We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Annie Nilsson. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Annie below.

Annie, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. So, let’s imagine that you were advising someone who wanted to start something similar to you and they asked you what you would do differently in the startup-process knowing what you know now. How would you respond?

If I were starting over, I would make sure I (myself) was my most important client, and really prioritize my marketing – especially social media. As a small business, client work and bringing in the money is usually the number one priority, which makes sense. But if you’re not prioritizing you and your brand, you won’t grow.

Find fun challenges within your niche to help you gain reach on social media, and connect with other small business owner-colleagues!

Today I would focus on reels, as they are being heavily pushed by the algorithms. Since the day I noticed the effect of reels, it’s my sole focus on my main account @by.Annie.N. I’ve never seen any other post type reach millions of people, over and over, like reels do. When my account was brand new, in just the first 3 months I grew 40k, now a few months later I’ve doubled that. Growing on Instagram have not only given me a lot of new opportunities, but also expanded my business in new directions.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

I started creating early. Painting, sewing my own clothes and creating jewelry, then I found the digital world where everything was possible to create! I started creating everything I could; logos, 3D models, other digital designs and websites.

Web development and programming was what I studied at university. I always knew I wanted to work for myself, so I got straight into freelancing and offering my services as a web developer. Web development and programming is a lot of the “back-end” (the stuff you don’t see on a website), but of course there’s no website without the “front-end” a.k.a. the things you see, and the *design*.

From there it was a straight path to graphic design and branding. We still work with web design, and that’s where we are different from a lot of other agencies. We offer a full service package for new businesses – we’d love to help you really get started with your new brand *and* your website.

With web design and development, usability is super important – that is everything from the visual representation for example: how big or small the text is, but also the visitor’s journey and the goal of the website. For that reason, we have a deeper knowledge also when it comes to branding, we bring the usability factor in to every brand.

Branding is really the whole essence of a business, much more than just a logo. What’s exciting about branding is that there’s so much thought that goes into it, strategy, target audience – and connecting everything as a visual presentation of the brand, with logos, colors, fonts etc.

Any design that needs more thought is right up my alley, so I love the fact that I get to design new reels templates for our membership ReeelTok.club every week. Within the ReeelTok.club we help small business owners and social media managers grow on social media with the same strategies I use on my Instagram account @by.Annie.N.

I love helping small businesses, because I can really relate! That’s why I’m proud of the fact that we help small businesses every day, not only with the start of their business, but also with their continued growth and social media within our membership 😊

Can you tell us the story behind how you met your business partner?

I have known my business partner in crime for my whole life. She knows exactly how my brain works, probably because she share my DNA – she’s my sister!

Fanny initially chose a completely different career path starting out. But when she saw how much fun I had building websites, she started studying the same thing I did and started working with me on the side. Fanny started at the exact right time as I was overwhelmed with work, doing everything myself.

Any resources you can share with us that might be helpful to other creatives?

Well, I wish I started using a CRM system sooner, haha!

When Fanny started, I just had an Excel sheets with all my clients to keep track of projects. It was messy.
Fanny really instigated me to find something better, and that’s when I found Dubsado.

Dubsado is great when you work with any sort of clients, we use it for invoicing, reminders, keeping track of projects, client communications, client forms, feedback and more. They also have a great client portal integrated.

I highly recommend Dubsado, and no, we’re not sponsored 😂

Contact Info:

• Website: https://webbyannie.com/en/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/by.annie.n/
• Youtube: COMING SOON: https://www.youtube.com/@by.annie.n
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/webbyannie/ http://www.tiktok.com/@webbyannie http://www.tiktok.com/@by.annie.n