We were lucky to catch up with Becky Chipera recently and have shared our conversation below.

Becky, 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 was starting over today, I would trust myself and my knowledge a lot more. When I was a new social media manager, I really struggled giving clients advice. I felt that “this” was their account and if they wanted me to do something, I would – even if I didn’t think it was a great idea. I really learned this lesson with an early client of mine. She did all of the wrong things – she changed her branding colors 3 times during our time together, she changed her target market twice, she had a freebie that had nothing to do with her business – just to name a few! And I went along with everything. When our time came to an end, one of the things she told me in her feedback form was, “I think you need to show up as an expert and give advice to your clients from an expert’s perspective.” And that really struck me because I hadn’t been doing that. And ever since, I’ve been very open and honest with my clients about their social media accounts.

I would also spend more time getting my business foundations in order. When you’re new – you don’t think about getting systems set up in your business. I was STRUGGLING! I had clients, but I was so unorganized and didn’t have automations set up. If I could start over, I would focus on building a strong foundation first!

Becky, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Hi! I’m Becky, the owner of Chipera Creative LLC, a social media management business.

If you would have asked me 5 years ago what I’d be doing with my life in 5 years – I can tell you for a FACT, it would not have been social media. Truth be told, I didn’t even know social media management was an actual job! However, now that I’m here – I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Let’s take it WAY far back! I was always a creative child. You could catch me coloring, making jewelry, writing a magazine (yes, a magazine lol) any day of the week. As I grew older, and school got harder, and friends became more and more important – my creativity started to slip away. It wasn’t until after college that I really rekindled my love  of creativity.

I went to college at the University of Northern Iowa and graduated with a degree in Public Relations and a minor in marketing. However, my favorite assignments in school were ANY tasks that required Indesign, creating a marketing campaign for a hotel, creating all the visuals for group assignments, and writing stories. Creativity was always there, I just didn’t recognize it as well as I do today.

After graduating from college – I did what any new grad did – I took the first job I was offered. Thats how I entered the insurance industry. I held all sorts of job roles from customer service, to sales, to marketing, to underwriting – but I always felt like something was missing.

A few years into working as a full time employee – my mom had gotten me a book on crocheting for a holiday gift. One night, I picked that book up and taught myself how to crochet and it became a full on passion of mine (it still is to this day!) After creating all of my friends and family hats, scarves, and blankets – I decided none of them needed another hat and opened an Etsy shop. Thats when it hit me – the thing missing from my day was creativity. Let me tell ya, theres not much room in the insurance industry for creativity, ha!

For awhile, having a day job + working my Etsy on nights and weekends was enough, until it wasn’t. When the pandemic hit, that really changed me. At the time, I was working full time, I had a part time job at a vintage shop, AND I was working my Etsy shop. The pandemic opened my eyes and made me realize I was doing way too much and barely enjoying my day job. I began to to question why i I was spending so much time doing work I didn’t enjoy and only have a few hours every week to do the things I DO enjoy. However, I had no solutions. Bills still needed to be paid.

And then, in 2021 – a good friend of mine suggested I start a VA business (virtual assisting). You see – one of my favorite things about Etsy wasn’t just the creating part, but also the back-end business “stuff.” I loved creating listings, taking photos, editing those photos, replying to emails, talking with clients, creating tiktoks, posting on my business instagram and I didn’t realize I could do these things for other people and turn it into a business.

So in March 2021, my business was born! And, my first client asked me if I would manage her social media accounts. Me, not fully knowing what i was doing, agreed. I knew a ton about TikTok and Instagram just from using them to promote my own business so i figured sure, why not. And thats when I fell in love with social media management.

It incorporated all of my favorite things – creativity, project management, organizing, building relationships with my clients. I absolutely LOVED it! About 6 months after that first client, I pivoted to only offering social media management and I’ve been so happy with that ever since!

What’s a lesson you had to unlearn and what’s the backstory?

Early in my business, I signed up for a coaching program that was supposed to help me get my business and order. While I did learn a lot, a piece of advice I was given REALLY did some damage to me in the beginning of my career. All of us who signed up for this program offered different types of digital services and I was the only social media manager in my group. The piece of advice they gave was to never give out DIY advice on your social media. They said all that did was attract followers who didn’t want to hire you – it attracted followers who only wanted to learn from you and enact those DIY lessons on their own. While that advice may work for some people and some industries, it did not work for me.

I struggled with what to create for content for myself. How was I supposed to grow my own account without posting any valuable information?

After that program ended, I signed up for an exclusive social media manager program. Everyone in the program was a social media manager, including the instructor – and that program changed my life and my business. The instructor confirmed what I had suspected – that advice I was given in the beginning did not work for us and I had to unlearn that mindset. And now – I post as much valuable content as possible without worrying about people taking it and enacting my advice in their own businesses. Why? Because the content I share shows I am an expert and that I know what I’m talking about. The people that hire me don’t have the availability to manage their own social media accounts. And, the ones that DO utilize my advice for themselves – in a few years as their businesses grow, they too won’t have the availability to manage their own accounts – and I hope they come to me, when they’re ready for social media management.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

Yes! I have so much advice on this topic! The first thing I want to say is – IGNORE YOUR FOLLOW COUNT. Here’s the deal, as business owners, it’s really easy to fall into the compare game. People often feel less than because their follow count isn’t large as someone else in their industry. and THATS OKAY! Its better to build an engaged following -slowly, that wants your content, than it is to build a following of random people just to have a larger follower number. Let’s talk about the difference because its important.

Building an engaged following is best because your followers actually want your product and/or service and they actually look at your content and take it in. Whereas a following of random people will not have as many REAL people that are interested in your content or your product or service.

Did you hear the story of that creator who had 1 million followers and could barely sell shirts? I can’t remember who the creator was but they had a following of over 1 million and they had decided to sell t-shirts, they barely made any sales. And then theres me, at the time of writing this – I have 520 followers and I make a full time living with my business.

Contact Info:

• Website: chiperacreative.com
• Instagram: chiperacreative

Image Credits
All image credits go to Katie Bullerman of Katie B Photography. (IG: katiebphotography.ia)