Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Emily Winters. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Emily, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. Do you take vacations? Why or why not?

After working for a digital creative agency for three years before launching The Social Rising, my own social media marketing agency, I was burnt out and completely void of creativity. When I founded Social Rising I made a promise to myself that I would work when it felt right to me, and take breaks when I needed them. I think about it like I’m leading by example for my clients who are all small business owners. We have each other’s back when we take vacations and are able to form great relationships as a team. Plus when everyone is rested and rejuvenated you’re able to come up with really amazing ideas together.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

The Social Rising is a social media marketing agency that helps small business owners develop a social marketing strategy that saves them TIME while building an engaged digital community through proven processes that work. Led by founder, Emily Winters, who has over 10 years experience in marketing and photography, The Social Rising doesn’t buy into fads but instead uses data and the goal of actually CONNECTING with people to tell a brand’s story and generate results.

We’d love to hear the story of how you turned a side-hustle into a something much bigger.

My photography career started out as a hobby. I’ve always loved photography and playing around with cameras, but it wasn’t until I started developing recipes that I truly started taking the craft of photography seriously. There is one moment that really changed things for me. I entered one of my recipes, dark chocolate matcha macaroons, into a recipe contest. Over the course of a few weeks, the audience would vote on their favorite recipe and the winner would receive $1000. I ended up winning and I immediately used that money to invest in an online food photography course and a Canon Rebel, which is basically the cheapest “nice” camera you can buy. From there I was fully committed to becoming the best I could be at food photography.

Now, close to 7 years later, I’ve worked with a wide variety of clients from General Mills to small family-owned seasoning companies that you can only find at your local farmers’ market. I’ve also branched out to lifestyle and branding photography. If you would have told me when I entered that contest with my macaroons shot on my boyfriend’s iPhone (his was nicer than mine) that I’d now be working full time as a photographer and social media marketer, I probably would have made a sarcastic comment and told you to stop teasing me.

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

Building a presence on social media is all about identifying who you are talking to and what their pain points are. Once you’ve figured that out, it’s all about connecting, on a personal level, with those people. For example I work with small business owners so for my content I think about how many hats they wear, how busy they are, how they may be doubting themselves – and I create content that speaks to that.

This is the same approach I take with all my clients. Social media is meant to be SOCIAL. People want to connect with a person, not a product. The more you can make it feel personal and give people a reason to connect with you, the more successful you social media presence will be.

Contact Info:

• Website: emwintersphoto.com/social-rising
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thesocialrising/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/the-social-rising/

Image Credits
All photos are taken by me! My photography business is called Em Winters Photo and can be tagged on Instagram @emwintersphoto OR @thesocialrising