We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Garin Michelson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Garin, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.

A larger social media agency owner passed along a client to me in the late spring of 2023. The client owns a business in South Carolina where she leases suites to beauty and wellness professionals. When I took over her account, the business was fairly new. The goal was to find beauty and wellness professionals in her area and send them DMs on Instagram to let them know about the business and invite them to take a virtual tour of the studios. My job was simple. Post 1x a week for the client and spend 15-30 minutes a day searching for and sending DMs to local professionals that met that demographic. In the first 2 months of working together, I was able to get 5 virtual tour bookings per month. As a social media strategist, I knew that there was a better way than to just send cold DMs to people. I adjusted our strategy and started focusing on building genuine, authentic relationships with people in the targeted demographic. I still sent some cold DMs, but I also focused on building relationships on behalf of my client. I commented on people’s posts, responded to their stories, sent words of encouragement and admiration, and spent time trying to get to know them and understand their businesses, struggles and desires. This strategy proved wildly successful. After implementing this strategy, we got 19 bookings in one month, up from just 5. One of the aspects of social media management that I preach in my own content all the time is building relationships. After all, social media is just that- SOCIAL. When we focus on actually getting to know people, and spread positivity and joy, we start to see improved results. I am very proud of the results I achieved and continue to achieve for this client.

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.

I am Garin Michelson, a former high school history teacher turned entrepreneur. When my first child was born on January 1, 2016 (my New Years baby), I left my teaching job to stay home with my baby. I had my second child in 2018 and stayed home with my kids for approximately 6 years. As a result of the pandemic and other factors, I opted not to go back to teaching, but I knew I needed to start working again. Through a series of connections, I found a woman on Instagram who offered an online course in switching careers to become an online service provider. I quickly settled on social media marketing and dove right in. I learned everything I could, read a lot, took a few online courses and joined a membership for other social media professionals. That was 2022. I have now been in business for 1.5 years.

I am a social media marketer and strategist. Small to medium-sized businesses hire me to create their social media strategies and implement them on their behalf. When I begin working with a new client, I gain as much information about their business, ideal client and goals as I can. From there, I create a comprehensive (30+ pages) social media strategy that covers everything from their brand values to their ideal client to the types of content we can create, and so much more. This strategy gives us a step-by-step plan to achieve their social media goals, which are derived from their overall business goals.

Once the strategy is complete and has been presented to the client, I create content for them monthly. Every piece of content we put out is based in strategy and data. Everything has a goal and a purpose, and I track the results and report them to the client monthly. When content performs well (depending on the metric we have determined to track per post), we continue with that type of content in the future. When it doesn’t perform well, we adjust accordingly.

Every single thing I do for my clients is based in strategy and data. This is important because clients want to know that when they spend their hard-earned money with me, they can expect a return on investment. It can take months to see this ROI, but with strategy and analytics reporting, the client can always see what they’re getting for their investment. They can rest assured that I will adjust content as needed to ensure that our goals are met.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

In my opinion, reputation is everything. With me, what you see is what you get. I consider myself to be a kind, nice person who is approachable and genuine. I create content for my business that represents me. I post reels of myself about 2x a week and show up on my stories almost daily to interact with my followers. I never do anything shady. I don’t buy followers or engage in engagement pods, or anything else. I show up as myself and as authentically as possible. I have build so many wonderful, valuable relationships on social media, and that is responsible for my growth. Most of my clients have come from the relationships I have built and continue to build, and I think that is all due to me showing up authentically always.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I pivoted in 2022 when I decided it was time to go back to work as my kids were getting older. I knew I needed to earn an income, but I also wanted to be home when my kids got off the school bus, to be able to chaperone their field trips, to be able to play with them after school and do homework together. That is why I decided to become an online service provider. It provides me the flexibility to work when I need to and take breaks when I want to. And I use my teaching and education background in my job frequently. I have figured out that there are many transferrable skills from my teaching career that I can take with me in my social media marketing career. I view this job as an extension of the jobs I have held previously, like they are all stepping stones.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.getsocialwithgarin.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/getsocialwithgarin/
• Facebook: facebook.com/garinmichelson
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/garin-michelson-a2b5255/

Image Credits
None, all from my iPhone. I have not invested yet in a professional photo shoot!