We were lucky to catch up with Lex Paige recently and have shared our conversation below.

Lex, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. What do you think Corporate America gets wrong in your industry?

I actually feel very strongly about this, haha.

Before starting my business for social media management + mentoring, I worked in a very corporate setting. While I was not in the position of being this company’s “social media manager”, it gave me a front row seat to almost everything Corporate America was doing wrong when it came to their socials.

A lot of big corporations feel as if things on social need to be cookie cutter style content, that follows a set of strict guidelines, using the same templates every time, or only using their social account for “business and sales” purposes. When trying to utilize the *incredible* world of social media, it’s important to acknowledge exactly what it is. Social. Big corporations are missing the community aspect, or the feeling as if you’re actually talking to a person in their DM’s, rather than an automated bot response. That personalization of your social media account makes a world of difference, even if you’re a franchise that again, has those guidelines that you have to follow when it comes to the content you post.

Your social media isn’t just a channel to pump out endless content to followers.
It’s a platform where people come to learn about your business, your establishment, who works there, who owns it, who those people are, what their business mission is, they want to see humor, they want to feel connection.
Corporate America treats social media like a bulletin board, just posting something & hoping for a couple of bites. What actually works is humanizing your social media to an audience. That disconnect really holds Corporate America back from fully utilizing and optimizing their socials.

While I understand having to uphold certain company standards, not being willing to lean into the trends, or what’s working in 2022 on social media, it’s only going to end up holding these corporations back from really benefiting from social media. Which, at the end of the day, gives smaller businesses who are more “up to speed”, more screen time for their content, so a win for small businesses!

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

Hi! My name is Lex Paige, and I’m the owner of Paige Media Co, and the creator of The Social Media Survival Guide!

To keep it short, Paige Media Co is my business for providing hands on & done for you social media services including management, content creation, strategy, & mentoring. The Social Media Survival Guide is a series of educational material I created to help others step into the world of owning a social media management business, and also helping small businesses get established running their own social media accounts!

It’s always so hard to tell where the story of Paige Media Co starts, haha! I unofficially started my business in 2016 by providing social media support to a friend who owned an e-commerce store. She had approached me asking for help in curating her business social media accounts – at this point, I had no experience with anything in this realm & her only inclination to reach out was based on how I was curating my personal account! Right place at the right time.

At the time, the thought of owning my own business was so far out of reach, so I just worked with her on the side of my full-time job for about 2 years before I realized what I was doing was a service that other businesses would also benefit from. I slowly started building the back end of my business, & I started reaching out to & connecting with more business owners to tell them about this new service that I was providing.

By 2019 I had built up a clientele that was almost to the point of being able to quit my full-time job to pursue this business full time. Fast forward a little bit to early 2020 when thousands of businesses had to learn how to navigate running their business digitally while the world was in the process of shutting down, & my inquiries went insane. A few weeks before we were officially in the pandemic, I was able to leave my full-time & dove headfirst into entrepreneurship.

Now in 2022, I’ve worked behind the scenes of hundreds of businesses, I currently have a full roster of amazing clients that I’m so unbelievably lucky to work with, I’ve launched a podcast (The Social Media Survival Guide) & a YouTube channel to provide as much education as possible when it comes to support with your socials!

What sets Paige Media Co apart is how I approach social media. It’s all about humanizing your brand, & I like to keep all of my hands on client as up to date as possible with what works on socials. Currently we’re really utilizing short form video including Instagram Reels & TikTok!

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Traditional word of mouth marketing & TikTok!

I think in an industry as digitalized as something like social media management, it’s easily forgotten how powerful word of mouth marketing can be. Providing a good experience, delivering quality results, and just overall being a decent human being, will go a lot farther than any paid ad will ever take you.

My first 15-20 clients all came to me before I even had a website, or a business Instagram account, or even an official business name, for that matter. Every single one of them trickled down from someone I had provided services for prior. They were thrilled with the results & wanted to share this resource with their small business friends. Then I introduced a referral program & incentive for my past clients to share this service with their friends, family & other business owners, which again, skyrocketed my inquiries.

Then in early 2020 I made the jump to putting my own business on social media. Once I started learning how TikTok worked & how it’s best utilized as a business owner, that became a huge source of new clientele for my social media management services.

Starting to work virtually with people also changed my business. This was the first time I was doing virtual discovery calls, and communicating strictly via Zoom. I was very confident doing these things in person, but transitioning to attracting & managing clients virtually was a whole new world for me.

Are there any resources you wish you knew about earlier in your creative journey?

Therapy, haha.

But in all seriousness, I don’t know if there is just “one” resource I wish I knew about earlier on in my creative journey, but what I do wish I did sooner was invest in myself to take this business seriously and find a community of other creatives who were not only supportive, but could understand what you go through in this position.

Growing up I was always made to feel as if a “creative” career was unstable, unmanageable, or just not the “right” path to take. It took me a LONG time to get over this conditioning & understand that honing in on that creative side was what was going to make this business work. But this mindset shift really started to happen once I started opening myself up to connecting with other creatives. Finding my people & really letting my walls down of being “ashamed” to talk about this business. Taking courses taught by creatives I trusted & respected, and attending 1:1 sessions with people who had accomplished the same goals I currently had set for myself.

So again, not a singular resource, but take the initiative to take yourself seriously. Find a coaching program, a community, or work 1:1 with someone who is where you want to be. Start surrounding yourself with people who match up with who you want to be.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.paigemediaco.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/paigemediaco
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCjJjvPcYcS20kIYQ4PNe8Yg
• Other: www.tiktok.com/@paigemediaco