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

Tina , appreciate you joining us today. Can you tell us about an important lesson you learned while working at a prior job?

The most important lesson I have learned that has stayed with me is to not become complacent in your business. I had worked for a company that had been very successful in the past in their area of commerce. Rinse and repeat was the answer to their success year after year. I began to be a believer in this system.. but I soon began to see their ways fall behind as technology improved. They never seized the opportunity to take behind the scenes pictures in day to day duties, or on location event pictures. They did not reach out and use the power of influencers, or accept the beauty of diversity. It was that precise moment I knew breaking through the rinse and repeat method was something they were not willing to explore and would eventually be a downfall for them. I knew we were missing out on perfect opportunities to engage future customers and show another layer of the company. In this day and age you cannot ignore the power of social media, the usefulness of influencers, and how to embrace organic marketing.

Tina , 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?

Over 20 years ago I made a scrapbook for the birth of my first daughter. What I learned in the process was the correct way to actually preserve your memories safely. How to use archival safe paper, adhesive, and to document the important details in the process. It was the quest to learn more about the creative side of documenting that led me to teach others the process. Searching for these products to use led me to companies that were looking for more insight into this genre. Within the craft and hobby industry I began consulting companies on products, designing sample projects, assembling design teams, teaching classes, and working trade shows representing different companies and products. Fast forward to today I have a line of products that helps you document your life and travels. My generation got handed down photo albums that were yellowing with pictures that are brittle from the adhesive used in the album sleeves. This generation’s photos live on their phone. I hope to motivate people to print their pictures off their phone and put them in a book. Leave a legacy with words and pictures. The power a photo can evoke along with words is so empowering. Just think how influential telling your story can be, what are you feeling? What are you doing? Where were you at? In 20 years your documented album will be one of the biggest treasures. I share my documented pages of my life. It could be my travels, it could be what I cooked, or what the sky looked like from my window. On some days I get super creative and colorful, or it can be simple with the picture and some written words. I have seen the practice called so many different things over the years, scrapbooking, memory keeping, journaling, memory planning, whatever you call it you are documenting your life story. My style of documenting is evolving, and I enjoy watching my customers style evolve as well, its a process and when they find what works for them is amazing. Knowing that I am helping people leave behind their story in a visual art form is what I am most proud of. I am also proud to be a hispanic woman business owner who has all of my products produced right here in the USA.

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

Social Media was struggle for me in the beginning of my business. I read every article that supposedly had the perfect Instagram recipe for success. I watched numerous YouTube videos on how to break the algorithm. I tried it all. I had the pertly curated feed, with bright pictures and good content. I was getting some traffic but not the engagement I had hoped for. I could not understand what the hold up could be. The pictures were great, the captions were catchy, it was frustrating not being able to crack the Instagram code! I went back to the drawing board and tried to see what if any common denominator was said between all the clickbait I watched. The one bit of advice that I took away from it all was to be the face of the business. It was the best advice I yielded from all the clickbait I had to fish through. I started getting on stories everyday, I was engaging with my customers now more than ever. I then began going LIVE once a week on my account. Around lunch time I would get on and do a quick project or I would flip through album pages and just engage with my customers in a LIVE conversation. I saw my engagement improve drastically. I wasn’t so focused on my numbers growing but more so my “saves”, and my “sent” areas. I would ask myself.. are my customers going to want to save this post? Is it so good they will send it to a friend? As soon as I changed my focus off the numbers and concentrated on engaging with my customers it was they perfect recipe! My call to action is to have them sign up to my email list. I love growing my social media, but growing my email list is a thousand times better!

Has your business ever had a near-death moment? Would you mind sharing the story?

Let’s talk about being so excited after months and months of preparation finally being ready to launch your business and COVID hits. But wait.. it should not matter, you have an online business. COVID shouldn’t affect my online business except you have a travel document line and no-one can travel. It was devastating. I launched with a line of items to help you document your travels beginning with Palm Springs and Hawaii. Planning on doing in store events, doing social media posts from the different locations, I had big plans and it did not turn out anything like I had plan. It was hard, it took a lot of regrouping and pivot became my go to word. I was constantly having to regroup almost weekly. I was fully aware and prepared for an uphill battle the first year in business, but this was a a Mt. Everest hike! It was scary and I did a completely 360 and went with a theme park theme for my next big launch. Theme parks even though they were not open always bought joy to people and who doesn’t have a ton of pictures from theme parks? After months and moths of nothing it took a theme park theme to get me out of my rut! I took a chance on a place that brought smiles to so many people, and it worked.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://socialpaperplan.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/socialpaperplan/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/socialpaperplan
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tina-keyner-00369b3b/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCqING39m4AlKqH0XRS4zXeQ