Flex Your Soft Skills While Everyone Else Trains Their Bots

We are currently halfway through the year and I am halfway through what I’m calling my personal “rebrand” summer. 

I feel like as a collective we are standing between two worlds right now. The human world and the ai world. And while we’re all hanging out here and congregating marketing is shifting.  I went into a whole thing about it over in this BLOG.  

As difficult as it is to tell businesses apart physically it is now getting EXTREMELY difficult to tell businesses events apart because whatever prompts people bought or searched from some leading ai expert is kicking out the same garbage that looks like it was designed at 2:42 a.m. when someone sat up straight in their bed because they forgot to do it, and were passed out from a raging party night with 3 percent battery left on their device.

And the worst part is someone else definitely looked at what got kicked out and said “Yeah, post it.” But I’ll talk more on that another time- pinky swear.

But while we are standing at this marketing crossroads of Wall- E or the Humans I think it’s a good time to remind you about your marketing soft skills and that it might be time to begin to flex those muscles again while other businesses are enthralled with the ai agents they are building. 

So let's talk about it. While everyone else is out here fine-tuning prompts and outsourcing their personality to a chatbot, here's your permission slip to get weird, get human, and get good at the stuff that can't be automated at 2:42 a.m.

The Marketing Soft Skills Worth Flexing Right Now

Storytelling that doesn't sound like it came out of a template
AI can generate copy. It cannot generate your story, your brand's actual voice, or the specific, slightly unhinged way you talk about your product because you actually care about it. That's not a prompt. That's a personality.

Reading the room (aka emotional intelligence)
An algorithm doesn't know your audience is tired, distracted, or scrolling past their fifth "AI-powered" post of the day. You do. Or you can, if you're paying attention. That's the whole game right now — noticing what people actually feel, not what the data says they should feel.

Actual, real-life relationship building
DMs, comments, follow-ups, remembering someone's name after a networking event — none of that scales in a spreadsheet. It scales in the "oh my god she remembered" department, which is where loyalty actually lives.

Handwritten cards (yes, actual paper, actual pen)
I send handwritten cards to clients for their birthdays and our work anniversaries together. Not an automated email that says "Happy Birthday from all of us at Maven & Muse!" — an actual card, with an actual sentiment in my actual handwriting, that I put in an actual mailbox, that took me actual minutes I could've spent doing something else. That's the point. In a world where everything can be generated in half a second, the thing that took time is the thing that means something. No AI is licking an envelope for you.

Creative risk-taking
If everyone's output looks the same because it came from the same five prompts, the fastest way to stand out is to do something a machine wouldn't think to do. Weird headline. Unexpected format. A badly lit phone photo. A joke that only your audience gets. That's you. That's not replicable.

Judgment — knowing when to say "no, don't post that"
This is the one nobody's talking about enough. Somebody has to be the person who looks at the ai output and says "yeah, this isn't it," instead of "yeah, post it." That instinct — taste, basically — is a soft skill, and it's becoming a rare one.

So here we are, at the end of my thoughts and still standing at the crossroads. Wall-E or the humans. And honestly? I feel like you don't have to pick a side to win this one. Use the AI. Use the tools. Just don't let them replace the parts of you that were never meant to be automated in the first place.

Because your audience isn't just scrolling past sameness — they're craving the opposite of it. They want to feel like a real person made this, thought about this, cared about this. They're starving for it, actually, whether they could name it or not.

These soft skills are how you get remembered in a sea of sameness. Not because you outsmarted the algorithm, but because you gave people something the algorithm never could the opportunity to feel seen. 

So here's your homework: this week, do one thing a machine wouldn't think to do. Send the card. Make the call instead of the auto-reply. Write the weird headline. Let's see who actually remembers it. Then drop what you did in the comments so we can all learn and be supportive of each other.

Go be memorable my friend. The algorithm will catch up eventually. Your people are waiting on you now.

Card Images bought from: : Viola and Beatrice and Ginger P. Designs

How To Work With A Social Media Manager

Social Media, a free platform that businesses use to communicate with their customers and clients.  We’ve all been on it for as long as we can remember. Because of this, we all think that we know how to do digital marketing and understand what we are doing when it comes to our social media.  It’s simple right, choose an appealing eye photo and write a captivating caption and watch the internet go crazy for it. Then get annoyed when the likes and comments don’t come. 

Don’t we all wish that it was just as simple as posting a photo and a catchy phrase and the likes and comments just came flooding in?  The truth is that I get weekly emails and questions at networking groups of, “I just don’t know what to write.” People always tell me that they write out entire captions, then they delete them.  They write them again and delete them. Most people say that this cycle happens to them at least three or four times before they just get uber frustrated and don’t post. 

This writes and deletes what should not be happening.  Understand that you are not alone, the frustration with words is real for some people, the defeat of setting up that perfect photo is another.  The truth of the matter is that you are great at that one thing you are in business doing. You might not really be that great at the marketing aspect of your business, and that’s perfectly normal.  This is where outsourcing comes into play. Realizing what your weakness is and that there are people who exist who have that thing you need as their strength.  

Admitting that you need help is the first part of solving any problem. Coaching you through it is an excellent solution; however, a coach can’t do it for you.  Realizing that you actually need to hire someone to just do it for you is where the success begins. 

What Is A Social Media Manager

To free up time in their workday to work on their actual business, conscious business owners choose to outsource their social media management to people called Social Media Managers. Basically, this person takes care of your social media (be it on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LikedIn, Pinterest, etc.) needs such as creating content, posting, interacting and engaging, monitoring analytics, etc. 

Good Social Media Managers (SMM) have specialties, where their main focus is one or two social media platforms. (Mine is Instagram & Pinterest) This is great if you are just starting out, have a budget, and want to see how you do in terms of utilizing one platform at a time. Other social media managers are well-rounded and know a little bit of every platform, and usually take on the role of managing them all at the same time. This is great if you have multiple streams of social media and various audiences, and want to keep on top of all of them.

What Is The Cost Of A Social Media Manager

One of the biggest questions after deciding which route to go in terms of social media management is, “how much will I have to pay just to get my actual work done?” Of course, as a business, you want to make sure that you are spending your money in the right places. A few significant concerns that I run into is your business is your baby and so paying for someone (you may or may not know) who can be your voice, and how can you trust them to do this correctly? After all, you’ve been on social media yourself, forever, so how hard can it be?

I challenge you with this question, have you ever opened up Instagram to go in and post, but you end up looking at your feed for the next 45 minutes, and you forgot why you opened Instagram in the first place? By this time you’ve forgotten what is you wanted to say, and it’s challenging to get those words back after perusing your feed. Let me tell you a secret if you’ve done this more than a handful of times you need to consider outsourcing. 

There are so many components that go into social media management, components that your business won’t realize by just posting whenever you have an excellent idea for a caption.

I’m not saying that you can’t learn to DIY your social media marketing (to save money), I’m saying that to do social media right takes dedication and CONSISTENCY. While you are building ALL the other parts of your business, a Social Media Manager is laser-focused on the task of social media and only social media. 

Can’t I Just Have An Intern Or My Admin Assistant Post To Social Media?

The answer to this is obviously yes; however, I am a firm, of you, get what you pay for. Thinking that you are saving money by having your admin assistant pull double duty managing the phones and posting to your Instagram could actually be losing you money.  As I stated before a legit social media manager is laser-focused and trained in their specialized platform. A real social media manager is tuned into the trends, updates, and happenings of the platforms they specialize in and offloading that knowledge into the work that you are paying them to do for you.  An admin assistant or intern might not be equipped with this knowledge. 

This has come into play because speaking to your demographic through words and photos takes a certain finesse that someone trained in the field possesses. 

I’ve Hired A Social Media Manager, How Do I Determine My ROI

Seeing a return on the investment of your outsourcing to a social media manager isn’t one that is always to physical to see. Sometimes it’s as simple as realizing just how much more of your actual work you are getting done a day by not focusing on what and when are you going to post to social media.

One way to effectively see a ROI by outsourcing you need to set clear goals for your social media manager to work towards. A good social media manager will also tell you what their goals are for your business as well. For example, my biggest goal when I am hired is that I want to create as many leads to convert to your website that I can.

Other trackable goals would include such things as:

• A certain number of emails or DM’s from customers per month.

• A certain number of sales of a product or service.

• Obviously increase in followers, likes and comments.

If you are serious about taking your social media presence to the next level and just do not have the time to watch and read all of the things to learn how to correctly DIY your social media game. I encourage you to seek out and outsource to a qualified social media manager.  To see what services I can offer your business, visit my Services page.

In Your Business: Money Is A Renewable Resource; Time Is Not

Money is a renewable resource; time is not.

Read that again.

The chances are that your business is not styling and taking 100 product photos to get just the right one. Your actual business is not researching and writing blog posts. Your business is not writing captivating scroll stopping Instagram and SEO rich Pinterest captions. Your business IS something else.

Your business is a physical product, or it’s a service that you offer and provide to other businesses. Your business and passion is most likely NOT creating the marketing content to bring awareness to your target market about YOUR business.

In the monthly 20-minute speed marketing sessions, the top three frustrations that I hear from other business owners are:

1. I loathe social media. I don’t know what photo to post, what to write or have the time to do it.

2. I don’t know what platform I should be concentrating the limited amount of marketing time I block out to reach my target.

3. I feel like no one is even engaging or paying attention when I post, so I just don’t post.

After we discuss these issues and we chat about the services that Maven & Muse provides it always comes down to money and not time. The phrase, “I wish I could afford to hire you.” gets thrown out a lot.

We are all good at something, that’s why we have a business. The skills that we lack we need to learn to hire out. We are a society of multi-taskers, because multi-tasking gives us a sense of purpose. We feel empowered because we are capable of doing ALL of the things, except we are not doing all of the things well. If we flip our focus to investing our time on the one thing that we do well and hire out the rest the money will renew itself and our business will grow.

I personally suck at keeping up my books, and I hate doing it every month. So I have hired out these services. It’s totally a pain in the ass to pay for something that I am fully capable of inputing into my Quickbooks but I know that I would rather do anything else then keep them up. The couple hours that I would spend doing this each month has freed up the time for me to personally write content and market my own services which has in turn brought in the money to pay for the bookkeeper.

I encourage you to actually sit down and think about how much time you are actually putting into feeling frustrated by creating your own businesses digital marketing content. I will put money on the fact that it is the same amount of hours that a content creator would charge you for.

Money is a renewable resource; time is not.