Episode 5 – Rachel Pedersen, Social Media Manager and Educator

On March 27, 2016, at 1:30 am, a southern Minnesota entrepreneur tweeted, “My greatest idea yet is coming to me in pieces.” Less than two weeks later, she had appeared in Cosmopolitan, Glamour, The Today Show, and Huffington Post. Millions of women had read her post, and over 17,000 people had commented on it. She’s Rachel Pedersen, social media strategist, educator, and viral-on-purpose mother of two. 16 months ago, she had a handful of followers on Instagram, a Facebook group she was struggling to get members into, and a social media management agency just getting off the ground. Now she has 20,000 followers on IG, her facebook community has almost 6,000 people in it, and her agency has tons of local businesses and larger brands as its clients. And today she appears on our show to help local businesses use social media to grow their communities and bottom lines. The paradox, says Rachel, is that by backing off of saying their own name, and focusing instead on the values of their customers, they can create a brand story that builds customer love and makes sales! And she should know. For a few weeks in early 2016, Rachel's incredible love story (not her business!) was a topic of national conversation. Hard as it might be to believe, she called this shot. Her viral post was the culmination of more than a year spent learning about the architecture of social media communities, and how users cooperate to tell stories that matter to them. For this show, we polled our audience and took a handful of questions about social media strategy. Rachel was kind enough to give us strategies as if our business owners were her own clients! Today, we welcome Eden Prairie's Rachel Pedersen to The Local Storecast.