Law & Business Podcast: Episode 22 with Sarah DeGeorge of Socially Dedicated

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On Episode 22 of the Law & Business podcast, I chat with Sarah DeGeorge of Socially Dedicated.  It’s a part of our Philly Bloggers series.  Sarah and I chat about her blog, Socially Dedicated, and what it means for business.  Sarah has tips on her blog, such as how to stay on a client’s money habits, how to balance your work and life properly, and what it means to be a freelancer.

We also chat about how Sarah uses her blog and her social media consulting concurrently.

You can find Sarah’s blog, Socially Dedicated at http://www.socdedicated.com

Twitter: https://twitter.com/socdedicated

Here is a lightly-edited transcript of the episode:

Intro:
You’re listening to the Law and  Business podcast hosted by Anthony Verna. We tackle the difficult questions where business and the law intersect to help you run a smarter business and avoid costly mistakes. Brought to you by Verna Law, PC a full-service law firm, focusing on patents, trademarks, copyrights, domain names, and advertising law. For more information, call (914) 908-6757 or send an email to Anthony@Vernalaw.com.

Anthony Verna:
And welcome to the Law and Business podcast. We’re in the middle of our Philadelphia bloggers series. You like the side of that, Sarah, don’t you? Yeah, right with me is Sarah DeGeorge of the Socially Dedicated blog. How’d I do?

Sarah DeGeorge:
Good. Great. Made it sound better than I ever do. So that’s what counts.

Anthony Verna:
Wonderful. Wonderful. Once again, the Law and Business podcast is brought to you by Verna Law, focusing on intellectual property and advertising law. You already heard that in the introduction. So, Sarah, let’s start here. Tell us about your blog and what you do.

Sarah DeGeorge:
So my blog is kind of an extension of my career, so I freelance and socially dedicated. It came from both my initials are SD and I do social media marketing.

Anthony Verna:
That’s very handy.

Sarah DeGeorge:
Yeah, I know, right? There was, there was a plan to incorporate a logo when I finally put it together and have my signature being the SD part of the logo. But that’s a completely different story. But anyways, my freelancing is like I said, then carried over to my blog because I wanted to be able to kind of talk about it, and a lot of people that are bloggers tend to, and, I see a lot of them, they are freelancing on the side more so with content creation because of their writing and everything like that. So, it was kind of like a three-sided venture because it’s it’s a portfolio page, it’s a blog itself, , I put it as like a business front too. So, it shows the services that I do alongside the information that I put out with the blog. So that’s kind of how I positioned the website itself. Whole package kind of.

Anthony Verna:
Yeah, I understand. I understand that completely. So, when I look at your blog, I see topics like best business practice of being yourself, freelance truly isn’t free, staying on top of client’s money habits. Are these topics that you draw from your experiences in work?

Sarah DeGeorge:
Yeah, I’d say so. Sometimes something might happen and instead of me being grumpy and spiteful and being all you know, write a blog to inform others about the situation and how to do it in a way where you have your freelancing career and your reputation behind you and it’s good, everything like that. Like sometimes it is inspired by my own personal experiences in a way that I can almost, it’s a teachable lesson. Oh, unfortunately I have to go through said lesson, but I’d like to help other people not have to go through it. Yeah, Basically I think most of it is kind of like personal experience. Some of it is just I see something, or something sparks my interest. Maybe nothing happened personally to me, but I’m like, hmm. Like that’s something we should talk about. And I tried to put my own spin on it. I’m still young so I’m, I’d like to say I’m kind of in like that mid-level part right now. I’m no longer, I would say entry level. I would like to say I’m, I’m getting to the level where I could be like, Oh yeah, I’m sure sort of an expert in the career by like riding that middle level where I can write about it, where I’m like, here’s my hindsight, but then here is where I’m working towards too. And maybe somebody else who’s on that journey can relate.

Anthony Verna:
What sparked the idea of making a blog that related to work in the first place? Because in a way, in a way your blog and work are intertwined. It’s very similar to my blog as well, my blog and this podcast, my law practice. I mean everything gets combined as one anyway. So, what sparked that for you?

Sarah DeGeorge:
I just felt like I had a lot of ideas and maybe like a lot of thoughts. And I’m really in my own group of friends. Not, you know, the Philly bloggers, we’re all bloggers. But in my own life I’m really the only freelancer I know. So, it’s not like I could really talk to people about this in my own groups. So, I wanted to kind of put my thoughts out there. And, in writing, because I went to school for journalism a little side. So obviously writing is kind of like what I do. So, I felt like this was a place where I’m putting my thoughts out there. I’m putting them out there for somebody else to hopefully, sure. Talk to me about it. Agree with me, disagree, anything. I felt like it was a good platform for me to hopefully help other freelancers and small business, you know, anything along those lines.

Anthony Verna:
And now your freelancing is social media and other digital…

Sarah DeGeorge:
Yeah, so basically anything in that realm. I kind of teeter on the lines of communication and marketing. Cause I do content creation, SEO, paid marketing, like ad words, Bang. So, I wear many hats, I feel like for a lot of the time, but it helps because I get to have my creative…

Anthony Verna:
 Everything is under digital media.

Sarah DeGeorge:
Yes. You know, it all kind of combines in itself. If somebody wants me to write their blog posts for them and then they’re like, oh wait, you do ad words too. Do you want to do our paid marketing too? And I’m like, Hey, I actually know that it’s not something that I’m like, I don’t know what paid marketing is.

Anthony Verna:
Sure. So, I want to ask you about your latest blog entry. Close the Laptop and Breathe seems a little bit at odds with what you actually do.

Sarah DeGeorge:
Yeah, I think it was almost kind of like one of those things where I’m writing it and I’m hopefully like, Sarah, you’re writing this, so hopefully you take this into consideration. I feel like it’s one of those things where as freelancers you, sometimes you want to practice what you preach, but you know, I’m writing this blog as I should be closing the laptop and breathing and you know, it’s kind of like, it’s almost like an oxymoron or something where you’re like, wait, but you’re, you’re doing the opposite of it by writing this blog sometimes. Obviously, I think it’s like one of those things where you write it in hopes that you almost like it’s a teachable lesson to yourself. The backstory is obviously they are friends and few sponsors hosted a yoga event at the Philadelphia Marina. So, it was a good event and hopefully it was a teachable lesson to freelancers that hey, if you’re invited somewhere, just take the time. Don’t worry. The work is going to be there whether you take an hour for yoga or not. So that was basically the whole concept of the blog. So, hopefully somebody else does yoga or whatever it is they want to do to relax for a little bit and close the laptop and breathe.

Anthony Verna:
So do you find that the blog helps with the work/life balance or…

Sarah DeGeorge:
I guess relatively speaking in comparison, you know, fashion bloggers and travel bloggers, there’s a little bit more of like a colorfulness to theirs where I’m talking about freelancing and small business. It may be a little bit more of a dry topic. But for me when I’m losing my creative juices from actual work that I do, Socially Dedicated is a good place where I’m writing about something I actually want to write about and it kind of is a relaxing kind of moment when I’m just writing cause I chose the topic, I wasn’t handed it. And, of course, obviously I don’t mind what I do and freelancing but at least this is almost like my own self-curated work that I do. So, a little different than you know, being handed something and you’re like I have to research this. I maybe don’t know what it is about or at least this, I’m like okay I feel confident enough I could just type. I don’t have to do research beyond like statistics or you know, things like that.

Anthony Verna:
We get that way too. Where either after filing some applications or writing a motion for litigation, I got to turn off the screens and I have to walk away even though I also know I’ve got blog posts that are like sitting in the back of my head, waiting to come out. And I look at the last time I actually put up a blog post I’m like, oh, I’m overdue.
Sarah DeGeorge:
No, and that’s actually, I think I’ve written about that in the past. Do you write? Sometimes I feel like as bloggers we see a gap and we’re like, we need to fill that gap. It should’ve just come naturally. Like should you just, right when it’s like you really feel like you want to write or do you go on as to where you’re like, ah, it’s been too long and then you write something and maybe it isn’t 100% what you want, but you’re doing it because you feel that you haven’t updated in a while. It’s kind of like a weird, I guess, like battle within. You’re like, do I wait until I have this perfect blog to write and then it’s going to feel great, I’m going to be happy about it, or do I make sure I’m constantly updating content just for the concept of updating content?

Anthony Verna:
Yeah. There are some who say perfect is the enemy of good.

Sarah DeGeorge:
 I can agree with that.

Anthony Verna:
My particular struggle with blogging really is that. It’s like I need to balance the fact that I work and I have a practice where I have other people in the practice as well, and so you have to balance that along with the fact that a blog entry is important in today’s world, when your blog is related to your work, , and you’re not really selling advertising on your blog. Whereas, if you’re selling advertising on your blog, that is your work and that is your job and so you do have to get something out, but your blog, when it’s related to your work, well, it’s marketing for you or you’re missing a marketing opportunity.

Sarah DeGeorge:
Yeah. It’s just, it’s one of those things where you’re just like, what is the right balance and how do I get to that point where I know the right balance and I think it’s a very open ended. I think it depends on everyone’s schedule. With blogging, you don’t want to burn yourself out because then I’ve had friends with blogs and they burn out and then they were so good at it, but they were almost too good at keeping up with it. And then all of a sudden now I look back and they haven’t wrote a blog in like four months because they’re like, I couldn’t do it. I didn’t even do it. I couldn’t do anymore. And then it’s then maybe the idea was maybe you were just doing a little too much. Maybe if you had scaled back even the slightest bit, you wouldn’t have hit this wall of sorts, you know? So, I guess there are places where they’re like, oh, this is how many times you should be updating this or how many times you should be blogging. But then at the same time, I think like there’s that gray area.

Anthony Verna:
Do you set goals for how often you want to post or is it just whenever the spirit moves you to write something?

Sarah DeGeorge:
So currently I have a pretty full plate with clients, so I think I’m on like the, when the spirit needs to just because of just like I said, my current lifestyle. But I’m kind of in the process of looking through my clients and seeing when contracts are up. Are there any clients that maybe there is no future growth between us and you know, I’m trying to make my schedule be as it having like, you know, 10 clients, but I’d rather have like five clients in which it’s a good relationship. I’m not getting stretched thin with time. With that being said, hopefully when I go through kind of my, I don’t wanna say purge of sorts, I will maybe flip to the other side where I’m gonna be a little bit more structured in my blogging schedule. Like my blog is very important to me and I want to see it continued to grow at some point. It’s growing, but you know, I’d like for it to be also a focus of mine instead of where I go to when I need a creative reboot.

Anthony Verna:
If you were to pin an ultimate goal on your blog, what would it be?

Sarah DeGeorge:
I’d really love for my blog to be where I gain more of my clients. So, a lot of my clients right now, and it’s great because it is referral based, so I’d like to think that I’m doing well, but I’d like my blog to almost be more or less where people are like, hey, I like what she’s saying. She seems like she knows what she’s doing, let me hire her and that be where I find most of my work. I’d like people to find me based on the fact that they think I’m knowledgeable or that I’m a good freelancer and I can help them. That’s what I know best. So that’s why I write about it. So hopefully.

Anthony Verna:
When you write a blog entry, how do you advertise that you’ve written a blog entry? How does that work?

Sarah DeGeorge:
So, it depends on what the blog entry is. If it’s just a blog entry where it’s kind of like a think piece, I usually post it on the some groups that I’m involved in on LinkedIn, like the usual avenues. My social media, I’ll make like a graphic on Instagram leading them to the blog. I haven’t done that lately, but that’s what I used to do, like new blog and those are my avenues right now for the most part. The other thought of that was, if it is a blog regarding something, so I’m trying to do like a small business spotlight if you will, in Philly. So, we recently did Founding Footsteps. They’re a tour group. So, when I’m done with the blog, I obviously send it to said person and then if they want to share it on their social feeds.

Anthony Verna:
Yeah, I mean in a way this is some of the stuff that you blog about when you think about it, like these are the connections and you have a blog post specifically on connections for small business people. It sounds like you try to keep that in your mind as these connections and you keep the advice that you gave on the blog.

Sarah DeGeorge:
Like I said, I try my best. Sometimes. I think the one part where…

Anthony Verna:
We’re all allowed to make mistakes and slack off and take time for ourselves. So, don’t worry about, yes, of course you’re doing it to your best of your ability.

Sarah DeGeorge:
So I try to make those connections. Especially I think small businesses and Philadelphia, shameless plug for Philadelphia, I think we’re really great city where people actually want others to grow. So, I don’t look at another maybe freelancer, small business blogger as a competition. I’m like, how can we formulate something? Like I ran into somebody one time and they wanted me to give talks with them. They were like, “Oh hey, like let’s try and do something when we can find the time.” So, I try to connect and disseminate my information from my blog out to others who might either want to work together with me on something for greater cause or so on and so forth.

Anthony Verna:
It makes perfect sense. And I am glad to see that you are practicing what you’re preaching on the blog. I do want to talk about another entry you had back in April about the fears of small business owners and freelancers. What are some of those fears and what advice do you have to get over them?

Sarah DeGeorge: (
I think the biggest fear for freelancers and small businesses is just the money. I know it stinks and I’m not really a money driven person, but it is the biggest fear because you’re no longer working underneath somebody where this is your salary and this is that. And I think that…

Anthony Verna:
I would, I would completely agree with you. Cash flow is a big, big fear.

Sarah DeGeorge:
Oh yeah. And then, cause you can make as much as you want, that’s great, but you can also not make anything cause you’re not guaranteed. And I think another fear with freelancing is you’re kind of your own entity. And if anything goes wrong, it just completely falls on you. There’s nobody that you can be like, well you can talk to my manager or something like that. So, it’s a lot of accountability and I think that’s a huge, you’re basically in charge of your success or failure. Sure. So those, I think…

Anthony Verna:
Well, I mean to look at it the other way, when you do something well, that’s also on your shoulders and people look at you as saying you helped me out in a situation.

Sarah DeGeorge:
Yeah. Unfortunately, I feel like people tend to go to the bad side first. I think, just like everybody’s like, oh, it could go really well, but then everybody’s like, yeah, but most likely it’s not gonna work out. And I’d say a good chunk of people usually go to the pessimistic end of things first.

Anthony Verna:
I hope we’re not all Eeyores in life.

Sarah DeGeorge:
My boyfriend is always like, when we watch it Winnie the Pooh, he’s like, “Oh hey, it’s you and it’s Eeyore.” So, he’s like, there’s Sarah. We tend to be very hard on ourselves and that’s I think why that tends to be the case. And then you’re like, oh it worked out, but it’s not going to work out next time.

Anthony Verna:
Oh yeah. What advice do you have on getting past some of these fears?

Sarah DeGeorge:
I think you just have to focus on the wins.
Like I know that sounds really simple and it’s not as simple, but you kind of like, if I’m feeling really down about something that happened. Maybe I send something in, and my client was like, ah, it’s really not that good. And then you kind of get down and you’re like, wait a second, but I just sent this in. So, for example, something didn’t work out with one of my clients, but then I was like, wait, but I just pitched to Runner’s World and we got an article in Runner’s World. Then they have, and you know a bunch of people like that. I was like, wait, I did that right. Maybe I didn’t do this right, but I did that right. So that’s kind of key to kind of keeping yourself in check is just to remembering the good things. I was on the phone with a client yesterday and he was like, you know, you’re a very important cog in this little, small business wheel that we have. You know, sometimes you think that your work isn’t getting appreciated. But then you hear that and you’re like, wait, no. They said I am an important part of this, so I’m going to remember that comment for sure when I’m feeling blue.

Anthony Verna:
I mean I have two particular thoughts and you can tell me what you think about this. One is, I know for a lot of small businesses, it’s difficult to do this, but outsourcing certainly helps. Like when it comes to money and being an attorney, I’m not an accountant so I know how to touch Quickbooks. I can look at it and I can read it because I had my own practice now six, seven, eight. Yeah. And longer than I ever thought that I would have to have my own practice. So, I first started by just doing Quickbooks. Myself and with my former partner, we would just spend a day doing Quickbooks and that’s like eight hours of a day wasted on Quickbooks. So, one of the things I’ve done is I’ve gotten a bookkeeper. In the end, that’s outsourcing. Qhen it comes to collecting money, some of that falls onto my bookkeeper. Then on the cashflow issue, what are the ways that you can increase your cash flow?

My firm takes credit cards, which for a lot of people sounds weird for a lawyer, but I mean, it’s normal in today’s world. And I even have a colleague who accepts Chase Mobile payments, as strange as that might sound. She’s like, yeah, I do some things post credit and she doesn’t even take credit cards, but she’ll take mobile. Oh, I know, how strange. So there are ways that you can do to make sure that your fears are alleviated by getting that support. And I realized that sometimes that’s not easy to do, but you kind of have to outsource some things to keep your support rolling.

Sarah DeGeorge:
Yeah. It’s funny, actually, I was going back, I actually shared one of those posts on my social media yesterday. It was like, the title was like, “When’s a Good Time to Hire Employees?” So ironically, that’s why your question, I was like, Hey, I just posted something about that so I like it. It’s just l every company has growing pains or small business freelancers, even sometimes. A a freelancer you are like, hmm, well I have this other freelancing friend that’s better at this than I, maybe I can have them work on this. So, I think it’s definitely a good way to alleviate some of those fears. Like if it’s something you’re just really not comfortable with, it’s probably better to outsource it because you’re going to get a better return having somebody really good doing it than you trying to like just pass something off as whatever it was and they’re going to be like, “wait, what did you even just do?” and you’re like, I don’t know.

Anthony Verna:
Right. When you take over the social media campaign of a company, is it usually because a company has been doing it themselves and they’re not seeing a return or a specific focus? It’s easier thought of then said.

Sarah DeGeorge:
You know, I’ve had the people that are like, I’m not seeing a return, and I don’t understand the analytics. Can you look at them? Another is just simply, they just didn’t know how even how to set it up. Like you know, you just have the basic and then some they’re like, I saw that you did this for x client, you know, they’re my friend. Could you do this for my company as well? And then I look, and you have to take into a whole bunch of things into account. And I’ve been given social media like marketing and management positions based on many different reasons. Just from the most basic to more in depth, deep dive type reasons.
Anthony Verna:
Sure. Understood. We’re running a little bit out of time, so let’s end on this. I actually like how your blog looks.
Sarah DeGeorge:
Oh, okay. That’s good. Sometimes I question that.

Anthony Verna:
So, I’m curious what your backend is and how, how you set that up.

Sarah DeGeorge:
It’s really simple because…

Anthony Verna:

I’m glad that you said this really simple cause I think a lot of people out there listening don’t necessarily realize how simple it is.

Sarah DeGeorge:
Oh, yeah, cause a lot of people they think to have a good blog they’d do WordPress, they need to know coding and stuff like that. And WordPress is probably the best platform for you to have the most control under. But because I was more focused on the blog end then like the web design, I just use Weebly. It’s very drag and drop. I set the whole thing up and it was very seamless. And I like how their layout was. I originally had a WordPress website. Wasn’t that pretty?

Anthony Verna
Like for me, I had somebody set up my site and I have a bachelor’s in computer science, but it’s been a long time since I’ve coded. So, I have the WordPress site. It’s there. There are some areas that could be drag and drop. But what I like about the blog section of this is that all I have to do is add a new post, title it however I want, just start writing, and it’s there.

Sarah DeGeorge:
No, I agree. I think it’s just basically find the platform that works for you. If you want to get into deeper stuff like the SEO and stuff like that, again, WordPress seems to be the best for those types of, I guess goals. If that’s your goal. For now, Weebly is fine. For me, I’ll probably at one point, because I have friends graduating that are like web designers and stuff, I’d love to give, you know what I mean, help freelance or helping freelance or I’d love to pay them to create, you know, and then I would move everything over to that new platform that they made for me. But in the interim, Weebly.

Anthony Verna:
Yeah, like I said, I do like how it looks. Sarah, tell everybody how they can find you.

Sarah DeGeorge:
You can find me at socdedicated.com – s o c dedicated.com. You can also find me under the same usernames for Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook.

Anthony Verna:
Keeping it  uniform. Rule number one. All right guys, thanks very much for listening to the Law and Business podcast. We’ll be back in a few days with another episode. Thanks very much for listening.

Outro:
This has been the Law and Business podcast. Visit vernalaw.com for more episodes. To contact Verna Law PC, send an email to Anthony@vernalaw.com or call (914) 358-6401.