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I'm Amy Nazarov, and I'm passionate about helping small business owners and/or creative people like photographers and musicians find the serendipity in social media. From new partners to eager csutomers to inspiration for your next product or project, there are many ways to make your time spent on any social media site more productive, more efficient and more fun. I am at capacity for 1:1 social m
As the holidays approach, my clients are mulling how and whether to talk about them.
If you're a small business, will calling out certain holidays on your socials endear you to your followers, or alienate them from you?
Should you limit your holiday observances to secular ones, like New Year's Day, skipping faith-based traditions like Hanukkah and Christmas? Perhaps observing the Winter Solstice is the way to do it.
Maybe the way to go is to mention only the holidays that have personal significance to you. But would you inadvertently make customers who observe different holidays feel overlooked?
Food for thought..
11/05/2024
Social media: an amazing platform for storytelling, a treacherous medium for politics.
I'm not going to admonish you to vote a certain way. But I do want to tell you a story about the slabs of concrete outside
the Belmont-Paul Women's Equality National Monument, a few blocks from my house.
The concrete was taken from the Occoquan Workhouse in Lorton, Va., where women demanding the vote were imprisoned in the early part of the 20th century.
By then American women had been pushing for the right to vote for at least 50 years. It would take multiple generations of women pushing for suffrage for them to attain that right.
Consider the "Silent Sentinels," a group of women who, after meeting with President Wilson asking for the right to vote, began quietly protesting outside the White House in January 1917.
For almost three years, the women - some 2,000 strong - were a constant reminder to President Wilson of his failure to support women's suffrage.
Many endured verbal and physical harassment as they stood outside the White House fence in all weathers. And, roughly 500 were arrested over the course of those years, and about 170 were imprisoned at the Workhouse, south of DC.
Conditions in the prison were filthy and dangerous, with worm-infested food served to prisoners and a single bar or soap shared among them.
Not only that, but some of the women who protested via hunger strikes were force-fed by the *prison docto*r, who jammed rubber tubes down their throats and pumped raw eggs through the tubes.
When others Sentinels of Liberty (as they were also known) vociferously protested this abuse, they, too, were arrested and thrown into the Workhouse.
These horrors culminated on the night of November 14, 1917, when the workhouse superintendent ordered guards to choke, kick, beat and chain up the women.
The news media covered these atrocities, forcing President Wilson's hand.
On January 9, 1918, he announced he would support a constitutional amendment giving women the right to vote, but a bill to formalize it got bogged down in Congress, and the arrest and mistreatment of suffragists continued.
By December 1918, the Silent Sentinels were setting fires outside the White House, in which they would burn Wilson in effigy, or burn pages containing his empty promises.
Despite all they endured, the suffragists did not relent.
By June 1919, the 19th amendment had passed both chambers of Congress. And on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment was ratified.
Those concrete slabs on Constitution Avenue? They are jagged, broken, chipped. Even concrete could not withstand the determination of a fleet of American women who asked - then demanded - that their voices be heard, and their votes be counted.
In the name of those who gave their blood, sweat, time and tears for women's suffrage, please remember whose shoulders we stand on.
Please vote.
06/10/2024
Got more than one spot online where you hang out?
Gather your LinkedIn, X, website, SoundCloud, Etsy, TikTok, Instagram, Discord, etc etc etc into one handy spot like a Linktree. It's free and it's easy to change and update as new links become relevant to your work or art.
Below is mine 👇🏼
Social media tips for entrepreneurs, small-business owners & creative folks
05/31/2024
*a sad state of affairs*
03/12/2024
Why YES season is underway here in the District. These are , one of the first varietals to bloom.
is a useful concept when it comes to managing your social media usage. Sakura not only refers to the blossoms and their brief window of peak bloom, but to the fleetingness of life itself.
In a matter of weeks, all this pink fluff will literally be gone with the wind.
So my advice is: put the phone away and savor the non-digital aspects of your work, your community, your family.
For better or worse, social media isn’t going anywhere, but beauty such as this has an expiration date. Go get you some! 🌸
02/13/2024
“Is there one with my name on it?”
02/01/2024
When I started working with entrepreneurs, authors, small business owners and others to lower their stress around social media, I kept seeing reasons why magazines and newspapers should write about them and their work or art.
So I started pitching my clients here and there, and getting some nice hits: The Washington Post magazine, for example, and Virginia Living, and a few alumni magazines.
Over the years, I've drawn on my experience as a journalist for 30 years to sort of become a de facto pr person for my clients. Which is a logical extension of promoting them via social media, if you think about it.
I am starting to gather some of my best tips and tricks for getting publicity into new content I've love to share with you. If you send me your best email address, I'll happily add you to my (10x/year) newsletter and email you a list of very do-able things to get your art or business noticed by the media, including podcasters.
I promise: editors need you as much as you need them.
(And: how warm and funny and raw is poet Andrea Gibson? I have to credit Glennon Doyle for making me aware of them.)
01/11/2024
AI Amy says “hey” from the slopes ❄️
Making this in the PhotoLab app was a weird but fun exercise. Some thoughts:
• I like the hairstyle the app gave me
• I like that my eye crinkles were preserved
• It’s fun to try on a color I wouldn’t normally wear
• My teeth do *not* look this good IRL
Sure, artificial intelligence is changing our world irrevocably in ways we can’t begin to fathom, many of them, well, pretty bad. In making myself into a fuschia-sportin’ ski bunny, am I contributing to the problem? Is using AI better, worse or equivalent to using a filter on a photo you post on social? Should there be a value judgment applied in the first place?It’s still me, just a more … um, enhanced version of me.
12/19/2023
Why yes sometimes you CAN convert a social media friendship to a real-life one, complete with phone calls and dinner dates
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My name's Amy Rogers Nazarov. I’m a recovering journalist who now manages social media accounts for entrepreneurs, artists, musicians, non-profits, grassroots startups and more.
My clients and I tap the infinite potential reach of Facebook posts, tweets, LinkedIn updates, Instagram galleries and more for drumming up business, making professional contacts, connecting with others, publicizing events and a thousand other things.
I’ve seen more times than I can recall a conversation, exchange or idea on social media that led someone to a new solution, a new client, a new friendship, a new strategy. It’s electric when that happens, sometimes by chance, sometimes through a long-cultivated relationship. It’s very much akin to a little jolt of electricity, hence the name of my company 💥
To my way of thinking, social media works best when it’s used with authenticity, passion, conviction and inspiration. I use humor, facts or emotion to entice my clients’ prospects to consider hiring them or buying their product or service; I form online ties that enhance offline ones; and I help the people and organizations I work with find a voice in social media that will help them stand out.
I take tons of photos, all on an iPhone6s. My images have appeared in The Washington Post magazine, ARLINGTON magazine, and elsewhere. By the way, all photos on this page are mine unless otherwise indicated.
(On the side, I write essays, articles, speeches, tweets, captions, blurbs, mission statements, press releases, Web pages, corporate biographies and more. Message me today for a quote on your project.)
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Before I went freelance in '04, I was a journalist for more than 25 years at publications like SAVVY, GIFT REPORTER, TODAY'S CHICAGO WOMAN, INTERNET WEEK and others in their New York, Chicago and San Francisco offices. I’ve had bylines in Cooking Light, The Washington Post magazine, Cure, Slate, Psychology Today, American Songwriter, Smithsonian, numerous alumni publications and many other magazines, newspapers and Web sites.
