Social media money making 101: 3 Sask. success stories

For many of us, social media is a way to keep up with friends, family and daily news. For others, it's a digital documentation of events and vacations — an addictive habit that keeps us scrolling and scrolling.

For others, it's their bread and butter.

It's estimated that there are as many as 100,000 social influencers in Canada, bringing in up to $1 billion a year.

A few reside in Saskatchewan.

Justin Reves: Local pride goes live

Regina's Justin Reves is known locally for making a career through his online pursuits.

When Facebook came out in 2007, he started as a regular user. A year or so later, when he started working in the advertising world, he said he realized social media presented a gap which needed to be filled.

The husband and father started a vlog — video blog, like a visual diary — as a way to challenge himself. In it, he spends his days exploring Regina and exposing the thousands of people who follow him to new coffee shops, restaurants and activities.

In 2016, he did 167 vlogs.

Now, he and his business partner Greg Moore consider themselves practitioners of social media — "eating, sleeping and breathing it."

Last year, the pair started a Facebook Live program called The Justin and Greg Show, which runs every Tuesday night.

The second season kicked off in September, with the first episode garnering thousands of views.  

Reves and Moore also offer digital marketing consultations to businesses through their company Pidgeon Social. 

"Social media is, for most people, where a lot of our life is lived," Reves said. "So many hours go to it."

Ashlyn George: Holiday in your backyard (and beyond)

Ashlyn George lives in Saskatoon. She started the blog The Lost Girl's Guide to Finding the World, in 2013.

Saskatchewan tourism hired her to travel around the province and promote different places and activities. Throughout the year, she was also building up her online skills and relationships. She credits that job with getting her name out in Saskatchewan, particularly in the tourism industry.

"It was the perfect opportunity to see what I could make out of a career doing the social media and the content creation," she said.

George holds an English degree and an education degree and said she was "supposed" to be a highschool teacher. Now, she works almost solely in the digital space, whether it's social media advertising, videography, content creation, photography or travel writing. She also does speaking engagements throughout the province.

She posts nearly everyday on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter. That means she doesn't really take a day off, although, she said she tries to.

"There definitely are moments where I remind myself to put the camera away. It's really difficult to do. If I'm with somebody else, I try to limit how often I make them stop to take a photo. I only pick the moments where I'm like, 'K, I actually need to get this shot because it's incredible.'"

One of her traditions is eating a big mac in every country she travels to, something she documents on her blog. She also shares how she affords to see the world which keeps thousands of people coming back for tips and tricks.

Ricky Forbes: Eye on the sky

Ricky Forbes and Travis Low are helping others to be as savvy on social media as they are. The Saskatoon business partners own Blue Moose Media which manages social media accounts for businesses and trains clients about online marketing.

"Social media is definitely by far one of the most effective advertising resources available to businesses. It's one of the most economical ways to advertise," Forbes said.

Soon, he had over 168,000 Twitter followers which spurred the TV show Tornado Hunters, which he starred in.

"We did our best to grow our following as quickly as possible and by doing so, that gave us a lot of pull in getting a TV show because we already had those eyes on it," he said.

"I've learned through trial and error, through research, through years of experience. "I use that now and pass along that knowledge to help businesses build their businesses online," Forbes said.

Since incorporating less than a year ago, Forbes and Low have taught close to 50 businesses about using social media more effectively.