For many entrepreneurs, social media is a double-edged sword. While platforms like X (or Twitter) offer the potential for valuable connections, insights and entertainment, they also become a significant distraction and time sink for many of us.

For professionals, you want to make sure that the content you’re posting is benefitting users and amplifying your social media presence. But finding ways to quantify that and using that to make decisions moving forward may not be obvious.

Anyone who has grappled with these challenges needs tools to ensure that their time spent on X is beneficial to their life and business. Having high-quality metrics can allow you to consistently evaluate your audience’s engagement with that content.

Related: Inspired by Elon Musk’s Twitter Takeover, Here Are 10 Marketing Tactics That Will Help You Make the Most of Big Changes to Your Company

Why track the value of X?

We all know that social media in general and X in particular gives you the ability to present content to millions of people. But getting value out of X requires a strategy. Tracking the performance and behavioral metrics of my X account can give me actionable data about the reach of my X content and the level of engagement from both my followers and X’s users in general.

Tracking X’s value can also increase the visibility of your business and brand by giving you metrics you can use to increase the number of followers to your feed, which can also help you drive those followers to your other channels, be it a website or other social channels.

Analyzing the X metrics of your audience, like trending hashtags, can help you stay up to date on trends you can leverage to drive traffic to your X presence. Finally, learning who the users are who are also leveraging X effectively can lead you to influencers in your industry who can help boost your brand.

Related: These 4 Traits Set Excellent Marketers Apart From Mediocre Ones. Here’s How to Make Sure You’re Hiring Them.

Best metrics you can use to track the value of X

Metrics are important because they can take questions like “How popular is the information I’m putting on X?” or “Am I putting too much or not enough content on my feed?” and give you numeric values you can use for making decisions. Some of these metrics are easily available. Some require a deeper dive or use of X’s Analytics suite to find.

Gaining followers

The total number of followers an account has is an almost ubiquitous statistic. Every time you hear about a celebrity in an entertainment-related story, the number of social media followers they have often follows.

If I have a quick spike in followers, that can mean an individual tweet resonated with my audience, while a slow steady rise in followers may mean that my content has broad appeal and that the content is being shared with others.

Link clicks

Link click metrics measure the number of times users click on the URLs found in your tweets. If you supply links to external content regularly in your tweets, this is another metric that is very useful in gauging what content resonates with users.

This can also be useful when you are trying to drive traffic to your own website. Correlating link clicks from X as well as other channels (Facebook, email, etc.) with how long users stay engaged with the content on your website can help determine which channels drive the most traffic to your site.

Conversion rate

Conversions evaluate the impact of a post on a user’s action. That action could be going to a website to make a purchase, sign up for a newsletter or download a file. Metrics like these can also help identify areas that could be improved. For example, if a post drives traffic to a form, but users don’t fill it out or abandon it before hitting submit, then the posts are effective, but the form may need some optimizing.

Engagement

Engagement rate requires a little math to calculate. The engagement rate measures the impact of your posts by dividing the total number of engagements (comments, reposts, likes, etc.) by the number of views. A higher engagement rate indicates that your content triggers a reaction from your audience. A lower engagement rate can mean they read your posts and then move on.

Related: This Expert Shares 5 Tips for Marketing a Boring Product

Impressions

If your post shows up in someone else’s timeline, that’s an impression. Two important things to note about impressions: They do not necessarily imply interaction with the post as simply viewing a post counts as an impression. Also, multiple views from the same user count as multiple impressions.

Reach

Unlike impressions, reach counts unique views from different users. If one user sees one of my posts seven times and another user sees it twice, my reach will be shown as two.

Think of impressions as a view of how many times your posts are being shown to users. By contrast, reach shows how many people you’re reaching. Both metrics combined can give you a better understanding of how your X strategy is working.

Related: These 4 Traits Set Excellent Marketers Apart From Mediocre Ones. Here’s How to Make Sure You’re Hiring Them.

Why does this matter long-term?

Having a decision-making strategy built around X metrics can benefit your business in several ways, beyond just increasing the number of followers you have.

1. You can evaluate long-term performance

Identifying the posts that perform well over time can single out content that your audience identifies with. Supplying your audience with similar content in the future can optimize your X stream with more consistently high-value content.

2. It helps you understand your audience

X’s analytics suite provides more about your audience than just their username. You can gain information about followers’ interests, geographic location, what language they speak and the time of day their activity level is at its peak. When you cater your content to the preferences of your audience, it leads to more frequent and more positive engagement.

3. You gain better control of your content strategy

Quality content isn’t just a question of what to post. When to post and how frequently are also considerations as X feeds update constantly. You want to make sure you post quality content when your audience is most active on X.

If you don’t post enough content, users may look elsewhere for content they want or simply be shown someone else’s material. If you post too much you may saturate your audience with noise that will also drive them to other feeds. Analyzing engagement will show when your users are most active and craving your content. Concentrate on posting at these times.

Related: 4 Insanely Easy but Overlooked Tactics to Advance Your Entrepreneurial Career

Increasing value over time

As you use X strategically, you may notice that the percentage of valuable experiences on the platform grows over time. By refining your feed and analyzing your audience’s interactions with your content, you can increase the value your audience and your business derive from X.

As you refine your analysis, your X network expands, exposing you to an ever-growing pool of knowledge and opportunities. This snowball effect of value demonstrates that strategic use of X metrics could become increasingly beneficial for you and your company.

Many Americans believe social media offers an inaccurate picture of wealth and success; 57% of social media users say that people post to appear more successful, and 51% of users say that social media depicts “unrealistic lifestyles,” according to a 2023 Bankrate survey.

Even so, many of them can’t help but get caught up in the cycle of comparison. Between 2022 and 2023, U.S. adults spent $71 billion on “impulse buys” they were influenced to make by social media, per Bankrate’s data — a fact that backs up an increase in “money dysmorphia.”

Related: These 5 Money Secrets Can Turn Healthy Relationships Toxic, Financial Therapist Warns

It’s no secret that working mothers still face discrimination in the workplace. With few legal protections in place, many moms are pushed out of workplaces (laid off or fired) and subjected to stereotypes about their competency. I’ve faced discrimination as a working mother several times since 1997. I’ve been passed over for a promotion and stepped down from a leadership role because of the discrimination I faced.

From the moment I saw that little blue plus sign, I’ve been fighting for equality at work and home. A lack of paid leave, exorbitant childcare costs and discrimination made my early career difficult at best, and for the majority of Americans, makes it nearly impossible to have a family.

I was just 24 years old when I became a mom for the first time. I was new at many things then: adulthood, marriage, and home ownership. I had no idea that the statistics were so stacked against me. Gender disparity didn’t cross my mind—that’s just the way it was. Little did I know that I was stepping into an entirely new world—one that would continually discount me.

As it turns out, new mothers who take fewer than eight weeks of paid maternity leave are at higher risk for depression and experience poorer overall health. My husband and I were a young couple starting out, so while I desperately wanted more time with my newborn, my mind reasoned that the six weeks of paid maternity leave my employer offered me would be enough — we couldn’t afford for me to take additional time away from work without pay. We weren’t alone. Two-thirds of workers don’t take needed leave because they cannot afford it. They’re also unable to afford daycare. For infants, the average cost of center-based childcare is more than in-state public college tuition in 34 states.

On my first day back from maternity leave, I learned that the young man hired a few months prior had been promoted over me. When I asked my boss why I’d been overlooked for the promotion, she told me she disagreed with it, but it was out of her hands. According to a Pew Research Center analysis, 16% of working parents have been passed over for promotion because they have children, and mothers are more likely than fathers to report this experience.

My company’s office hours were 8:30 am to 5:30 pm. I had to walk out the door at exactly 5:30 pm every day to pick up my son by 6 pm or pay $1 for every minute I was late. Still, I was pulled aside and talked to about always leaving on time when other employees were staying late, as though it spoke to a lack of work ethic or drive to succeed on my part. I wasn’t alone. Mothers are 40% more likely than fathers to report that childcare issues harmed their careers.

There are so many lessons I learned during those early years. Looking back now, it’s easy to see where the bias was and what changes were needed to create equality. My only recourse was to take matters into my own hands. Here are six tips for recognizing and navigating adversity to build a thriving career.

Related: Why Women’s Entrepreneurship is Booming Right Now

Tip 1: Change starts at home

If you carried a baby for nine months and gave birth, you’ve done 100% of the parenting work so far; don’t let your partner assume you’ll continue to do so.

Like most infants, ours didn’t sleep through the night for many months. So, I went to work exhausted every day. One day, a few weeks after returning from maternity leave, I fell asleep at my desk. The owner of the company walked by, saw me and sent me home. When I told my husband about it and asked him to help, he responded, “I can’t. I have a job.” Not only was I devalued at work, but I was also devalued at home by the one person who mattered most.

When a couple is deciding who will take more time away after the birth of a baby, it makes financial sense for the one who makes less money to take more time away. That means maternity leave typically falls to mothers because women make less than men. If companies paid men and women equally, this conversation would be eliminated as part of the decision, and it would make more financial sense for each partner to take equal time off work. That would, in turn, change the perception at home.

Tip 2: Take matters into your own hands

When my son was about eight months old, my husband and I decided to move closer to family. When we found our new home, I began searching for childcare. Daycare centers were insurmountably expensive, so I interviewed several moms who provided daycare in their homes. I walked away from every meeting deflated.

I couldn’t find trusted care for my son, and I continued to be overlooked and undervalued at work. That’s when I decided to join the 43% of women who leave the workforce after having children. I quit my job and started my own in-home daycare. I used my marketing background to get the word out, and within two weeks, I was caring for three toddlers and an infant full-time with an expectant couple on a waitlist. I spent the next six years taking care of little ones and raising my own.

Tip 3: Think long-term, act short-term

By 2005, I’d earned my writing degree and was freelancing as a copywriter. Two years later, in the midst of a recession, my husband and I separated. With two school-aged boys and a two-year-old daughter at home, I was forced to go back to work full-time.

Finding work in a recession is difficult enough, but having a nine-year lapse on my resume didn’t help. It was virtually impossible to land an interview and, much less be offered a job that paid enough to afford childcare. Unsurprisingly, women who took just one year off from work earn 39% less than women who did not. Desperate for a full-time job with health benefits, I took an account manager position. The salary wasn’t enough to cover daycare costs, so I held onto my freelance clients. I’d work all day, and then after tucking my kids in at night, I’d tuck into my freelance writing projects. It wasn’t something I wanted to do forever, but short-term, it paid the bills, and long-term, it would set me up to start my own business.

Tip 4: Look for opportunities

In 2011, the recession hit the marketing industry, and companies dropped their ad agencies in favor of working with freelancers to ease budgets. My number of freelance clients more than doubled, while at the same time, our agency’s roster of clients was cut in half. That allowed me to negotiate to work on my freelance projects during business hours in exchange for a percentage of my freelance revenue. I was able to take on more clients without giving up all my evening hours so that I could still be a present parent to my kids and get enough sleep at night to face the day ahead.

By 2013, my freelance business was thriving, and on August 1, 2013, I quit my job to work for myself full-time. That decision changed my life and our home. It’s not surprising that a whopping 75% of self-employed women love their job. Working for myself allowed me to put my priorities in order and plan my working hours around my family, not the other way around. I worked late into the night but also took hours off for after-school trips to the park, family dinners and homework time.

Tip 5: Be open

In 2015, I was offered the role of content marketing director for a freelance client. While I loved the flexibility of working for myself, it was an incredible opportunity to build and manage a content writing department from the ground up. I accepted the role and learned all I could. A year later, traveling and late nights became too much, and I needed to be more available to my kids. I gave my notice and negotiated a 12-month freelance writing contract in exchange for hiring my replacement. Within a few months, I launched a marketing agency.

Related: What Do We Tell Young Women Considering Entrepreneurship? Here are 6 Key Messages to Share

Tip 6: Remember that actions speak louder than words

In 2021, my previous employer offered me another role. This time, it was a C-suite position and a stake in the business for bringing my agency into his company as the social media arm of the business. I said yes, knowing that, at the very least, I’d learn something, and at best, I’d grow the agency much quicker than I could on my own. While I enjoyed the stable income and benefits, I was drowning in work, and no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t change the culture. I began looking for support through networking groups and was invited to join CHIEF, a powerful network of women executives. This was an incredible opportunity to learn from other female executives, network with peers and get in front of potential clients; all things my male peers had in spades. I laid out the benefits and requested that my company sponsor the membership. They declined.

Deciding it was well worth the investment, I paid the fee myself. When I published a LinkedIn post announcing my membership, the CEO expressed disappointment that I hadn’t mentioned his company in my post. That’s when I decided I could no longer work with or for companies that refused to invest equally in male and female executives. In June 2022, I gave my notice and pulled my agency out of the merger.

On Mother’s Day, we celebrate moms — and companies do, too. It’s no secret that brands are increasingly jumping on the bandwagon of social causes, but consumers aren’t fooled by the many that pay it lip service. They want to see real change.

Want to celebrate moms? Offer paid maternity, paternity and family leave so that working parents can take the time they need to give their children and their families a healthy start. Normalize paternity leave so that fathers can be equally responsible for and able to bond with their children.

More than 120 countries, including most industrialized nations, provide paid maternity leave and health benefits by law, according to an International Labour Office (ILO) report. The United States’ failure to do so leaves 80% of the workforce without any paid time off after the birth of a child. Nearly half are not even guaranteed unpaid, job-protected leave through the Family and Medical Leave Act.

The answer isn’t to leave the workforce. The answer is for the government to join nearly every other nation in offering paid family leave. Until then, taking matters into our own hands is the only answer.

Maya Angelou said, “When someone shows you who they are, believe them.” The same is true for companies. Work-life balance issues cause conflict for an astonishing 72% of women. Don’t share your time and talents with a company that doesn’t support you.

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Weeks after the bombshell news that Elon Musk fired the entire Tesla supercharger overnight, some executives and team members are reportedly being asked to return to the company.

Musk reportedly has brought back the director of charging for North America Max de Zegher, one of the 500 employees let go, according to Bloomberg, which cited people familiar with the matter.

The outlet did not specify how many employees had been asked back to work, but noted it was more than one.

Related: Tesla Is Reportedly Revoking Internship Offers to College Students Weeks Before Their Start Dates: ‘I Spent Thousands On Housing’

Per de Zegher’s LinkedIn, his position is still listed as “Director — Charging, North America at Tesla,” a position he’s held for nearly two years.

Last month’s layoffs left many employees “in shock” when they were told their positions were defunct.

“In the middle of the night, I learned, along with all my Tesla Global Charging colleagues, the Tesla Charging org is no more,” Lane Chaplin, Tesla’s former North America real estate lead, wrote on LinkedIn at the time. “Thank you to all who have reached out to me already. Your friendship during the good times as well as the bad is sincerely appreciated.”

Musk seemingly addressed the layoffs via X, noting then that Tesla still planned on growing its Supercharger network albeit at a “slower” pace than originally anticipated.

Tesla still plans to grow the Supercharger network, just at a slower pace for new locations and more focus on 100% uptime and expansion of existing locations

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 30, 2024

Tesla Employee Was Sleeping in His Car Before Lay Off

Elon Musk is known for promoting a “hard-core” work culture, and employees have gone to great lengths to comply — some even slept under their desks when Musk took over Twitter.

One former employee, Nico Murillo, recently went viral on LinkedIn for sharing his story of sleeping in he parking lot to avoid a commute before being laid off.

“At one point in 2023, I was even sacrificing sleeping in my car on work days just to avoid commuting to work. Showered at the factory and slept in the parking lot. Microwaved dinner in the break room,” the former Tesla Production Supervisor wrote. “Sacrificed a lot for the company. But this is just a small part of a chapter that is ending, and there’s a whole book waiting to be written.”

Related: Elon Musk Tells Investors Cheaper Tesla Electric Cars Should Arrive Ahead of Schedule

Tesla reported a 9% quarterly revenue decrease during its Q1 2024 earnings call last month, the biggest drop the company has seen since 2012.

Earlier this month, college students reported that the electric vehicle company revoked their offers for summer internships just weeks before they were slated to start without explanation.

Tesla was up just shy of 3% year over year as of Monday afternoon.

Communicating and executing complex projects and operations can be challenging for even the most thoughtful and devoted entrepreneurs and team leaders. To help your business create events, initiatives, helpful analytical reviews, communications, and more, consider setting it up with a capable diagramming tool to help map out and guide those endeavors.

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The phone lines were down at Berkshire Hathaway’s headquarters for a few days this week — so CEO Warren Buffett worked from his iPhone.

“I don’t know how to do much with it, but I do know how to answer calls,” Buffett, 93, told The Omaha World-Herald on Wednesday.

“I’m glad we didn’t sell all of our Apple,” he joked.

Related: ‘I’m Smarter Now…But Also Poorer’: Warren Buffett Says Berkshire Hathaway Ditched Its Entire Stake in Paramount at a Big Loss

Buffett only upgraded to an iPhone four years ago after previously using a $20 flip phone.

Buffett told CNBC’s Becky Quick in February 2020 that he uses his iPhone “as a phone” and doesn’t use “all its facilities like most people.”

^{Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway. Photographer: Daniel Acker/Bloomberg via Getty Images}

The news of Buffett using his iPhone for work calls comes days after Berkshire Hathaway’s annual shareholder meeting, which saw the conglomerate cut 13% of its stake in Apple, or about 115 million shares.

At Apple’s March 28 closing price of $171.48 per share, Berkshire seems to have sold around $20 billion worth of Apple.

Apple is still Berkshire’s largest holding and Berkshire remains Apple’s single largest shareholder. Berkshire still has 6% of the iPad maker or 905 million shares worth about $167 billion, according to Apple’s Thursday closing price.

Related: Read Warren Buffett’s Annual Letter to Berkshire Shareholders

At Saturday’s shareholder meeting, Buffett hinted that Berkshire reduced its Apple stake for tax reasons. He said he was confident in the leadership of Apple CEO Tim Cook, who was in the room at the time.

“We will own — unless something really extraordinary happens — we will own Apple and American Express and Coca-Cola when Greg takes over this place,” Buffett said, referring to future Berkshire CEO Greg Abel.

Apple makes up one-fifth of Berkshire’s portfolio. Berkshire’s next four biggest holdings are Bank of America, American Express, Coca-Cola, and Chevron.

Related: ‘An Obvious Move’: Elon Musk Suggests Warren Buffett Should Make This Investment Move Next

Businesses and business leaders can benefit from ongoing education. It can help inform you on trends in new markets and tools to access old ones that have been previously out of your reach. From brushing up on the latest digital marketing best practices to learning a new language, there are many ways you can set yourself up for improved business in the future.

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Browsing online and using public networks can make your computer vulnerable to a wide range of hackers and trackers. For entrepreneurs running a business, being bogged down or having your team members bogged down by dangerous, cost-threatening disruptions like these is unacceptable.

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Windscribe can be a great VPN subscription for entrepreneurs and small businesses because it supports unlimited devices. Going beyond typical VPN services, Windscribe offers itself as a desktop application and browser extension. All-in-all, it can be used to unblock websites, block ads, and keep you safe without expecting you to configure a wide range of complicated settings.

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Empowering mothers in the workplace takes a thoughtful and multifaceted approach. Today, women in most households still bear the brunt of the majority of familial and household responsibilities while also working full-time. It’s unfair — and saying that it’s a lot to juggle and have on your plate is an understatement. The reality is that moms are expected to be everything both at home and at work, and that can be incredibly difficult and daunting physically, mentally and emotionally.

As a mother and entrepreneur myself, finding ways to elevate the mothers at my own company and create a culture that truly fosters work-life balance has been paramount from day one. Since starting ZenToes in 2015, I’ve grown my own family, hired an incredible team of women who have done the same and managed, with the help of my team, to grow Zentoes into a multimillion-dollar business.

While seeing your business’ success demonstrated through metrics and revenue growth is amazing, what’s been most rewarding is witnessing how dedicated our incredible team of employees is to grow with us. Below, I’ve outlined seven tips for other entrepreneurs looking to empower their employees.

1. Have flexible hours and work arrangements

Remote work options are critical in helping to ensure flexibility in schedules for moms to balance family responsibilities, including everything from pickups and drop-offs to sick days at home with the kids. They’ll also create happier attitudes towards work overall.

Related: Want to Be More Productive as a Working Mom? Try These Steps

2. Put women in leadership positions

Having women in leadership positions is crucial to creating mentorship opportunities and fostering the next wave of leaders. Creating opportunities for other women in the workplace helps elevate all women.

Related: Why I Hire and Invest in Working Moms

3. Support professional development

We believe strongly in not doubting the gaps in some women’s resumes from staying home with young children. Parenting can be a huge learning curve for people management. It’s also important to offer professional development opportunities specifically to help mothers feel confident in the time they are out of the workforce.

4. Encourage work-life balance

Prioritize having open and honest conversations with employees around ‘mom guilt’ and the need to ‘do it all.’ Employees will both feel happier and perform better when they feel at ease and balanced in their personal and professional lives. To us, it’s essential to create space for women who have families or are planning to have families to be able to take the time they need to feel successful in both work and family life.

5. Ensure redundancies to cover leave

This applies to both sides of the parental relationship! At my company, our small, scrappy team has had to identify and build redundancies to ensure the work still moves forward, and we’re not without coverage while a parent is out on leave. Documenting SOPs and having collaborative decision-making processes have been instrumental in ensuring our success.

6. Allowing for social outlets at work

It’s beneficial to have casual, weekly team-building meetings that cover social topics that allow for group sharing amongst our employees. It’s a moment for everyone not to be focused on just work or just their families and be able to share about themselves as individuals.

Related: What Working Moms at Your Company Really Need This Mother’s Day

7. Don’t forget about the partners on the other side of these working mothers

Offer the same benefits to both partners in a family unit – flexible hours, work redundancies, etc – to normalize and allow partners to be more equal at home. If they have the same flexibility, there should be a correlation in the undertaking of responsibilities – lending well to supporting a more equal future. In my household, my husband taking a fair share of the household load has been instrumental in making ZenToes a success.

Entrepreneurs should approach creating work policies, arrangements, benefits and team-building initiatives holistically, paying particular attention to the diverse needs of all employees, especially moms. Ultimately, moms are an incredibly valuable part of any business team, bringing vision and a uniquely thoughtful perspective to their work each day. Allowing for balance, honesty and communication is critical. Your company and all your employees will be better off with it.