Your Social Media Engagement Numbers

by BusinessFacebookHow To Build A Brand
Picture of a cheering crowd with text overlaid saying: A 5% engagement is on posts is really good"
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Your Social Media Engagement Numbers

(5 Minute Read) If your engagement rate on social media is anywhere above or even approaching 5%, you’re doing great. I did some research to see how this rate stacked up against popular social media content creators and found that they don’t do much better than 5% engagement on their posts. So if that’s what you’re at now and you’re worried that it’s low, don’t worry, because you’re doing better than Justin Bieber (No, really, you are! Read on to find out engagement rates on his mega-popular videos).

Gathering Data On Social Media Engagement Rates

I often tell my clients that an engagement rate of around 5% on social media is really fantastic. But I realized I was basing that assertion on intuition. So, I wanted to get some good solid data to either validate my claim, or change what I asserted going forward (you should always be willing to change your mind if you are presented with evidence that contrasts with what you had previously held to be true).

To measure social media engagement, I looked at posts on YouTube from content creators with large, involved followings. I took the 5 most recent posts from 12 creators, spread out across a wide variety of topics. I figured these were representative samples because they are so popular and diverse. With findings from these creators, we can measure what really great engagement rates look like across social media.

Your current level of social media engagement is probably better than you think!

Tons Of Very Popular Channels Have An Average of 5% Social Media Engagement

What I found in my research was really interesting. My 5% threshold turned out to be true, and a lot of really highly performing social media channels performed a lot less highly than I thought.

I went into my research assuming that highly performing social media channels would have an engagement rate of at least 10%. I mean, if 1 out of 10 people watching a music video from, say Justin Bieber, clicked “like” while watching the video, that wouldn’t be surprising, right? Well, it turns out only about 5% of people engage with videos on popular social media accounts. So, only half of a person out of every 10 people like popular videos.

Additionally, the data skewed heavily toward lower engagement rates, with approximately 2/3rds of the videos I sampled having a 6% engagement rate or less. In fact, at the highest point, I only found 3 videos out of 60 that had engagement rates of over 11%.

A lot of very popular content creators, with millions of followers only have 5% social media engagement rates, so it's okay if yours is a little lower.

Even The Mega-Popular Posts Have Engagement Rates At Or Below 5%

Lastly, I chose videos from channels with a high number of subscribers that had dedicated followings in specific niches. So, these videos probably represent the high end of engagement by interest. To test that theory, I also took two videos from Justin Bieber that had views in the billions. The two videos I chose also had low engagement rates of 1% and 3% (to put that in perspective though, we’re talking about 27 million and 3 million engagements on each video). So, we can see that even mega-popular videos do not have a terribly high percentage of engagements either.

Keep churning out quality content and focus on providing value, not your engagement rates.

Conclusions

Although this research was not as rigorous as a scientific study, I do believe it was enough to be representative of social media trends as a whole. And, I think these data offer comforting news: a 5% engagement rate is what, by and large, a great deal of successful YouTube channels see on their posts. If you, as a small business, or someone with less than 100K subscribers or followers is getting engagement rates at or around this number, you’re doing really well compared to a wide sample of popular social media channels.

Methodology

This is a very unscientific study. I was looking for overall trends to benchmark against, not hyper specific figures meant to represent all of social media. I’ve included my data if you’d like to take a look or disagree with my conclusions.

To begin, I chose 12 popular YouTube channels across a variety of subjects to ensure freedom from a subject matter bias. If people who watch videos on one particular subject engage with videos more or less frequently than those in other subjects, it could skew the data. To try to prevent that I chose a diverse array of channels, spread across a variety of subjects (nature, law, art, marketing, comedy, art history, real estate, economics, movie reviews, and politics).

I chose to use YouTube to measure engagement on social media because the data from views are readily available and easy to use. I measured total views and then added the likes and dislikes for each individual video to find the percentage of engagement among viewers of that video.

I measured data from the 5 most recent videos of each channel in order to standardize the process and remove the possibility of me choosing videos I liked or disliked, which could have affected the results.

Finally, I looked at two Justin Bieber music videos with more than a billion views each to see if the data was much different at the highest end of the spectrum. It does not appear to be different.

Data On Social Media Engagement Rates

Click Here To Download Excel Spreadsheet of Engagement Rate Research

Improving Your Social Media Reach

If you’d like to learn more about improving your reach on social media, or how to convert your 5% of engagements into more customers, shoot us an email at:

 [email protected] 

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Communicating Your Values

Communicating Your Values Is The Foundation Of Career Security

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How Does A Company Express Its Values Effectively?

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Start With Why

by BusinessHow To Build A Brand

Digital Marketing Philosophy

My digital marketing philosophy, start with why, is taken from the 2009 Simon Sinek lecture “Start with why, how great leaders inspire action.”

I also believe brands should play to their strengths and provide value by communicating with their audiences frequently. These ideas are informed by two other thought leaders in the digital marketing space, Alex Becker and Gary Vaynerchuk.

All of these ideas come together to form the following, overarching philosophy:

 

Start With Why

In this video Mr. Sinek discusses how there are a great deal of benefits that accrue from beginning your brand’s messaging with “why.” One of these benefits is that you can grant your business a great deal of leeway in terms of your product offerings. In some cases, you can even sell products that your brand’s competitors otherwise could not. For example, you’d never buy an MP3 player from Dell Computers, but you’d buy one from Apple, because Apple isn’t a computer company- they’re a company that produces great products that happens to sell computers.

Overall, the biggest benefit of starting with “why” is that your brand’s messaging connects with people in a much more effective manner than if you start with “what” (“what” being what you’re actually offering.). So, I like this messaging strategy because it is, ultimately the most effective way to reach people and it allows your brand a great deal of flexibility. 

Communicate Frequently And Provide Value

This is my favorite content distribution strategy. Put simply, it involves creating a large piece of “pillar content” and then creating and distributing several social media posts based on this larger piece of work.

A piece of pillar content should be where a brand goes into an idea reflecting their values in some significant depth. Gary Vee is a content monster and creates one of these via a podcast basically every day. That is more than most brands can handle, which is fine. I have found that creating one piece of pillar content a week and then distributing information from that over the course of that week via social media posts is sufficient for communicating with a customer base.

Another idea that Gary Vee constantly comes back to is the idea that you should be providing value with your content. Why should someone consume your content if it isn’t helping them? Providing value and connecting with people regarding the “why” of your business is an effective way to stand out in a market place of ideas that is usually bereft of actual value.

Play To Your Strengths

We each have a unique skill set. Some of us are more math oriented, others are more creative. Some are both. Whatever you skill set is, you should use that to your advantage. Trying to emulate the success of others can be a fools errand if you’re trying to do something you won’t be good at.

If you’re out there trying to provide value to people with your posting, the value you’re providing is based on your expertise. You can’t provide something worthwhile to someone else in the field of math if you’re really just not good at math. This Alex Becker video makes a really strong case for why this is true.

Conclusion

If you want to reach people effectively, you need messaging that grips them. To do that, you need their attention. The best way to get someone’s attention is by communicating value through shared beliefs. Logistically, communicating that message works best when you communicate in a way you are good at communicating.

I’ll leave you with my philosophy again below. If you’d like help implementing this strategy for your brand, Stand Out Professional Branding can be reached by email at [email protected].

Client Interview: Jeremy Dover, Attorney

by Businesslawyer

Jeremy Dover, Esquire is a founding partner at the Demesmin and Dover Law Firm. He mainly practices Civil Litigation, with a focus on both Personal Injury Protection and Personal Injury Lawsuits. Jeremy is an ethical scholar that focuses on finding innovative arguments for helping his clients, and through his zealous advocacy, he will never settle for less than any of his clients justly deserve. 

Jeremy’s law firm, Demesmin and Dover is a client of Stand Out’s, and we would like to highlight him here.

Humble Beginnings In The Public Sector

Question 1) You started your legal career as a Guardian Ad Litem. That involves an enormous amount of empathy and compassion. Can you talk a little bit about what a GAL does and how you bring that experience into your current practice as a personal injury attorney?

Jeremy Dover: Yes, a Guardian Ad Litem, or “GAL,” is a volunteer advocate for children who have been abused, abandoned, or neglected. A GAL is assigned as an uninterested third party to protect and voice the best interests of the child during their time in the system. GALs and everyone involved in their program do have a lot of compassion and empathy because you see all scenarios from the good to the bad to the worst, and knowing that your work can impact another in such a monumental way is a true motivator. Here, in the personal injury field, we need to maintain a similar level of compassion and empathy. While the practice is different, people in this field, like in the juvenile Dependency field, have experienced a trauma that continues to impact them day to day. Another way to state it is that personal injury involves a present controversy. Being able to be compassionate and empathetic allows us to connect well with our clients and make sure their rights are fully represented when dealing with their case. Just as the GALs advocate for the best interest of the child, we at Demesmin and Dover advocate for the best interest of our client at all times.

Jeremy Dover: Clients Come First

Question 2) Without identifying any clients, what has been the most challenging aspect of opening your own firm and how do you manage to stay client-focused when there are so many other aspects of the business demanding your attention?

J.D.: You must make yourself available to the clients regardless of the other distractions. Business comes with its ups and downs, and challenges will present themselves every day. You need to disconnect when dealing with your clients and avoid bringing any personal or business stressors into the dealings with your clients as they will take away from your attention on the client. The client comes first, period.

Going Above And Beyond

Question 3) What is a way you’ve gone above and beyond for a client recently? What motivated you to want to do that?

J.D.: We try to assist in all aspects regarding a client’s claim. Whether it involves us seeking additional recovery for diminished value, which is when the insurer will not agree to pay out the full amount because it determines the car’s value to have been minimalized by the accident, to directly assisting with the repairs themselves. We do not get compensated for a lot of these issues, but we do it because we are here to help and we truly care for all of our clients. We will make sure to try to answer all of our client’s questions and if they ever come to us with an issue outside of personal injury and outside of our wheel helm, we will be sure to connect them to the best person to assist them.

Jeremy posing with a happy client and his law firm partner Victor Demesmin Jr.

Teamwork Makes The Dream Work

Question 4) What is your favorite part about working with your law firm Partner, Victor Demesmin, Jr.?

J.D.: Victor is not only a great lawyer, but he is also a great entrepreneur and human being. His drive and compassion in everything he does fuels everyone around him including myself. He finds new inventive ways to help our business grow and he never does something without having an underlying plan in mind. He keeps the same drive and compassion in his dealings with clients, friends, and his family at home. He knows how to balance work life with being a great father and husband, which is inspiring to all those around him.

South Florida: Loving Life

Question 5) Why did you choose to become a personal injury lawyer in South Florida? What drew you to this specific field of law?

J.D.: South Florida is where I learned the law, it is where I went to school, and it is where I chose to settle and live. It has such a wide variety of people of all walks of life and it prides me to be able to help these people when in need. I love the atmosphere of South Florida and the people in general, which is why I chose to make it my home.

Athlete, Lawyer, Helper

Question 6) If you weren’t a lawyer, what do you think you’d do for work?

J.D.: Hard question, if I were about a foot taller, I would have been a professional athlete, sadly that was not in the cards for me. But in all reality, I would like to do something that helps people. I always had a heavy interest in both business and the medical field, so maybe some type of entrepreneurial venture incorporating those aspects, but I am happy with the path I chose.

To reach Jeremy Dover at his law firm Demesmin and Dover, you can call (866)-954-6673 or visit their website: http://www.attorneysoftheinjured.com.

The Future Of Streaming Video

by Business

Measuring audience reactions in more detail than is present today will be a big part of the future of streaming video. To that end, I predict that streaming video services like Netflix, Amazon, Disney+, and YouTube will display an option to use emojis to react to streaming videos in real time within the next few years, if not sooner. These reactions will be tied to a time stamp when you click, and collected by streaming services as data points. Your reactions and the reaction of others may even appear on your screen as you watch. The interface on Netflix might look something like this:

The Future Of Streaming Video
What Netflix might look like with emoji reactions available and displayed to the user.

This trend will first allow content hosts like Netflix, Amazon, YouTube, and Disney+ to see how their viewers respond to their content in real time with emojis. Eventually hosts will share this data with creators to optimize content creation.

The data generated from this technology will shape how video content is produced, and give everyone more data on how content is being consumed.

The Current Statistical Limitations

The current viewer statistics across most platforms are largely limited to total views, how long a person streamed a video for, and demographic information for the viewer. These statistics are valuable, however, they don’t tell the whole story behind a user experience. Currently there are very few ways to measure how successful specific jokes or emotional story beats are landing with audiences across specific demographics.

So, for example, Netflix may know that the TV show ‘Breaking Bad’ got X number of viewers per episode, and Y amount of people 22-30 years-old watched each episode all the way through, but Netflix currently does not have a way of measuring what makes audiences stop viewing. They also don’t know what keeps people viewing up through the end of an episode. Do they stop because they find a particular storyline or character boring? Are they more engaged in episodes that focus on one character over another?

In the future of streaming video, generating data using this reaction/timestamp model will be a way for streaming services to ascertain that information and so much more.

Examples Of Benefits Of Reaction/Timestamp Model

  • A streaming services like Netflix can compare actors to the emojis that come up during the time stamps they are on screen. A comedian getting lots of laughing faces would be a good indication that their jokes are working, and you can see which jokes are working based on the time they appear. Netflix could then use that information to continue publishing work from comedians with positive reactions and lots of views, while avoiding working with comedians whose material does not generate audience reactions.
  • A streaming service like Amazon can compare the age groups that leave laughing emojis against the same comedian’s screen appearance times, noting which demographics react across age, location, race, gender, and all the other data the streaming platform has about their audience. They can then use that data to market comedy specials to specific demographics that have already demonstrated interest in that comedian’s work. 
  • A content creator can use this reaction/timestamp data to see trends surrounding which parts of a production that their audience doesn’t like as well. If a piece of content as a whole gets reactions consistently, except during one scene, that type of scene may be something to consider reworking or cutting entirely in the future.

Conclusion

The future of streaming video will see the creation of more granular information for streaming services and content creators to analyze. As a result, audience members will be able to get more of the content they express interest in, while material garnering fewer reactions will be less attractive to the streaming services.

How would you use this streaming data? Let us know at [email protected]!

Values Marketing Builds Long Term Relationships

by BusinessHow To Build A BrandJob Seeker

Values-based relationship between a business and a consumer create loyalty. Marylin Manson is a rock and roll singer, who has been popular among his fan-base for the last 30 years. He has gone through several reinventions in that time, with his musical style varying wildly, all the while staying true to a set of values that his marketing has centered around.

Fans have stayed with Manson through several musical genre changes because they’re not really there for his music, they’re there for his values. They’re there because he embodies a certain kind of weirdness that they identify with and like seeing performed. When they buy a ticket to his show, they’re not thinking about the money. They’re excited to be participating in something outside the norm.

Using Values Marketing To Build Loyalty

So, values are important because they facilitate relationships between businesses and customers, with the result being long-term customer loyalty. As long as you stay true to your values, your business relationships will remain solid over time.

If you’re building a personal following to gain career security, or one for your business, you want loyal business relationships that last a long time. That’s where security comes from. Those are the kinds of business relationships that last through recessions, and frankly, those are some of the only business relationships that are built during recessions and bad times.

When I work with someone at Stand Out Professional Branding, the first thing I do with them is establish their values. Everything else, including their social media communications, the events they organize, and even the companies they look to do business with, will be informed by those values that they establish.

The Results Of This Strategy

The end goal from this process is to build the kind of long-term relationships between businesses and customers that Marilyn Manson has cultivated with his career. Those relationships have lasted through several genres of music, fluctuations in popular trends, and even different lineups of the eponymous Marilyn Manson band due to the consistent values on display. To build relationships with the same kind of loyalty, you need to be using your values consistently.

Your Unique Value

by Business

Your Unique Value Could Be A Game Changer

Bring your unique value to the table and don’t be afraid if no one else is doing what you want to do. Your uniqueness can be an innovation and can help gain you career security because you’ll be out there providing something that no one else thought to provide.

Speaking of uniqueness, I briefly worked for a company that provided airlines with a really unique value proposition for SEO, which is a great example of how doing your own thing can be a really valuable proposition. What this company did was create landing pages for each one of the airline’s routes. That means that this company created a web page for New York to Chicago, Chicago to New York, New York to Boston, Boston to New York, Boston to San Diego, San Diego to Boston, etc, etc, etc…

This was a totally unique value proposition at the time and helped airlines rate higher in Google search results for someone looking to fly between two different places. This resulted in more sales for the airlines, and they were really happy with this service.

Your Unique Value

Rating higher in Google search results is important, but what’s more important is providing value in a way that you think is a good idea. There was no playbook saying that creating a landing page for each route was a good idea. This company just figured out that it worked and went ahead and did it when nobody else was.

Your Unique Value

You bring a unique value, so don’t get too hung up if you feel like your value is too niche or hasn’t been promoted before. Like the company I used to work for, if it’s a good idea, it will work. You just need to follow through in order to build something that brings value to people and your network so that you can create career security.

You Can Always Reinvent Yourself

by Job Seeker

You Can Always Reinvent Yourself.

Just because you have a specific job right now, doesn’t mean you have to stay in that job forever. You can break free from boxes like that and reinvent yourself through a variety of means. One way is through personal branding. Another is through career coaching.

Leave Law Behind

Leave Law Behind is a company that helps lawyers break out of the box of “lawyerdom” and pursue alternative careers. They are like an incredibly specific career coach who focuses on solving one problem extremely well. LLB is a good friend of Stand Out Professional Branding, and if you’re a lawyer looking to break out of the law, we couldn’t recommend them more.

What Does It Look Like To Reinvent Yourself?

Leave Law Behind recently published three articles about how to leave the law and reinvent yourself. I present them here now and hope they can benefit you if you’d like to reinvent yourself.

What You Can Do With A Law Degree Besides Being a Lawyer

We hear the questions “What can you do with a law degree?” or “What can you do with a law degree besides be a lawyer?” very regularly. These questions occasionally come from students considering going to law school and want to know their future job prospects. More times than not, we hear these questions from current lawyers who are unhappy in the profession, and would like to explore their career options out of the law and want to know what other types of “alternative” jobs and careers they can do with a law degree. 

 

The truth is that the old maxim “you can do anything with a law degree” actually carries more weight than you may realize. Having coached thousands of attorneys through our blog, how they can land their dream career out of the law, this article lays out a two-step process, you can begin using to determine your ideal job. Read Full Article Here.

How an In House Legal Job Can Be Your Path Out of the Law

If you are looking for a change from your current law job, but you’re not ready yet to entirely stop using your law license, then you may want to consider an in house legal job.
 
You may feel that an in house legal job can let you have your cake and eat it too: You want to remain as an attorney, but you want to free yourself from most of the stress and anxiety of being an attorney in a firm or solo practice.
There is much truth to this. Casey Berman, Leave Law Behind founder, has been an in house counsel myself, and have helped many unhappy attorneys transition to general counsel jobs. This article will deep dive into the differences between an in house counsel job and the traditional law firm role you have now. We will also explore what you might want to watch out for when you’re considering taking one of these jobs. This article will also help you decide whether an in house legal job might be that stepping stone to your dream career out of the law. Read Full Article Here.
 

"Don't Be A Lawyer": What the TV Show Video Got Right

Written by a Leave Law Behind grad who successfully left the law for a management consultant career, this article explores how the song “Don’t Be a Lawyer” from the TV show “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” aligned with his own career path and life journey. 
 
The author discusses his journey as a lawyer, why he wanted to leave, the steps he took to map his way out of the law and the main revelation he gathered throughout it all. As he writes “I took a long look at myself – if you want to change your life, you have to change yourself first. I really dug deep into who I thought I was, how I saw myself, and what I wanted to be doing with my time. The realization that I was simply not aligned with my true self was jarring. But we can all move forward to our true nature, this much I know.” Read Full Article Here.

It's Never Too Late

It’s never too late to make a change, and if you need to make one, I hope those fantastic articles from Leave Law Behind help inspire you to reinvent yourself.

Alex Becker: Play To Your Strengths

by BusinessBusiness and Job SeekerEditor's PickJob Seeker

Play To Your Strengths

One Of My Strengths

One of my strengths is that I know that there are people who are better than I am at certain things. And that doesn’t take away from what I’m good at in the slightest. In fact, recognizing that fact makes me better at what I’m good at because it means I can incorporate ideas from others without having some kind of ego about it preventing me from doing something because it was someone else’s idea.

To wit, here is a video from Alex Becker, a thought leader in business that I very much so admire, where he discusses how important it is to play to one’s strengths.

Playing To Your Strengths Is Important In Both Business And Job Hunting

When you’re job hunting or running your business, you’ll be the most successful when you maximize your strengths and doing what makes you great. Don’t take my word for it though; watch the video above for an excellent argument about why this is so.

Crossposting

by BusinessEditor's Pick

Exposure

Crossposting is when a piece of content from one person appears on another person’s platform. This kind of posting can be really valuable for both the audiences and platforms involved.

The most seemingly obvious reason for the importance of cross posting is “exposure.” If you post on someone else’s platform you’re exposing your work to another person’s audience and you can get some of your audience to become your audience. The same is true for someone posting on your wall.

A group of people viewed from behind all with their arms around each other sitting on a ledge

Bringing audiences together can benefit everyone.

Bringing Value

Although exposure to a new audience can be valuable, I think the most important part of crossposting is bringing value to each audience.

So, if you’re cross posting on someone else’s platform and you bring value to that audience, you’ve brought a benefit to not only that audience, but also the platform you’re posting on.

The same is true when someone posts on your platform. If they’re bringing value to your audience, you both you and your audience benefit.

Crossposting And Providing Value In Practice

Recently, I’ve posted content from Deaftone Digital on my website, and had my own content featured on the Leave Law Behind blog. In both cases, there was value provided and received in a reciprocal manner, which is a win-win-win. The audience of all three platforms received value, and so did the platforms themselves.

 

Leave Law Behind Crosspost - Giving And Gaining Value

For Leave Law Behind, I wrote an article about why lawyers want to leave law. Often lawyers know that they are unhappy practicing law, but have a difficult time identifying why this is so. Once they have identified why being a lawyer is making them miserable, they can take the steps to leave law, which is exactly the service that Leave Law Behind provides.

My post provides value to the LLB audience by helping them identify why they are unhappy practicing law, and it provides value to the platform it is posted on by helping guide people toward retaining that platform’s services. Finally, Stand Out Professional Branding is benefited by exposure to Leave Law Behind’s audience.

DeafTone Digital Crosspost - Giving and Gaining Value

Deaftone Digital recently shared what their process of applying business values looked like on this platform. And they used a framework provided on Stand Out Professional Branding’s website to do so. It was hugely beneficial to Stand Out to have a real brand be willing demonstrate, in their own words, what it looks like to implement branding methodology that Stand Out sells.

Testimonials like this help drive business as much as anything else. And finally, DeafTone Digital benefited by gaining exposure to Stand Out’s audience. Another win-win-win.

Conclusion

Crossposting can be very beneficial for brands. But, instead of focusing on the exposure to be gained, focus on the value to be given when you’re providing content.

If you do that, you put your foot forward in the best way possible to a new audience, establish long lasting relationships with other businesses, and you will benefit from these things the most in the long term.

DeafTone Digital: Connecting Values In Practice

by BusinessHow To Build A Brand

Making Connections

I am grateful that I have the opportunity to connect with lots of different people in the digital space. And for me, the important part of connecting professionally is providing value. Recently I connected with the founder of DeafTone Digital over the idea of connecting your values to your messaging. He looked through some of the articles on this site about the subject and then wrote a piece for his blog on his process connecting his values to his messaging. I think this is a terrific example of why connecting your values to your messaging can be good for your business. I present to you that piece in its entirety:

Connecting My Values

By DeafTone Digital

Figuring This Out Was Enlightening And Fun. 

When Stand Out Professional Branding first approached me about doing some contributions for the website specifically on the subject of connecting my values to my brand, I wasn’t entirely sure of what my values were to begin with. The irony is that I have helped several businesses define this very question and create their own set of values and mission statements. I have even helped my local fraternity chapter with the same.

To be honest, I didn’t really know where to start when it came to my own brand. Even though I have done this for several other businesses, I have never done it for my own brand, and in a way I felt like I had come too far. Then I followed West Kramer’s guide on the Stand Out website and voila, a set of values and a mission statement. 

As West puts it, 

“to figure out your values, mission statement, and slogan, start with the question: why do I want to help people? Once you have an answer to that, the mission statement and slogan will flow from the values you decide on naturally.”

So I did that, and here is what I came up with.

Why? 

I love Hip Hop and music in general, but the more music I come across outside the mainstream, the more I am disappointed with the marketing efforts. I really think most artists need some kind of guidance. A lot of good talent goes to waste because it is not properly promoted. 

DeafTone Digital Marketing seeks to improve the quality of marketing in hip hop, music in general, sole proprietorships and small corporations. 

See, I’m a big fan of corporate marketing. I love coming across big, national ad campaigns or social media campaigns. It feels like “the pros” to me… kind of like the NFL of Marketing, in a way. So I want to bring that corporate feel to the smaller businesses. 

For some reason, it seems like the smaller the business, the worse the marketing quality is (except for some obvious marketing experts, and creative businesses). And I can totally understand since small business owners are usually swamped with enormous piles of workload and rarely have time to sit down and think of marketing strategies. 

The same is probably true for musicians and artists. They might be so busy with their own craft that they pay little to no attention to learning to promote. 

That’s Why Went Into Marketing. 

When I first started in marketing, I was just lucky to land a pretty cool, fun job. I graduated high school with the idea that I was going to be a writer and a rap artist. It’s a weird combination, I know, but it made sense in my head. 

A friend of mine suggested I became an expert in a subject an write about that instead of pursuing a degree in English to be a “writer.”

I had always had a knack for sales and working in an advertising agency immediately after high school introduced me to a world I would soon fall in love with. I decided to become an expert at sales and marketing and write about that. 

But My Passion For Hip Hop And Music In General Never Ceased. 

As I climbed through the ranks in marketing, I always kept well in touch with my artist friends, and when a really close friend of mine, Dcplina, released his own album and joined a small independent label, I wasted no time in helping him and giving him advice. 

That lead to Dc introducing me to Matt M (Junkroom Music), and I suddenly became an authority locally in South Texas Hip Hop Marketing. Since then I’ve worked with other artists including Jay Barr (noimnotwhite), and Midnight Militia. 

When COVID-19 hit, I was laid off from a director position I held at a dentist firm. Luckily I was prepared mentally for this. I quickly sprang into action and started my blog for covid entrepreneurs and hip hop artists. 

This pandemic was a silent blessing in disguise for me. It pushed me to go all-in and pursue what I’ve always thought I’d be great at… being a writer but like my friend suggested as an expert in a field. 

Slogan: 
“Seriously Fun Marketing.”

The slogan I came up with, I already had for quite a while actually. When I first started my rap career, I wanted to stand out and be different. I pushed every button I could just to get attention. I became more of a troll than a serious artist, and somehow that fueled me. 

So I went more, and more ridiculous every time just to see what I could get away with. Then I realized the more ridiculous, the better… so I went “8 Mile” and started making fun of myself, and that’s when things started to really pop. 

In the movie 8 Mile, Eminem’s character wins a rap battle by dissing himself leaving his opponent with nothing to say, and that is kind of what I was going for when I came up with my rap slogan, “I’m serious about being a joke”

It was a ridiculously fun coincidence when I worked at Vector Marketing for a couple years and THEIR slogan is “Work should be fun, seriously.” 

It seemed like a no-brainer to use “Seriously Fun Marketing” as my slogan.

In Conclusion.

I came up with my first set of values, mission statement, and slogan. This is a process I have helped many businesses do, but had never done for myself. Now that I have this, it will narrow down all my targets and I will be able to get more of that sniper action I’m focusing on lately.

Click the image below to listen to my podcast:

DeafTone Podcast