It all started out with my own online side hustle business, in which I bought and sold social media profiles. At the time the platform was just starting to get attention, so the profiles sold pretty easily to small businesses and private buyers. I got this idea from a friend of mine.
The process was simple: buy an account, grow it a bit (using the growth methods I had learned though experience, studying and testing), then sell it for a profit. This simple process very soon started generating me more then minimum wage…
My main focus was on Instagram at the time because I believed it to have the most potential.
This give me a ton of practical experience and showed me the journey of growing a online businesses using social media. The idea of starting my own marketing agency was in my head for a while.
Some time went by, and after being in the industry for about 4 months, I felt it was necessary for me to go bigger and start offering Instagram growth services to businesses. So I finally took the leap and started my own agency
After about 2 months of reaching out and trying to get clients, I had no success, I was about to give up. Businesses just weren’t seeing the potential and would rather put their advertising dollars elsewhere.
So I decided to do something special, something different and unique. I decided to provide value first, I did this by approaching businesses and telling them i’ll work for FREE. The idea was simple, I knew I could get them results, I just had to prove this to them within the first month…
And if I did that, they would obviously agree to paying me for the upcoming months, and possibly even refer me to their other business friends.
I spent the last bit of 2015 reaching out using this exact strategy, most businesses still didn’t take me seriously. But I knew all I needed was to get one client on board…
Once I was able to get a business called ProjectVanlife to agree with my “I’ll work for FREE” strategy, things really started to kick off. In fact, all the credit of my success goes to this one simple method, in which instead of being selfish, I provided value first…
This created almost a snowball effect for my newly started social media marketing agency. Since I was in fact able to deliver on my promises,.My business started growing pretty quickly. Here’s the simple yet effective process I followed:
1) I work for free and bring results
2) once the client is satisfied, compensation is inevitable
3) the client will begin to refer me to his/her friends
Everything was working out exactly the way I had imagined it. So much so, that I eventually had to start turning down clients in order to keep up with all the work.
Obviously I didn’t like doing this, so I knew the next step was to hire a team. I didn’t want people who were just in it for the money. Instead I wanted a team filled with people who were passionate, interested in such an industry, and willing to innovate, expand, and more importantly learn.
It took a while but I eventually found those people. Not all of them knew about social media marketing, and that didn’t matter because they showed me they were willing to do whatever it takes to learn. I invested time into my team and would teach them everything about the industry. After about 3 months they were ready, and it felt good knowing they had my back.
By the end of 2016 we experienced a bit of a downfall because I was investing a lot of time into teaching and perfecting my team. But, this meant we were ready to tackle 2017 and the upcoming years as well. So, it was indeed a good idea when you look at from a long term perspective.
This is where the market began to get saturated, everyone was diving in face first and this meant more competition. In order to keep up, we decided to start offering more services. Up until now we were only providing social media marketing on Instagram.
This had both advantages and disadvantages.
The advantage was that we were able to perfect Instagram, and provide amazing results for it since it was our only focus.
However, the disadvantage was that our clients would go to other agencies for other services and platform management.
We didn’t really like this, mostly because our clients as well preferred getting all the services from one agency instead of having to run around.
So it was time for yet another change. together me and my team quickly got to work and began learning how we can bring our clients results with all the other social media platforms out there. It didn’t take long to figure it out since we already had so much experience, and after 2.5 months we were ready to start offering these services as well…
2017 was a exciting year filled with learning, challenges, and growth.
Now almost everyone started becoming an “entrepreneur” and starting their own online businesses. This didn’t concern us since we’d already built up a pretty stable foundation beforehand.
However, this meant that growing on social media would become harder due to all the competition. We quickly started noticing that the tactics which we used for growth before, were no longer as effective.
This is nothing new though, platforms get updated all the time and change their algorithms. We’ve experienced this several times before and were still able to bring results despite the changes. So we expected to do the same this time.
We began testing and testing and testing…
Our goal was to figure out which variations of our old growth tactics still works today, what are new ways to grow, etc…
Again, it didn’t take long for us to figure it out. But this time social media was growing so fast that we had to constantly do research and adopt to the changes in order to stay ahead. Luckily I had a team which was willing to do whatever it takes, and because of that we kept learning and adopting. This is something we do till this day.
2018 thought us to be more innovative…
Despite the increasing competition, Social Medics stayed ahead of the curve due to our dedicated team who we had been allocated to the conduct rigours testing on various platform to ensure our clients get the best services and stay on top of their industry when it comes to social media marketing.
It was also at this stage when we had collectively decided to actively offering web development services along with the social media marketing which was offered on platforms such as Pinterest, Instagram, Google, Facebook, and Twitter.
During this time, social media was on a new wave and the digital space for businesses was booming.
We had quickly realized that there were many businesses which would need newly built websites for a basic online presence.
This is when I decided to hire a web developer and started to actively advertise this new stand alone service as well as a bundled package which also included social media marketing to our prospects.
We were able to help many businesses be seen, not only by their social media marketing but also through their websites which were user-friendly, included compelling visuals, had a clear value proposition, and Call-to-Actions.
The vision for 2020 was to have the team primarily focus on social media marketing and continue to grow the cliental while one person looks after developing websites.
We executed on this strategy very effectively since we already had members of the team executing on tasks in which they had the most skills and experience.
The day-to-day operations for our existing cliental had been running very smoothly and we had seen a lot of growth within the businesses who had worked with us. In addition to that, we had experienced more interest in our services from new prospects despite the Covid-19 lockdowns.
This is when I had decided that Social Medics needed to also help out our local businesses excel in the digital space as we had been for online businesses and Influencers.
We started a new project in which we researched local businesses in the area who lacked online presence and digital marketing for their business as I believed that we could genuinely help them grow and increase their revenue.
2020 was a year of growth and prosperity which also had it’s own challenges (Covid-19) but despite that we had evolved and started working with businesses from different industries that we had not tapped in before especially since they realized that utilizing the digital world to their advantage can be beneficial in circumstances like the lockdown.
In 2021, many local businesses had lost money due to the lockdown and they had to cut down on their advertising budgets.
Going through this phase was tough but I understood how these business owners were feeling but they were very appreciative for the assistance and growth we had provided them.
During this year, our team had realized that we should shift our focus back to primarily working with businesses and influencers who already had an online presence of some sort. Ofcourse we still kept working with the existing clients but the goal for the future had to be different and I wanted to narrow down the services we provide to excel in one particular area.
After working with many businesses, we had realized that Pinterest had now become gold mine for rapid, exponential growth compared to traditional platforms.
This year was a pivotal moment in our business and this is when I knew Social Medics had to evolve and double down on the one platform which we had always excelled in and brought the most benefits to our clients on – Pinterest.
Pinterest is a visually stimulating platform which is very underrated, we have seen much faster growth and about 4x the traffic compared to any other social media platform.
The teams focus was now purely on working with our current clients along with other pre-existing businesses & Influencers who needed help tapping into a larger audience, captivating attention and converting that interest into meaningful results.
This transformative journey was beyond conventional marketing and it’s goal was to shape the client’s (your) brand’s evolution within the digital space.
Now that Pinterest marketing was at the forefront of our services, we had quickly started to see traction and interest for businesses wanting to onboard with Social Medics to assist them in driving results using Pinterest.
Social Medics had officially evolved to specialize exclusively in Pinterest marketing, unlocking unparalleled potential for businesses and influencers.
In 2023, Social Medics helped grow the Pinterest pages of various businesses including Project Van Life, Four Wheel Campers, and Tru Earth, to name a few.
Pinterest emerged as a powerhouse, driving traffic, boosting engagement, capturing clicks, and effortlessly turning casual browsers into buyers.
Throughout this year, our primary objective has been to assist businesses and influencers by implementing tailored Pinterest marketing strategies, aiming for maximum growth and exceptional results.
This year, we have created many success stories in the world of Pinterest marketing and our new simplified onboarding process lets our clients kick back while the experts take the lead. Our strategies continue to evolve and we now have over 8 years of experience, expertise, and results that have worked for our other clients.
The year wasn’t just a chapter; it showcased how Pinterest marketing could transform brands into digital success stories.