Member Spotlight: Austin Iuliano
I am a public speaker (http://austiniuliano.com), growth-hacker, digital entrepreneur and social media influencer. By day I teach people how to build audiences, creative native social content, and sell their services online. I mostly do this through corporate training programs and keynote talks. By night I create silly things online that make them laugh.
How would you describe your brand?
If I had to use one word I would say “magical”… I dress up in a unicorn costume for a lot of my social media content. My brand is a weird mixture because while I am perfectly comfortable making a fool of myself online, I can also suit up Barney Stinson style and drop digital knowledge bombs building social media strategies that sell.
Why were you drawn to marketing and social media?
Honestly, 6 years ago when I started it just made sense to build a business using social media by building relationships and communities. Then it was the money as a validation that my ideas and methods worked. I love seeing the results of marketing in real time.
What advice would you give to someone trying to build their social media presence?
Start by becoming a “power member” of someone else’s community. Share their content, engage in the conversation, and get to know them. The more you invest in someone else, the quicker they are going to turn around and invest in you.
Focus on the content. Social media is all bout the content you create. It doesn’t matter if you write kick-butt medium articles, rock a podcast as hard as Lewis Howes, decimate growth hacking in Instagram stories like Justin Wu (Hackapreneur), or make some fantastic Snapchat art like Mplatco. The community is built around the content you produce. It is the way to communicate to the entire audience.
Be prepared to invest lots. There is a myth in social media that it is “free” and while yes it doesn’t cost you anything to open a Twitter account, it does cost a tremendous amount in time, energy, and money to do it right. You absolutely get what you pay for in social media, so don’t skimp out.
What does a typical day look like for you?
I start every morning taking care of me first, too many entrepreneurs forget to take care of themselves first. You can not give if you don’t give to yourself first. Depending on the day my days look drastically different. If I am not up on stage or doing a corporate training my day looks something like this.
6am: write a 1000-4000 word blog article
7:30am: make breakfast go for a run/workout then set daily goals
9am: Send 250 prospecting emails out
10:30: Follow up with leads/prospects
1:30: 15-30 minute virtual coffees with my network (usually around 5 a day)
3:00 Create social media content on Instagram stories/Snapchat/Musical.ly
4:30 Finish up projects
6:00 Build content for the next digital product launch such as http://shop.dscience.co/courses/marketing-templates
7:30 Family/Me time
What do you like to do when you're not working?
When I am not working I balance my time between listening to audiobooks (I absolutely love Audible and think it is the best investment of all time), spending time with my S/O, watching comedy, and learning new random things. Right now since I live in LA, I am learning how to act and write sketch comedy. I believe those skills will help me with my career path as they fall into a meta-skill I have.
Thank you Austin! You can find him on Instagram at @austiniuliano.