We were lucky to catch up with Brittany Burton recently and have shared our conversation below.
Hi Brittany, thanks for joining us today. Can you open up about a risk you’ve taken – what it was like taking that risk, why you took the risk and how it turned out?
Currently, I am taking the biggest risk of my life. My grandfather got sick in 2022 forcing me to drop everything and move back home. Sadly, he passed away leaving me and my family devastated and heartbroken. As a result I had to stop working in order to take care of my mental health and help my family gain our sense of what our “new normal” would look like without the matriarch of our family. As a result, I took a different career path going back to politics to work for the Illinois State Senate as a communications specialist. This allowed me to take care of my family, my mental health, and get back on the road to pursuing my dreams. In this stage of my life, I am sacrificing it all in the name of music. Recently I left my job at the Illinois State Senate to pursue my entertainment endeavors full time. As an award winning entertainment journalist everyday I get the chance to bridge my love for music and journalism. I have sacrificed so much to get to this point in my life and I will not let anything get in my way. I have seen the way my words impact people and now I am ready to take it to another level. Music is what feeds my soul, helping me through every obstacle in life. You only have one life to live and the sacrifices I am making will lead me to the best parts of life.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
My name is Brittany Burton and I am an award winning entertainment journalist from Illinois. I got my start in the industry at 19 while studying journalism at Howard University by starting my own entertainment and fashion blog called “Enfired”. That led to me interning with DJ Drama at Mean Street Studios in Atlanta, GA in which I started running his blog called “Dramalikethedj”. At the same time I began working with the singer SZA creating original content for social media and creating and running her official fan page. Everything took off after that. I began writing for Huffington Post, Buzzfeed and several other sites including the illustrious Source Magazine and Hip Hop Weekly. Currently I have my own media company called B&B Meda n which I offer PR marketing services to clients and potential clients to help increase visibility, social media presence, press opportunities, credibility and influence in the world.
What sets me apart from others is my journalism background that has ultimately led to my success. I am most proud of becoming an Award Winning journalist in 2019 at the All Purple Gala in Washington, DC at the Smithsonian castle. What I want potential clients to know most about my work is that it is authentic, honest and designed only elevate any business, brand or persons.
Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?
As I previously mentioned, a time when I had to pivot in business is when my grandfather passed away last year. With limited funds and business slowing down I had to force myself back into the workforce putting my entertainment career and entrepreneur endeavors on hold temporarily. By the grace of God the Illinois State Senate offering me a position as a communications specialist allowing me to return back to my stomping grounds almost 10 years later. It was not an easy transition but I did what I had to do to improve the quality of my life, finances and relationships with people who gave me a life changing opportunity. Being able to work back at the Senate was such a full circle moment that gave me the opportunity to learn, grow, and figure out what I wanted to do next with my career. Because of the senate I can now take a stab at living my wildest dreams on my own terms. As scary as it was, I trusted God and it led me to working on so many different impactful projects that betters the state of Illinois forever. I am forever grateful. Sometimes you don’t know what God has planned for you. But trusting his process is always rewarding. As a result of me pivoting in business, I am a better businesswoman, professional and overall better person.
We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?
Yes. I built my audience on social media from a couple of different methods. One is being my authentic self. People can be who they want to be on the internet. I only know how to be one person and that is myself. People love genuine energy and cling to my authenticity. Because I work in the music business I am around a lot of celebrities, influencers and entertainers so I started sharing a lot of my experiences as a journalist which organically started growing my following. The more credible I became as a journalist the more followers I gained. People started sharing my articles, tagging, me and reaching out so they could get stories written on them. Then I began working with people such as DJ Drama, SZA and One Music Fest, which contributed to my following immensely. The bigger people i worked with the more my audience grew. But the hardest part is maintaining the followers. So the best advice I can give those wanting to build their audience is be authentically yourself and do not worry about what others think about the content you are putting out. Create your own unique content that makes you stand out and make sure your caption matches the content People can tell when your content isn’t really you. If you are having trouble building a following seek out a social media manager as social media is so important in growing a business, brand and sustaining relationships. 
Contact Info:
- Website: https://bzasite.wordpress.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brittburt3/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brittany.burton.921/
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/brittany-burton-39183399/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/BrittBurt3