We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Desiree Martinez a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Desiree, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today So let’s jump to your mission – what’s the backstory behind how you developed the mission the drives your brand?
In 2015, I was a new military spouse and a new mom with a 2nd on the way. One of the great things about being a military spouse in a world of thriving social media is that every base has a spouse Facebook group so they can connect, educate, inform, and vent in a safe and supportive space.
I started noticing a common theme. These wildly capable women couldn’t get jobs and not jobs that coincided with their degrees or experience, but even local restaurants and retail stores. The stigma of military life was stopping them from supplementing their family income and helping to provide.
At this point in my life I was trying to embrace being a full-time mom, but I also had been a social media marketer for 6-years and had built an awesome network of professionals. It dawned on me that I could help my community.
I could teach military spouses how to be social media managers while offering package-based social media services to small businesses. Business owners could then focus on their business while military spouses helped grow their business through social media marketing.
In September of 2015, All-In-One Social Media opened its digital doors. Since then we have put dozens of military spouses to work and taught them a digital skill that they can use anywhere while also helping hundreds of business owners grow their social media presence and businesses.
In 2017 we moved to South Korea on orders and I needed a way to keep getting new business, so I launched a Youtube channel focused on helping businesses grow with better content marketing. This has become my #1 lead source for my business, a massed over 2.5 million views, and over 30,000 subscribers.
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?
I became a social media manager on accident. I was a product of the great recession and forced to move in with my parents after college in 2009. I was eagerly hustling my graphic design skills at local networking events when everyone kept asking me “what is this Facebook thing?”
As a 24-year-old, I had been using Facebook for years since I had gotten it in college when you could only get it with a college email. So it was easy for me to explain to them and it became a marketing troupe I used to get leads and new business.
Then one day someone told me that I should do this for a business and I looked at him and said “no one is going to pay me to be on Facebook.” But here I am over a decade later an award-winning social media marketer, Youtube and Podcast creator, and agency owner focused on social media marketing.
Have you ever had to pivot?
In 2019 my husband was separating from the Air Force and would be classified as a disabled veteran. This forced our family dynamic to take a drastic shift with me being the breadwinner and my husband stepping in to be the primary caregiver for our young kids.
I had been building the agency and brand for years, so this didn’t seem like a problem until 3 months before his formal separation when over half of my business and income just vanished.
Clients were cutting budgets and taking things in house and I just could not understand why. After taking the time to study my services and talking with my customers, it occurred to me that while social media was evolving our services weren’t.
I had to make a sharp turn with the services we were offering, raised our prices, and streamlined our process. This freaked me out but it was exactly what our customers needed. I was able to replace the income and then some from this change.
You have to make sure to keep up with industry trends and changes but you also have to make sure your offerings match. Right now we are going through something similar with needing to add in Reels and TikTok videos to our service since all the social networks are leaning into those.
How did you build your audience on social media?
Like I said before, I needed a way to get leads to my business now that I was living on the other side of the world unable to network in person, speak, or go to events.
My start was rough and basic, but it did the trick. I needed to create all those crappy videos so that I could figure out what my audience wanted and needed. It took time and showing up multiple times a week to grow my audience.
Now I have over 2.5 million views on my Youtube channel and over 30,000 subscribers. Youtube is my #1 lead source and has let me build an email list of over 14,000 people with email open rates of over 45%.
Every business needs to build a Youtube channel to future proof their income. The best advice is to turn on the camera and start answering the questions you get asked all the time.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://www.allinonesocialmedia.com
- Instagram: http://www.instagram.com/mrsdesireerose
- Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/mrsdesireerose
- Linkedin: http://www.Linkedin.com/in/mrsdesireerose
- Twitter: http://www.Twitter.com/mrsdesireerose
- Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/allinonesocialmedia
- Other: www.womenofyoutube.com