We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Francesco Ponticelli a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Francesco, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. If you could go back in time do you wish you had started your creative career sooner or later?

I started very early but then I took a very different path in my career, and I am back to my creative career after the pandemic.
More than 20 years ago, when I was studying at university, I had my side job as freelance journalist and content creator and I was doing really well but, for the Italian culture of having a better future with an employment job, I decided to gradually quit my creative career and get a regular full time job in marketing for telecommunications companies. Fast forward to today, I am happy in my career in the Telecom industry – which brought me to work in different countries in the world (and to Miami!) – but when the pandemic hit, I started dedicating my free time to my creative soul, with focus on blogging about Miami and aerial photography. I realized that I could live with that and many times I wonder if I should have continued that path 20 years ago. Never say never! Will I make the big jump to work full time on my creative career? Who knows!

Francesco, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I have a degree in Economics, a Masters in International Marketing, an MBA and my focus for many years has always been in marketing and services for the Telecom Industry. I have a deep passion for journalism, storytelling and photography and in 2020 I started a blog with an Italian friend living in Miami – “Due Italiani a Miami” – to talk about Miami, its life, through articles but mainly through photos and video. I have reached 26k followers on Facebook and 10k on Instagram and I am really proud of the results! I am a professional Drone pilot and this helped me to expand my passion in something which can pay me back for the time and the passion I spend while taking photos and editing videos. My photos got the attention of two main industries here in the Miami area: tourism and real estate. I mainly provide photos and videos of iconic places, tourist attractions and real estate. Clients always ask for something “different” from the common pictures and videos on the web: my answer to the cryptic meaning of “different” is taking pictures of places with my own perspective…and so far it worked!

How did you build your audience on social media?

By being authentic and studying the market I want to reach.

The idea of “Due Italiani a Miami” came during the pandemic. The most recurring questions from friends & family were always the same: “How is Miami during the lockdown? How is the covid situation? Is there nightlife? Can people walk on the street? How is the beach during the pandemic?”

So I decided to build our social presence on Facebook and Instagram showing Miami and its daily life through pictures, videos and live streams. Together Alfredo (my partner in crime for Due Italiani a Miami) and I shared it with friends and family, but quickly we saw an exponential and unexpected growth of our Facebook followers outside of our family & friends circle, thanks to the power of word-of-mouth: “sharing” our content was organic.

Italy was experiencing one of the most strict lockdowns globally and people were bored at home: in many cities they could not even go to the supermarket without getting an authorization. Thousands of Italians started to follow our page and interact with us via comments, messages and questions during the live streams as a way to evade and travel – virtually – to Miami from their sofa.

Honestly it has been pretty smooth to grow on Facebook, that is the main social media in Italy, but difficult to grow on Instagram. We reached over 10k followers on Facebook organically in a few weeks, with a solid user base interacting every day: people shared our content with their friends, shared the pictures of their past trips to Miami remembering the good times they had here and enjoyed seeing Miami in our videos and photos. It’s also true that Facebook by its nature is a perfect platform to interact, and our followers want to see daily moments, interact live during live streams and stories, want us to visit places they love while we bring them on the streets, bars and beaches of Miami through our cameras. Listening to what they wanted to see has been the key for our growth.

Instagram has been a totally different story: I had to use a different approach from the one we had on Facebook and being totally focused on Instagram’s peculiarity. Live streams and posts are not so appealing to our Instagram followers, so I shifted the focus only on Reels and Story. This allowed me to grow organically from 1k to 10k followers in a few months.

Alright – so here’s a fun one. What do you think about NFTs?

I think that NFTs can be a good monetization opportunity for creators: it’s going to be my focus next year. The main challenge I see today on NFTs is that it’s pretty hard for small creators to emerge from the crowd and sell the content, since there is the lack of a unique marketplace which can help to distribute content and monetize it. I see many changes happening in the NFTs space and I am pretty sure that in 6 months time, the panorama will be changed and there will be more opportunities for small creators.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.dueitalianiamiami.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/dueitalianiamiami
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/dueitalianiamiami
• Youtube: youtube.com/ponticelli

Image Credits
@dueitalianiamiami / @ponticelli