We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jessica Johnson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Jessica , looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.
I created Hidden San Diego in 2010 as a way to inspire the community to get out and explore all the hidden gems throughout the city. This was before the days of Instagram, Tik Tok or influencers. When I started my brand it was because there was a gap of quality websites covering the less discovered pockets throughout San Diego. I knew I could offer a lot in this category.
At the time I was teaching myself how to build websites and had recently bought a professional camera. With the knowledge I had, I decided to put my dream of creating a Hidden San Diego website into reality.
It was a slow growth but slowly my audience and list of hidden spots grew. For the first few years it was more of an underground vibe. Once I created a Facebook page for my group in 2012 and then an Instagram page for it in 2015, things really took off. It was no longer underground and actually becoming a household name for San Diego.
Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?
Being in the field I have chosen, I am often out on hikes and connecting with the land. I have always felt a deep need to learn the history of the places I am exploring. Who lived there before? What are their stories? One of the most horrifying realities I have had to stomach has been the truth of what happened historically to the Natives and how colonization impacted their lives, even today.
It’s a lesson we were not taught in school. We were fed a highly romanticized version that is so far from what the actual truth is. It can still be very hard to find the real stories when researching places. Just look of the websites for the missions in San Diego. They are still not taking responsibility for the fact that those missions were built by slave labor, and how many Natives died or were forced into Catholicism in the process. Really nasty stuff.
Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?
It was really interesting when I finally went on Instagram because I had already had my website for 5 years at that point. Once I was on there and looked up the hashtag #hiddensandiego I saw that over 1,000 people had already tagged their Hidden San Diego adventures.
That was the first time I finally got to see people’s adventures that they’d gone on through my site. It was the most touching thing ever.
I grew my audience pretty quickly because I already had a pretty good online presence before then. I continued posting quality content day after day and thankfully it’s caught the attention of many. I still try to post every day.
My advice on social media is to post content relevant to your brand (try to not go too far off topic), post consistently, be part of the community (this means engaging in other people’s posts) and stick to high quality content.
The algorithms are changing so rapidly and it’s definitely frustrating seeing my posts get less likes now than they did with 100k less followers. It’s all about money for these companies though. You have to pay to play. For this reason I’m back to focusing more on SEO with my website again instead of putting so much time and heart into social media.
Contact Info:
- Website: https://hiddensandiego.com/
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/hiddensandiego/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HiddenSpotsOfSanDiego/
- Twitter: https://twitter.com/hiddensandiego1
- Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC1uO34z0YosqP0JP7DlsezQ?app=desktop
- Other: My Hidden California website: https://hiddenca.com/