We were lucky to catch up with Kristian Harloff recently and have shared our conversation below.

Alright, Kristian thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Do you think folks should manage their own social media or hire a professional? What do you do?

I do manage my own social media and I do have some people who help me who I trust. I have been doing my own social media for a very long time and one of the main reasons is because I feel it is important to learn each new trend and to stay up-to-date with the best things that can help my business. The main thing I would say to other people who want to do what I do is to keep up and be consistent on posting and being aware of what is trending with the content you are providing.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

I started out as a production assistant when I moved to Los Angeles in 1999. I had already done stand-up comedy in Tallahassee in New York while I was in college and I decided to leave my assistant job and pursue stand-up comedy full-time. During that time, I made a bunch of connections and after a brief stint as a writer for the WWE, I became a regular at the world famous Comedy Store Getting chosen to perform there by the founder of the club Mitzi shore. During that time I met my friend Mark Ellis, a fellow comedian, and we started a brand called Schmoes Know. We were the first certified MOVIE review team to ever become certified on rotten tomatoes, and accredited by the MPAA. When we started doing movie reviews on YouTube, it wasn’t a thing that people did. We started back in 2008 and we started gathering a following and soon after we started being invited to press screenings, and with then invited to speak on the Adam Carolla show. The idea was to approach the topic from the every day point of view. Now, you turn on any social media app and you see people doing the same thing, but it wasn’t as common back then. We grew our channel to over 300,000 subscribers and we were offered Jobs at both Collider and Fandango to where we built out the brand and created a trivia show called the Movie Trivia Schmoedown. We toured all over the country and it was eventually acquired by Skybound entertainment. I stayed there and became a producer for three years. During that time I created my own YouTube channel called The Kristian Harloff Show. That channel currently stands at over 185,000 subscribers with 35 million views in 2024.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

I have been told that the pivot is my strongest trait. In my business, you always have to pivot. One in instances when I had a job as vice president of production/content at Collider. When my time was done there, I had to change the course of what I was doing and focus more on the trivia show that I was developing. I had to let go of the daily show that I was doing, and then I had been accustomed to in order to focus on becoming a full-time producer of this show. And I had to pivot once again when the run of the show was complete, I had to go out on my own and start my own YouTube channel and instead of having a team, rely on myself to start from scratch again.

How did you build your audience on social media?

It truly is consistency. And it also depends on the platform that you are using. Every social media platform is different. They don’t work the same. They all have different algorithms. Put in the research and pay attention to what is working for some people in your industry and why it is working. In the case of any social media, stay consistent.

Contact Info:

• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kristianharloff/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TheBigThingPodcast/
• Twitter: https://x.com/KristianHarloff?ref_src=twsrc%5Egoogle%7Ctwcamp%5Eserp%7Ctwgr%5Eauthor
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@TheKristianHarloff