We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Melissa Church. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Melissa below.

Melissa, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Some of the most interesting parts of our journey emerge from areas where we believe something that most people in our industry do not – do you have something like that?

I may be a bit biased, but there is a huge untapped market in social media marketing. Many businesses are afraid of taking a step outside the Canva search and experimenting with more engaging content. I have worked in the meme-business for over a decade. There is so much that can be done, for almost any industry, with memes. When pitching to companies, I see many businesses are afraid of the voice that comes along with humor. Obviously it may not work for every business, but I have seen success from many with more engaging, humourous, content. This is also true of influencer advertising. It’s almost frowned upon to ask a community style page for ad-space on their profiles when they are having some extremely high engagement rates.

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?

Over ten years ago, for a high school project, I started Bad Science Jokes on Tumblr. (badsciencejokes.tumblr.com) It became a hobby of mine while in and out of school. I began learning about digitial marketing and working more professionally in the field. Of the years I have been able to grow Bad Science Jokes to over a million followers across the web and started my own social media managment business called Digi-Buzz.

Bad Science Jokes focuses on education through humor.
Digi-Buzz won the best of the region in marketing in 2022. Our claim to fame is 24/7 emergency on call service. ‘The internet doesn’t sleep, why does your social media manager?’

Through my work on Bad Science Jokes and Digi-Buzz, I won the Emerging Leader award from Women Lead Change in 2022, and the Millennial Leader Award from the Universal Women’s Network also in 2022. I love when clients are able to tell me they saw real-life results from the social media strategies we implemented.
I get a huge smile on my face when fans of Bad Science Jokes tell me that the jokes helped them understand a difficult topic, or get them through a tough week on campus.

Can you talk to us about how your side-hustle turned into something more.

Bad Science Jokes wasn’t even a side-hustle. Actually, ‘side-hustles’ weren’t even a thing when I started BSJ in 2012. When BSJ was starting to take off, seemingly on its own in 2014, I realized I could turn this into something bigger than I understood. I took a couple classes on social media and digital marketing when I realized the real experience was so much more beneficial than the books they were teaching from. A lot of A/B testing, to C, D, E, F, etc, testing, to see what worked the best and what didn’t. I spent all day for years completely engrossed in learning different social media platforms. I was offered a job at a high profile digital agency right out of college and learned so much about the B to B side rather than the B to C I was working on. Getting that job, with only my experience on Bad Science Jokes as experience in the industry, it really showed me what I had created was something more than just a school project. Shortly after that job acceptance I was invited to NASA Social, where STEM users are invited to blog and stream about NASA projects. That was definetly a turning point in my career. It made more of a name for Bad Science Jokes than ‘just a meme page’. Within a year of starting Digi-Buzz I was awarded Best in the Region for marketing in our hometown. That showed that not only did we make a difference in a business owner’s social media, but it was such an impact they wanted to tell other people. It’s an amazing feeling to know we were able to help make a small business owner’s dreams come true by helping them be successful.

What’s worked well for you in terms of a source for new clients?

Surprisingly it was not Bad Science Jokes helping gain attraction to Digi-Buzz. Initially I thought that was where all of my clients would come from. The majority of my clients were being actively involved in local online communities in the area and word of mouth. They say when someone is unhappy they will tell 7 people. My goal is to make people happy enough to tell 7 people about how happy they are. It seems that has worked. I treat every business as if I was an in-house employee. I come in, ask my questions, do my job, and am at the ready for when my client needs me again. We do our best to take as much work off the business owner’s plate, even if it isn’t something we normally do. You need a new menu and new food pictures? Sure! Let’s do it!

Contact Info:

• Website: www.digi-buzz.biz
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/bad_science_jokes
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/badsciencejokes
• Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/themelissamiller