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

Alright, Robert 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?

When I first started, as many do, I simply used my own personal page. It was only after separating my personal life from my business, that I realized how important it is. Many people’s brand is themselves, but the last thing I wanted was for my family as well as my now wife to be forced into a spotlight that they did not ask for. Fast forward into creating my own page and the first year of business, I was in college(studying mass communication/advertising). Having won an AMA(American Marketing Association) with my team, we kept in touch and one of those guys, Clayton Howard, wanted to help me grow my brand. He helped me make posts, interact with comments and kept content on my page. As my business grew and I am quickly outgrowing my old tendencies of trying to do everything, I realized that I had to pick the top 3 things that only I can do and let someone else do the rest. I would respond to potential clients, secure bookings, send invoices and contracts, set up my event, take before and after and dance floor photos, DJ, take down, follow up with my client on how we did, edit and post my photo by the next day with a tag in it. Amongst other things and relating to the original question, I decided that I needed to do my own social media. To build a personable brand, I need to be responding to all of my comments, DMs, making posts and stories, commenting and engaging on other people’s content, and being a person as opposed to a profile. Someone else can take my photos(even though I am also a photographer), someone else can do my taxes, and someone else can help me set up.

Robert, 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?

My gateway into Djing was through dance, specifically breaking(breakdance/bboying). I like skills and learning things that other people can’t do. After going through my honeymoon phase, I realized that there is some money in this. I began to find different applications for DJing like weddings, clubs, house parties, or proms. With breaking, there is a huge emphasis of course on music and break beats. This knowledge of music, phrasing, and rhythm helped me transition from the dance floor to the DJ booth. After about 8 years of trying different types of gigs and finding my way, I’m finally in a spot where I’m happy and 90% of the time want to go to work. The last 10% is from lack of sleep.

What I do right now is a mixture of 10% weddings, 35% greek life(sorority/fraternity/school) related events, and the last 55% are events that I host. What I am most proud of are my events that I host in the town I went to college, called “TheAssignment”. The name came from the nature of the event, a back to school party. My DJ friend Eric Goree and I bought out a club and got to work on planning. We put in our own sound system, programmed our own lights, did our own marketing and hired our long time, and go to photographer Kiersten Hart. The three of us would bring an event to the town that had let nightlife to some degree slip through the cracks.

After reviewing the success we had on our first event, we had to really plan and analyze our next ones. We later added on a security team that consisted of some prior army and hired local sheriff’s officers for added security. We expanded our content team to lessen the load of cranking out content to one person. We added to the production value with 12+ moving head lights, pars, cryo, and confetti blasters, as well as booked an artist to perform. With the addition of money, was that influx of people and equipment. This led to me scaling the business model as well as literally everything very quickly. The business plan changed but the ideas and values of the event stayed the same, that’s what made it special.

This event is special in many ways and in my opinion is what we always wanted for the scene. We are two DJs who care soley about “good DJing”. That means being tastefully technical(scratching and not just button pressing), playing the right songs at the right times and the songs you didn’t expect, playing open format, introducing new music, and having the special effects but not being reliant on them. We can truly craft the night into whatever we want it to be. For example, there are people that have never or will have never heard this afrobeats, house, reggaeton, 80s, or disco track need to hear it and we’re in a spot to do it. It doesn’t have to be swag surf into faneto, mo bamba and all that every night, that’s easy. Diversity is what we want and to see all kinds of people at these events. We want the white people cutting up with the black people, the Asians and Hispanics, the edm people, hiphop heads, reggae fans, and my 70s-80s junkies. I want to look up and see that my LGBTQ+ friends are feeling comfortable and having fun. We don’t say it explicitly, it’s reflected in the music we play. It’s reflected in the content we post, not just one demographic or gender. You may hear Lil Baby, Michael Jackson, Daddy Yankee, Dom Dolla and Tems, all in the same night. Good DJing was and is the goal for the event and is the sole reason that it works. We aren’t focused on selling bottles, attendance through the door, or VIP. We’re focused on just being great DJs.

How did you build your audience on social media?

The way that I built my audience was through the micro. I posted like I had followers and it was a normal post for about a month while no one followed the page. I wanted content on the business page before I started sharing the business page. If someone clicks your page and you have one post, you don’t propose any value to follow. If there are several posts and they are quality or offer something in return, then you increase chances for a new follower and engagement. I would show out for my gigs and bring out amazing setups, even if the client wasn’t paying. This let people see all of the value that I can provide. Moving off of the content, I would do a great job at my events and develop as personal of a relationship as I could. Tag people, hear me now and tag people. They love the recognition and will repost it to all of their followers. Yes, you can hashtag but that hits your macros. You then get followers who don’t know or care about you, which yes they have their place too. Develop brand loyalty with people, post their stuff, tag them and get their reposts. Repeat this process over and over and over.

In my instance, I would take photos at my event(I also learned how to take photos and use flash). Post these photos, tag them, share them and let them download them from a link on your page. This will get clicks to your page, eyes on your content and develops them consistently being on your page. This is what we do with our events and photographers. College students want professional photos from the club or their event. Out of 11k students, we got over 90k impressions in two weeks. We were at 40k from before the event and got to 90k in two days after we posted the link to the photos. We were getting about 100 followers a day for a bit and organically. These are micro as well because they actually care about the page and who we are. They comment and like the posts. 1000 micro followers who will actively view and interact with content is better than 5000 who just like the DJ lights and that’s it.

Do you have any insights you can share related to maintaining high team morale?

I have found that the best way to maintain high morale is to let people crush it at things that they want to do. Understand that no one cares like you care. Just because someone was brought on for photos doesn’t mean that they want to do video. They might not want to do flyers. They might only want to work once a month and not 15 times like I want to. Maybe someone is getting married or graduating. It would not be wise to overload them with work. Let them decide how much they want to work and then give them the tools to succeed. I understand as a business owner, “this is what you pay them for ”, but telling someone that you don’t pay them X amount of money(even if it is a lot) to just pick and choose won’t get you where you want to go. Find someone who loves flyers and outsource it to them. That outsourced flyer is a small price to pay for great culture in the work space. With that, let people move on when they need to. If someone has outgrown your business and wants to go somewhere else to expand their skill set, let them go and help them. It’s hard to let great people go, but that kind of culture and leadership is hard to find. I don’t say that my photographers can’t photograph other people or DJs, that’s absurd. Kiersten is lead shooter for the football team and in my opinion is probably the most in demand content creator within at least 50 miles. I would like to think that me working with her has helped further her in her career. My brand value in content goes up at the same time as hers since she has done so well. What kind of person or brand would I be to hold someone like that back. Encourage your people to grow outside of your business, it’s not their business. Support everyone and help everyone get better.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://allthingsrnb.com

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• Twitter: allthingsrnbTX

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Image Credits
Kiersten Hart aka K.Hartfilms for all of them except the very last in a silhouette(4 light beams), that’s by Colbie Balsamo.