We were lucky to catch up with Samantha Shepherd recently and have shared our conversation below.

Samantha, appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear the backstory behind a risk you’ve taken – whether big or small, walk us through what it was like and how it ultimately turned out.

One of the biggest risks I’ve taken in my career was leaving corporate to start my own content creation agency, The Social Shepherd. I had absolutely NO idea what I was doing or how to plan that transition financially, BUT it was the best decision I’ve ever made. Going from working 12 hours a day to build someone else’s dream to then getting to funnel that energy into working for my own channels, building value into the community that I’ve built, and getting to put that energy into my own clients that I choose to take on has been an absolute game-changer in so many ways.

Samantha, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Let’s start from the beginning. I went to SCAD (Savannah College of Art & Design) and I absolutely LOVED it. I actually started off as a painting major believe it or not – I had been painting since I would hold a brush. Once I got to school I realized that I loved painting so much that I didn’t want to get burnt out on it as a career, so I took an intro to design class where I ended up falling in love with graphic design – which became my major. From there, I worked both in small and large ad agencies, freelanced for a variety of local businesses, and eventually landed a role as a Senior Graphic Designer & Art Director at Fanatics. There, I would design and create everything from 360 campaigns for the NFL to designing the new branding for Miami’s MLS team, Inter Miami CF – including truck wraps, stadium branding, jersey art, and more.

When Covid hit, sports were cancelled for 3 months. While I was lucky enough to keep my job during that time, the boredom eventually drove me to start a Tiktok about my explorations around Tampa Bay. That was the beginning of my career shift into content creation. 3 years later, I have my own true crime podcast that just got signed (Fame, Fortune & Felonious Deeds) and my own content creation agency where I offer everything from drone videography, photography services, design services, social media management and even custom trip itineraries!

How did you build your audience on social media?

When I was first building my audience on social media, I made SURE to follow these rules DAILY:

1. Respond to all comments that you get on your posts the DAY OF. IF you cant the day of, do it the day after. It’s more important to build that connection and to come across as reasonably accessible to your audience.

2. Respond to all DM’s DAILY!

3. Cross promote! One of the most important things you can do early on is build the foundation for your audience and your content to thrive on 2-3 channels. If you post a reel to Instagram, post the same one to Tiktok and Youtube Shorts. Some of your audience will only see the video on one platform or another and this helps widen your audience, give you a better chance at monetizing your content, and prevents you from pigeon-holing yourself to one platform (you wouldn’t want to only have content on Tiktok right now for instance, since its becoming more and more restricted and may possibly get banned in the US).

4. Last but not least – have a thick skin, don’t take the negative comments personally, just learn from them and DO NOT respond unless absolutely NECESSARY to hateful/mean/negative comments. This just makes you look bad and only starts an unnecessary bicker war. If need be, just block the account. All of a sudden monitoring your comment sections becomes a far more hassle-free experience when you do!

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

One of the stories I tell to people when they ask what has been one of the most challenging things I’ve had to deal with as a creator is when I was first starting out on my content journey and my ‘friends’ at the time learned that I had just started to get paid for creating videos and content.

My best friend at the time, we’ll call her Maddie, would usually go to places around town that I wanted to cover for the page with me. Before I started the page on Tiktok (which was the original), Maddie and I had talked about starting a food blog based on all of these cool, fun restaurants we were going to and making videos of. I was gung-ho and was ready to start the Tiktok for it, but for the next 6 months Maddie claimed she would ‘just leave the creative stuff to me’ and instead just come with me to check these places out as support.

Fast forward to about a year later when the Tiktok I had created started to get some traction, Maddie – my best friend – started to tell our mutual friends that I ‘stolen’ the idea from her, that it should have been her page and she should be the one getting paid. Even though she had never taken a single photo. A single video. Or done ANY bit of research to help me or our rudimentary ‘food blog’ at the time. She didn’t even have the login! At the time, it felt like I was losing my best friend, tarnishing my reputation with our mutual friends, and being accused of stealing an idea that was mine in the first place and that I was putting in a LOT of hard work & effort into!

Looking back and after talking to a handful of my content creator friends, its actually pretty common it seems, for people who you would consider to be in your inner circle to NOT be happy for you when you start to become successful and to get a little green with jealousy instead. At the end of the day, just be you, be authentic and genuine and always honest. Do that and keep working towards your goals and the quality human beings that are meant to be in your life long-term will find you!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://the-social-shepherd.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/socialshepherdadventures/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/samantha-shepherd-83348493/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCsmrYdzkwNAbY4_P2_Ng-7A
• Other: Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@socialshepherdadventures

Image Credits
Photo Credit (portrait with bangs): @withrachelj