Today we’d like to introduce you to Stephanie Loyd.
Hi Stephanie, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I fell into social media marketing accidentally. I studied sociology and business in college and went into a recruiting/HR job first thing after graduating. In that job, they needed someone to start doing recruitment marketing on social media. They had zero social media presence, and I had zero professional social media experience, but I was up for the challenge.
I self-taught myself everything about social media for business, and social media marketing and branding ended up becoming most of my job. I was a one-person marketing team inside my company’s HR department. Eventually, I became so successful at it that my friends were referring me to help entrepreneurs and small organizations in the community. Before I knew it, I was getting a lot of freelance clients on the side.
Then it hit me. Why not go all in? I became so passionate about helping entrepreneurs create a bigger impact online. So, I left my 9-5 (in an actual marketing job at this point) and launched my social marketing agency, Social Lock. It’s been two years now.
Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?
Growing enough revenue quickly to establish a successful business doesn’t happen overnight. For me, I tried to grow Social Lock before fully leaving my 9-5. It was a struggle working 9-5 at my corporate job and working 7-1am on my business. I learned that you really need to be ALL in for it to work. I also learned that there’s an immense amount of mindset work that comes with being a business owner. From reshaping your money mentality to dealing with operations, being a business owner comes with a set of challenges outside of the specialty you created your business to do.
Alright, so let’s switch gears a bit and talk business. What should we know?
Many Social Media Managers start their business with no experience and learn along the way. What sets me and my social media management business apart is my corporate marketing experience prior to launching the business. I’ve also served on two boards of directors as a marketing director. This gave me the opportunity to work with over a dozen brands of different sizes and industries – effectively knowing how things are done in the “big boy leagues”. Having been fully immersed in all the important functions of a marketing team outside social media, I’m also a capable marketing subject matter expert for clients.
We specialize in working with established entrepreneurs with a service-based business that has been operating for at least two years. We work with these businesses in two capacities: social media strategy (where we create the strategy for the entrepreneur to implement it themself) or social media management (where we create the strategy and implement it for them on a day-to-day basis, completely running the social media marketing function for them). In the near future, I will also be available for speaking bookings.
Do you have any memories from childhood that you can share with us?
I’ve always had a love for people, so any family or friend social gathering was my favorite thing to do as a child.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.thesociallock.com
- Instagram: Instagram.com/sociallock
- Facebook: facebook.com/sociallock
- Twitter: twitter.com/thesociallock
