Marketing Happy Hour - The Secret to Organic Social Media Growth | Orlando Gonzalez of Florida Blue

Starting point is 00:00:00 you're listening to the marketing happy hour podcast where we discuss career and industry insights with our peers in marketing we're here to talk about it all like the ups and downs of working in social media how to build authentic relationships in the influencer and pr space managing a nine-to-five and a side hustle at the same time, how to be productive in your life and career without losing your sanity, and more. Ultimately, we're here to build a community with you because we're all trying to navigate the world of marketing together. Are you ready? Grab your favorite drink and join your hosts, Cassie and Erica, for this week's episode.

Starting point is 00:00:57 Today, we're thrilled to have Orlando Gonzalez, social media lead for Florida Blue on the show. He's sharing his expertise in crafting and optimizing social media strategies. With over 15 years of experience and remarkable organic growth of 900% for Florida Blue's social following, Orlando brings invaluable insights into tailoring content for diverse audiences and managing multiple brand accounts effectively. Tune in as Orlando shares his top tips for social media success

Starting point is 00:01:21 from staying inspired across platforms to tracking KPIs and discover actionable takeaways to elevate your social media game. You ready? It's time to dive in. So grab your favorite drink and let's get to this week's episode. Hi, Orlando. How are you? I'm good. Thank you for asking. How's everybody doing? Doing really, really well. And we're so excited to have you here today. You are a fellow Florida local like us. And before we get started, I do have an important question for you that we ask all of our guests,

Starting point is 00:01:55 and that is, what is in your glass? Well, right now is a water bottle um but normally i try to indulge in some type of liquor over the on the weekends i like uh i love champagne so i drink a lot i drink some mimosas and i went to uh total wine recently and they have a a champagne that is already mixed. It's called mimosa and it's like $6.99. It's already pre-mixed and it actually tastes real good. So I have a couple of bottles of those in my little bar downstairs. Oh, that's great. That's awesome. We love a good mimosa at brunch. I am just currently sipping on a vintage cola Olipop and I am historically a soda hater, but I actually really enjoy this. You know, I tried Olipop for the first time,

Starting point is 00:03:01 you know, a couple of years ago. And then we recently had one of their team members on our show talking about their content and things like that. And I fell back in love with the brand. So I, that's what I have right now. But what about you, Cassie? I have two things as always on my desk. I have water and then I have this Ginnip. I don't know if I'm saying it right. It's like an ocean mineral drink. And I did some research. Ginnip is a Spanish lime. So I'm assuming I haven't cracked it open quite yet, but I'm assuming there's some lime infusion in there as well. So I'm excited to try that. Yes, yes. But Orlando, we are excited to chat with you about just all things social media, your tips for using the different platforms.

Starting point is 00:03:44 But first we got to ask, you know, you know, what's up with your career journey? How'd you get to where you are today? Well, it was a long one. I'm blessed and grateful for, you know, where I'm at right now. It started off working in the music industry. I was the regional marketing promotional specialist, you could say, for G-Unit Records, 50 Cent, you know, working with 50 Cent, you know, doing the regular street teaming stuff,

Starting point is 00:04:17 putting up posters at three in the morning, handing out CDs and flyers. You know, this is before the digital age. And then, you know, we branched off to, you know, they created a website called thisisfifty.com because putting up posters and was getting expensive. And the company was getting fined per poster. So in New York, I think they was getting fined, you know, per poster. So, you know, of course, 57 didn't want that, you know, he didn't want to get fined no more. So he used the website as a way, as a tool to market himself and the artists of the company. So he created this platform where it was his marketing hub, you know, all his music videos, all his music,

Starting point is 00:05:07 you can find it in, on this website. And, um, I was overseeing the website with several others and we was, you know, increasing the brand awareness of the website through social media, through MySpace, Twitter, you know, the old school days. And then, um, and then when the company, you know, the old school days. And then when the company, you know, went on to social media on Twitter, you know, I was helping out with that, you know, but I fell in love with the digital space, the digital industry of promoting yourself and marketing yourself through this thing called social media. And I decided to like go to Full Sail and get my degrees and then take this journey and land me where I'm at right now.

Starting point is 00:05:52 Oh my gosh, I have to interrupt here because you mentioned Full Sail. That was one of my first jobs. I was an enrollment coordinator there. So I wonder if we even talked to each other about that time, but. Probably, I know my class when, you know, So I wonder if we even talked to each other about that time. Probably. I know my class when, you know, I inquired about full sale like around 2003.

Starting point is 00:06:13 Okay. And it was too expensive. It was too, too expensive. So I was like, nah, never mind. And then around 2013, I was like, let me try again you know and um yeah they started they had this new um and you know internet you know virtual classes and i was the first class uh it was like hey we have this new program called internet marketing if you want to be involved um it's a virtual it's a virtual class and i was like

Starting point is 00:06:46 of course you know it was similar it's basically digital marketing because they don't even there's not even a class no more called internet marketing so i enjoyed my time at full sail received a mass bachelor's and a master's there i learned a. But I felt like I learned a lot just, you know, working under, you know, the music mogul 50 Cent. And, you know, that's how I fell in love with marketing because of him. I was just watching his steps and how he was able to create a control of the narrative about his product, his music, his voice. Oh, wow. That is so cool. We probably did cross paths. I was at Full Sail working there in 2014 and 2015. So we might have at some point chatted

Starting point is 00:07:33 with each other. But so cool. So cool. Love that. I think so. I had a lot of questions and I was, I used to reach out to the career development department a lot, to admissions a lot. We probably did. We probably did talk. They actually made you have like a different name than your actual name for like privacy reasons. So my name was Amelia. If you ever remember talking to a person named Amelia, it was probably me. I'll have to really look back to all the emails.

Starting point is 00:08:05 It was cool.. I'll have to really look back to all the emails. It was cool. Oh my gosh. So many paths crossing. Yeah. Orlando lives in where I grew up too. So it's so cool to see all of these different paths crossing and things happening. But yeah. So Orlando, I mean, you've been, as Erica said, you've kind of been around the block,

Starting point is 00:08:25 right? You started in the music industry, you pivoted eventually into hospitality, you were at Hard Rock, now you're at Florida Blue. So I'm curious, like, how have you primed yourself for shifting in industries? Like, what has that experience been like? Because I know a lot of marketing professionals specifically are like, oh, I'm in beauty now, maybe I'll jump over to a different industry or whatever. What has that experience been like for you? Well, you know, it's been tough, you know, it's learning, it's like learn, learning a new language, every job, you know, you have to learn how how the company speaks you know I first start after after the music industry my first social media job was at a construction staffing agency so I

Starting point is 00:09:16 don't know nothing about construction I had to learn how these construction people would talk and and you know the the different, you know, acronyms and the nicknames about stuff. And, um, you know, I just came in as a, so I saw the job social media. I was like, Hey, I'm, I'm just applying. And I was able to get it, but, you know, I had to learn on the fly, everything about the company. And then after that, you know, real estate, you know, working at Remax

Starting point is 00:09:46 and working at Keller Williams as a social media director, same thing. I had to learn the language. I had to learn about how to talk to the real estate agents and how to teach the real estate agents, how to use social media, but I had to teach them, you know, in their language because they won't understand impressions and reach, you know, they won't understand, you know, in their language, because they won't understand impressions and reach, you know, they won't understand, you know, that type of talk, but I had to teach them, you know, how to use social media to, to basically increase, you know, profits, you know, through social media. And then comes, you know, hard rock. And i feel like with hard rock you know um it was so many different industries in one because you have entertainment you have hotel you have food and beverage you have health and beauty because when you think about the spa and the salon and the barbershop then you got the fitness because they had a weight room then you

Starting point is 00:10:45 had um gaming you know casino gaming gambling you know so I had it was like so many industries all packed in one and I really feel like the hard rock prepared me for Florida Blue you know because when me shifting over to Florida Blue you know everybody was like well Florida Blue, you know, because when me shifting over to Florida Blue, you know, everybody was like, well, Florida Blue, you know, it's not entertainment. It's not the hard rock. Are you sure you want this job? And it's not exciting, you know, and I'm like, yeah, I'm ready. I think I'm prepared because at the hard rock, I had to go through so many phases, and I had to communicate with so many different personalities, because every department was a different person, you know, a different director. So with the food and beverage, I was speaking to one person,

Starting point is 00:11:38 you know, when hospitality, speaking to one person, entertainment, speaking to one person, entertainment speaking to one person. So, and I had to try to please each director, you know, because entertainment wants, you know, all the concerts front and center on social media, you know, I need this promoted here and there, you know, and same thing with food and beverage and hospitality. So shifting over to healthcare, you know, I was well prepared. It's not the prettiest thing on social media, you know, but I had a strategy, you know, I was preparing myself when I was making that transition over, I was preparing myself, how could I approach this job?

Starting point is 00:12:22 And I was just teaching myself by analyzing all the competitors of Florida Blue. And when I actually started my role, I was ready to go. Yeah, absolutely. You spoke about your strategy. And that's something we wanted to chat with you about. You grew Florida Blue's social media following organically by over 900% in 12 months. That is a huge accomplishment. What do you think is the secret to, you know, exponential organic growth like that? Humanizing the brand, you know, really just storytelling, educating, you know, with healthcare, it's all about, you know, you see a lot of healthcare companies, they want to sell the product.

Starting point is 00:13:09 They want you to go sign up and be part of the company. They want you to be a member. So they're pushing that narrative, you know, to your face all the time. But I wanted to educate. Let's educate our followers. Let's educate our members on the benefits of healthcare. Let's educate them on flu. Let's educate them on mental health. Let's educate them on suicide awareness. Let's educate them and bring awareness to a healthy heart, you know, and

Starting point is 00:13:41 let's educate them on our rewards plan. You know, I wanted to, instead of selling, let's educate, let's bring that content to social media, you know, and, um, you can see the KPIs is all about the growth. The growth was really what I was looking for. I wasn't really looking for engagement or, you know, I was really looking, could we grow out our social media channels, you know, and, um, that was the goal and, uh, it worked. Um, when I started at Florida blue, it was like 3000 followers on Instagram. Now we close to 12,000 followers. Um, and, um, followers. And yeah, it's fun.

Starting point is 00:14:25 It's fun because Florida Blue has a story to tell. We have so many great team members, so many great stories from employees to community specialists that have something to speak about and how it can help our members. You know, and I want to put that out there on social media. Yeah. I'm curious to hear what channels that you guys are on and who you're speaking to on each channel, if it's different, you know, I don't know if your audience and your content is going to be different on Facebook than it is on Instagram or anything like that, but we'd just love to hear who you're speaking to and how you're speaking uniquely on

Starting point is 00:15:05 each platform. Yeah. So Facebook, you know, as most of our members are on Facebook, we have 66,000 followers on Facebook, I think, or 65. Instagram, our members, I would say a younger generation, a younger demographic on Instagram. Twitter. Twitter is more you'll get more of the negative sentiment on Twitter. That's where everybody goes to complain. So Twitter, we do have members on Twitter, but we try to keep Twitter as a as a as a place where we discuss company updates, you know, partners. You know, we have a lot of partners, you know, from sports partners, partnerships to professional partnerships with different companies. So we try to give those updates on Twitter. And then on LinkedIn, we have a lot of executive, you know, co-workers, team members,

Starting point is 00:16:11 people in the same industry. So those are the different channels. So every channel we try to push content that is different. We don't want to push the same content on every channel. So LinkedIn, you'll see more company updates, more culture content. Twitter is more, you know, kind of the same company updates, partner updates, community content. When I say community, it's stuff we do in the community with our executives and with our partners. Facebook and Instagram, we post about education, educating our members, our followers on several different health services, community content. What else? And engaging content. If you follow our social, you'll see on Instagram and Facebook stories, we do Mindful Mondays, Trivia Tuesdays, Wellness Wednesdays, Thursdays, we do this and

Starting point is 00:17:15 that, this or that. And then Fridays, we post a schedule for our Florida Blue Centers when they have activities on Saturdays. That's awesome. Well, I want to hear too about just your experience managing the other social accounts under the Florida Blue umbrella. I love how you talked about having kind of this set plan throughout the week of the content you're posting for Florida Blue. And so has that kind of level of organization and that kind of strategy helped your experience juggling different accounts? And how do you stay inspired for all of these different components that you're managing? I'm very competitive. So seeing other companies out there and I'm like, oh, we have to do better than them. You know, like, so i'm always looking for new content new um

Starting point is 00:18:06 inspirations to to create you know engaging you know posts for us to put out there but you know we have life at guidewell which is our life at guidewell that's our um guidewell is our parent company and god is guidewell is the is the mothership Florida Blue is under. And all the other companies, Truly, Triple S, they all under GuideWell. So Life at GuideWell, we changed the name from GuideWell on Instagram to Life at GuideWell because this year we'll be rolling out more culture type of pieces on, on life. I got well,

Starting point is 00:18:49 where we'll be showcasing more behind the, behind the scenes stuff. Like what we do at the company at our, at our main headquarters in Jacksonville, you know, more team, team activities, what our subsidiary companies are doing.

Starting point is 00:19:05 So that's Florida Blue, Triple S. I could go on as a list of companies. I'm sorry, I don't remember all of them. But, you know, we're going to showcase that at Life at Guidewell. And, you know, to answer your question, you know, I love Sprout. So so sprout social is the one that keep me organized you know i have all the calendars there but you know i try to every like i was saying life at guidewell is all about culture truly is all about you know another piece you know triple s is another piece i don't have to handle triple s. Triple S have their own, you know, team.

Starting point is 00:19:46 And they're based out of Puerto Rico. But every company has a social media manager. There's some companies that don't. And those are the companies where, you know, they send over content for me, for me to push post on their social media channels. Yeah, awesome. Well, you mentioned Sprout as being one of the ways that you're kind of planning and dispersing this content. I know Sprout has some built-in analytics, but how are you tracking KPIs for all of these different brands? Are you using the native platform analytics? Are you using a platform like Sprout? What does that look like? And how often are you analyzing data for these different components?

Starting point is 00:20:31 Daily. I wake up when I come to the office, that's the first thing I look at is the metrics. Let me see how, you know, how we did, you know, yesterday or the week versus week, you know. But I'm always looking at organic. I don't look at paid. I look at what are we doing organically. And I'm really looking at impressions more than anything. Engagement. I'm not expecting everybody to engage on health care posts you know that's I don't I don't really you know if it happens that's a bonus but as long as I know that our posts reach a certain amount of audience and that's why I love looking at impressions I love looking at video views non-fan impressions you know how many people we reaching that actually don't follow us, you know, so that's the non-fan impressions. So I really like to see, to see

Starting point is 00:21:33 that. And then I also look at posts versus posts, you know, so I look at how many times we posted one month versus last month, you know, so that's, that's, those are the numbers and the metrics I'm looking at. And I, and I use, I'm using Sprout. Sprout is the best way for me to, to actually get all the analytics from both, you know, the life, you know, GuideWell platform and the Florida Blue platform all together at one time. Awesome. Well, Orlando, I want to ask quickly about your personal LinkedIn page uh you've grown a really great following and community on your own platform and you're also uh noted as one of the top social media voices on the platform as well which is awesome so congrats on that uh but I'm curious with with LinkedIn for, how has building your personal brand on that

Starting point is 00:22:25 platform been beneficial to your career and what's kind of the inspiration behind doing so? It's just, you know, it's a place, LinkedIn is a place where I could speak social media and, and, and get people to understand, you know, like I met you guys, you guys are great. So, you know, I meet a lot of different people in social media. I think I have over 3,200 followers, I think. And most of them are social media professionals, which is great because, you know, we bounce ideas off of other, strategy, you know, just speaking, you know, that social media talk, you know, and that's what I love. I mean, Instagram, Facebook,

Starting point is 00:23:14 those are great, but I don't even, I'm not even on Instagram. I'm on Facebook and LinkedIn. You know, Facebook is more personal and LinkedIn is all about just communicating with professionals, you know, and then years ago. And now they, you know, how, how differently, you know, you can see the salaries change, you know, from two, three years ago to now, you know, how people talking about their job and, and the job duties they have to, you know, carry over. And, and it's just going on LinkedIn and being able to communicate with other social media professionals really helped me become a better social media professional, you know, cause I'm seeing, um, you know, social media updates. I'm seeing people talk about their frustrations with social media and, you know, and their

Starting point is 00:24:25 job and people don't understand social media professionals. I get it. I love it. You know, and so following everybody on social, you know, on LinkedIn that that's in the social media industry is great. I think is, is the best, you know, it really made me a better person a better professional in social media yeah absolutely that's definitely like why I love LinkedIn is just connecting with people in the same industry as I am or even people outside of marketing it's cool to see what's going on in

Starting point is 00:24:59 different people's uh roles and things like that and better understanding how a business works as a whole with all of these different sections and all of these different departments is really cool to see on that on that platform for sure. Well Orlando we'd love to ask this question on the show and that is just what do you know now that you wish you knew earlier on in your career? Well, it's hard because I think I needed it. I needed to go through every stage of my, you know, from beginning to now, I needed to go through that because that it made me a better person. When I first, when I first started my first corporate social media job, I was raw, straight out of the streets, went behind the ears. I only knew certain things about social media, and that was from the music

Starting point is 00:25:53 industry. I needed to learn and gather this information from every industry. And I would say, you know, courage. You know, now I'm more confident in my abilities to do things in the social media industry. Before, I was doing things. I didn't really pay attention to metrics and stuff like that. And I wish I had that courage back then to back my knowledge up with certain different professionals. I used to just stay quiet, you know, and they used to tell me, oh, you're not doing so good, or these numbers don't look good, and I didn't really know much, but now I could really explain something. I could really break it down. I could really show you, you know, the opportunities, you know, the growth. I could really point certain things out. And that's, I think, the courage in me now.

Starting point is 00:26:54 And, you know, backing up my performance. I wish I had that back then. I wish I had it when I first started. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for that, Orlando. That was a great little tidbit and piece of advice there. And we've really enjoyed just having you on and hearing about your experience and where you are today and excited to stay in touch with you and see where you go or where you evolve or how you evolve next in your role with Florida Blue. But with that, we'd love to stay in touch with you. So how can we do that online? And how can we stay in touch with all things Florida Blue as well? Yeah, please follow me on LinkedIn.

Starting point is 00:27:35 You know, that's where I'm always active on LinkedIn. And Florida Blue, just follow us. You know, Florida Blue can just follow us. Florida Blue can't miss us. We have several different campaigns that will be starting next week and the upcoming weeks and the months ahead. A lot of campaigns showing the greatness of Florida Blue and the Guidewell Company, you know, and yeah, follow us on Instagram, Florida Blue, Florida.Blue. Follow us on Twitter, FL Blue. Follow us on LinkedIn, Florida Blue. Please follow us. The more followers, the better.

Starting point is 00:28:23 Yes, yes, absolutely. we will link all of that in our show notes so people know where to find you and find florida blue and stay up to date on everything uh that you're up to but thank you again for joining us this has been really great thank you thank you so much thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Marketing Happy Hour podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe, rate, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. If you want more of Marketing Happy Hour, but don't know where to start, we invite you to download our free Marketing Happy Hour starter Kit at marketinghappyhr.com forward slash starter dash

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Marketing Happy Hour - The Secret to Organic Social Media Growth | Orlando Gonzalez of Florida Blue

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