Hoo.Be Founder, Jordan Greenfield’s Tips for Staying Connected to Your Social Media Audience
We invested in relationships early on and figured out as many ways as possible to provide value to individuals in our network. We stayed focused on building a superior product for our core user group; celebrities and creators. Upon launch, those we provided immense value to caught wind of what we built and wanted to support us.
In 2021, there were an estimated 4.5 billion people in the world actively using social media. That includes Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and WhatsApp. That number is a 13% increase from the previous year. The average time spent daily by users is about 2.5 hours and it was projected consumers would spend nearly 50 billion (B) dollars by the end of 2021. It is clear to see the power of advertising on social media can be very lucrative, and not just for brands.
But its not as simple as posting pretty photos with a trending tune. Influencers and celebrities spend in exorbitant amount of time creating their profiles and messaging in order to gain the trust of their following.
Tech guru Jordan Greenfield also noticed there was something missing in the world of social media and set out to create it.
Please give us a little background on yourself prior to launching hoo.be
I left my MBA program at Marquette University to begin working in biotech before quickly realizing that my true passion lies at the intersection of tech and entertainment. It was at this point when I chose to take a risk and go off on my own to found hoo.be. Mentorship was an important thing for me along the way. A big part of my motivation and inspiration came from individuals who were working in the space. One person in particular who stands out is Corentin Villemeur. From the very beginning, Corentin put me under his wing to show me the ropes of this world and has since been an integral part of what we’re building.
What is hoo.be and why do we need it?
hoo.be is the best link in bio tool on the market exclusively for celebrities, creators, brands, and organizations. This one link acts as a unified social hub that converts social media followers into meaningful audience members — a relationship owned by the creators, not the platforms. We originally founded hoo.be around the notion that the social space will always be fragmented; whether it be an additional platform or a new niche, there was no centralized location. That is where hoo.be comes in. Our tool allows celebrities and creators to share what is most important to them at this moment. You can Google someone and the Internet will tell you what is ‘important’ about them. But when you visit a hoo.be page, that individual gets to dictate their own narrative and truly share with their audience what matters to them. That’s the key differentiator and it’s a very powerful one.
How were you able to get celebrities such as Major Lazer, Diplo, and Perez Hilton along with brands like Sports Illustrated Swimsuit and InTouch Weekly using your app?
We invested in relationships early on and figured out as many ways as possible to provide value to individuals in our network. We stayed focused on building a superior product for our core user group; celebrities and creators. Upon launch, those we provided immense value to caught wind of what we built and wanted to support us. With a couple of big names using the platform early on, we gained credibility in terms of the product/solution we provided which then led to a domino effect of other top creators joining the platform. We have never incentivized anyone to use our platform, all of our growth has happened organically in that our users genuinely prefer our product over other options.
Where do you see the future of social media promotion going?
I see a transition from one-off brand deals to creators regaining their power and selling their own knowledge, ideas, and products opposed to other people’s. As we lean more into web 3.0 and the metaverse, I believe our way of self expression is going to drastically change. Instead of being represented by things like our physical appearance, we will instead be able to emphasize the intangible, like our knowledge.
What are your top tips for social media users to stay connected with their followers?
Find your niche, stay true to that, and provide value in the form of knowledge, information, etc. to your direct audience. Instead of focusing on quantity of followers, focus on the quality. Really look for that smaller group inside the larger group of followers, the superfans if you will. A constant flow of value exchange between creators and audience members strengthens the already established connection. Once you create trust and loyalty with them, that’s when you can begin impacting buying decisions and influencing actions.
What’s next for hoo.be?
Our first initiative was geared toward solving the “link in bio” problem. Apart from being a centralized location, hoo.be also acts as an audience migration tool where creators can direct their existing audiences toward a desired location on the web. Long-term we want to own part of the end destination, not just the tool that migrates people from destination A to B. Ultimately we want to create infrastructures for celebrities and creators to own their communities and the interactions with their audience members. Linking creators directly to their audiences with new and innovative ways to connect and explore is our ultimate mission and a concept we plan to continually level up.
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