Influencers Lorenzo DeMalia & Jack Doyle of ‘We Got Ice’ On How To Cultivate Connection & Community In A Click to Connect World
An Interview With Karen Mangia
… Engaging with your audience is really important, especially when you’re trying to establish a community and yourself as a creator. When we were first starting out on TikTok, we would go live every morning even though only a few people would be watching. Even to this day when we go live on TikTok or social media we try to answer every fan’s questions and make sure to engage with the people who are taking the time to support us.
We often use the term “Influencers” to describe people with significant social media followings on platforms like Instagram, Twitter TikTok, Youtube, Linkedin and Facebook. Influencers have become today’s media titans, sought after for everything from product placements to timely trends. What’s the difference between influence and impact? Fans and followers? Sizzle versus staying power?
In this interview series, called, “How To Cultivate Community In A Click to Connect World” we are talking to influencers about how they define success and what we all need to discover about the true nature of influence. As a part of this series I had the pleasure of interviewing Lorenzo DeMalia & Jack Doyle of We Got Ice. Lorenzo and Jack are very popular baseball content creators who have been blowing up on TikTok. The duo has rapidly developed a substantial TikTok presence with over 664K followers on the platform. Lorenzo (22 years old) & Jack (21) have developed a fiercely loyal following among the teenage demographic, bringing a passion for baseball to the next generation of fans. They just got back from the Little League World Series and were treated like Rock Stars there, literally getting mobbed by young fans everywhere they went.
Thank you for making time to visit with us! Our readers would love to get to know you a bit better. What’s the most important lesson you’ve learned along the way that influences how you operate now?
The most important lesson we’ve learned is that nothing is guaranteed in the content world. Some weeks every video you post will get a million views, and others it’ll feel like nothing you post is working. Trying not to ride the highs too high and the lows too low helps us keep a level head and make content we love.
Many of our readers are influencers as well. Others have tried and have yet to succeed. What words of advice would you offer to aspiring influencers, knowing what you know now?
Make content around something you genuinely care about. People will gravitate towards your content if they feel the authenticity behind it. It can be intimidating to put content out that you feel passionate about but that fear is how you know you’re onto something.
Success is often a matter of perspective. I’ve always resonated with Henry David Thoreau’s quote, “It’s not what you look at that matters, it’s what you see.” How do you see success — or define success — for yourself now?
This is an excellent question. Views are the driving force for all content; if a video gets a lot of views it’s a success, of course. Digging deeper into it, though, as we’ve evolved as creators, success has become more complex than that. We pride ourselves on quality over quantity. If we make a video that can make our friends and fans laugh, that’s a success. We aren’t ones to celebrate milestones but rather the day-to-day process of making content.
What are your strategies to make room for who and what matters most?
It can be hard to turn that creative switch off sometimes. You are never truly done when it comes to making content. When you first start out, you kind of have to put your head down and push forward if you find something that is working. The internet is truly a what-have-you-done-for-me lately relationship. As we’ve grown personally and creatively we’ve started to find a better balance between work and personal life. It’s definitely one of the harder things to work through as a creator though.
How do you reduce or mitigate stress?
As I said earlier, trying not to ride the highs and lows has been crucial to controlling stress. Working together also helps a ton in terms of managing the stressful times. Having someone to talk to or help share the workload has been really helpful as we’ve grown the past few years. We like to view stress and pressure as a privilege rather than a negative.
I’m going to try a few of your tips, and I’m hopeful our readers will, too. Now it’s time for the big reveal — the moment our readers have been anticipating. What are your “five strategies to cultivate a large & engaged social media community?’ Please share a story or example for each.
Make content you would want your friends to see: This is a piece of advice that was given to us and has resonated greatly. If you make every piece of content with the mentality of, “I would share this with my friends,” it’ll make the work you put in feel that much more fulfilling. The moments when our friends from college or our childhood started messaging us about how they loved our content and were fans were truly amazing moments and helped motivate and inspire us to keep creating.
Bet on yourself: We’ve always had high expectations for ourselves. Even when we had 100 Instagram followers, we believed if we just got people to see our content they’d love it. When we first started seeing success on TikTok, several podcast networks and companies reached out to get us to work for them, or make content for them. This only boosted our confidence and made us believe we could do it on our own even more. By betting on ourselves and not selling ourselves short we were in a position to be hired by Jomboy Media when the opportunity presented itself.
Be Positive: You attract the energy you put out. Sometimes it can be tempting to make a joke at someone’s expense or make content that may be negative towards someone because it would get views. However, your audience will carry the same energy you do or this will attract other audiences that may be more negative in nature. Always make content that has a positive tone to it, your audience will gravitate towards it.
Know what you’re getting into: As content creators our main goal is to get people to see our content. At your best moment, millions of people could potentially see that content. While that comes with a lot of perks and recognition, it will inevitably also come with some form of negativity. Knowing that every video you post to the internet could be seen by a million people can help ground your content and make sure every video you post is something you’re comfortable with all those people seeing. It will also put you in a better position if there are people commenting negatively on your posts. If you’re proud of your work and prepared for that reality, it’ll go a long way.
Be Grateful, Not Comfortable: Showing the community that follows you that you’re grateful is important not just for your followers, but for yourself. It’s good to stay grounded and enjoy the little wins along the way; you’ll look back on them fondly if you do. It’s helped us a lot to enjoy these moments but to also view them as moments of inspiration. Since we were able to achieve this, what else can we do? It’s important to always be working towards goals. It helps make everyday feel special and fulfilling.
What do you do to create a greater sense of connection and community among your fans?
Engaging with your audience is really important, especially when you’re trying to establish a community and yourself as a creator. When we were first starting out on TikTok, we would go live every morning even though only a few people would be watching. Even to this day when we go live on TikTok or social media we try to answer every fan’s questions and make sure to engage with the people who are taking the time to support us.
As an influencer, you are, by definition, a person of great influence. If you could inspire a movement that would bring the most amount of good to the most amount of people, what would that be? You never know what your idea can trigger.
What a beautiful question: I think for us we would want to inspire people to be kinder to one another — on and off the internet. Every video we have ever made has been made with the intention of making someone laugh or smile. That’s the core philosophy of We Got Ice. If our content could inspire others to start being kinder to one another, or for creators to make content that spreads positivity and makes others smile, that would be amazing.
We are very blessed that some of the biggest names in Business, VC funding, Sports, and Entertainment read this column. Is there a person in the world with whom you’d like to have a private breakfast or lunch with, and why? He, she or they might just see this. :-)
We are diehard baseball fans and Red Sox fans. so meeting David Ortiz or Dustin Pedroia would be a pretty surreal experience for us. Maybe even playing wiffle ball against them one day.
What is the best way for our readers to further follow your work online?
We are everywhere you can consume content. Check out our TikTok, Instagram and our YouTube Channel: We Got Ice, as we are starting to make longer-form videos, and now do a weekly show!
Thank you for these thought provoking insights. Here’s to your continued success!
Thanks for taking the time to ask us these questions, truly an awesome experience!
- Jack and Lorenzo
