Quitting Your Job for YouTube?!

Sounds kind of crazy right? Well, it's actually something that is happening for some people today.


I was on Entrepreneur.com looking for some news in social media marketing. While I was browsing, I came upon this title, "How These Four Dads From Utah Quit Their Day Jobs to Make Millions on YouTube" and naturally, I was stopped in my steps. It didn't make sense to me, FOUR DADS, QUIT JOBS, MILLIONS ON YOUTUBE?! My brain could not comprehend having all these words in the same sentence.


After being confused, I read the article and learned a lot about The Piano Guys.







These are four Mormon dads from Utah whose career is now found on YouTube. This was not the plan for them in no way shape or form. It started with a store called The Piano Guys in Utah looking to gain a greater presence on social media sites for marketing purposes. They wanted to bring more people into their store. So, the owner asked Steven and Jon, a pianist and cellist, to make video clips for their Facebook and YouTube pages. Unfortunately, while people loved the music, it failed to help the store succeed. More attention was drawn to the men rather than the store.


After some time the store ended up closing down, but the guys continued to make videos. The posted creative covers to popular songs on a regular basis. Later, the band started to build a fan base and eventually got contacted by Sony. They now have three albums, 3.7 million subscribers, collaborate with celebrities, and go on tour. Since they gained this new found fame, the had to make the decisions to either keep their jobs and do less work on YouTube, or make YouTube their career. It took a couple years, but the group decided to leave their day jobs and make YouTube their full time job. Although it sounds kind of crazy at first, it ends up making them a lot of money with tour, album sales, and video views. These average dads now get to call themselves millionaires.

Pinterest Marketing Tips

Sorry for the mini hiatus! With exams and spring break, I got kind of caught up in all of the stresses of my last college semester, and earned a couple greys because of it. But here I am again with some fun social media marketing information!


Today, we're back on my favorite outlet, Pinterest! And how to get some awesome results and get the most out of this social media outlet.


I stumbled upon this article titled, 5 Pinterst Tips fro Crazy-Good Results. This article had some great ideas on how to get great marketing results through Pinterest.


What I found most interesting was when the author, Susan Harrow, spoke about using the images to speak for your brand rather than a bunch of words to sell the product. She uses Home Depot as an example to prove this point. As most may know, Pinterest is known for Do-It-Yourself products, so of course Home Depot would want to work their way into this outlet. Now, instead of pasting their bright orange logo allover the site, the use real nice, professional, bright colored photos to grab your attention. This is super smart because once people like it and pin it onto their board, the more likely they are to go to Home Depot in search for the product to reproduce whatever picture they saw.

There a couple other tips in the article that relates to whatever you maybe trying to promote and grab attention towards.

I personally use Pinterest for my own pleasure, but it's good to know how to use it in a form of marketing for future jobs and to also be aware how companies are working even when you don't totally realize it. :-)

Oh, the dress

I know, I know. I hate to be another person to mention that silly dress. But here I am. Not to debate on the color, but to talk about how it almost broke the internet and impacted social media in a great way.

Before I continue, I have to say, I saw white and gold.

Now, let's talk about I saw it come about. It was Thursday evening and I was scrolling through my feed on Instagram. I saw a celebrity I follow, Quest Love, post the dress and didn't think much of it. I didn't even read the caption. I just kept scrolling through like it was no big deal. The next day when I woke up and refreshed refreshed my feed, HOLY COW, it was everywhere! From the celebrities I follow, to my friends from school, to the youth from my church were posting about. I was so confused. When I went to Twitter, that's when I saw companies start to "tweet" about it also. And naturally, I knew I had to talk about it on here.

Since I only saw the posting from Dunkin' Donuts and Pizza Hut, I was curious to see if anyone else got into the action.

I found this article on Entrepreneur.com titled "Color War: Brands Attempt to Cash In on the Great Dress Debate via Social Media" which displayed the hits and misses from companies that used it in their social media marketing. I recommend checking out so you can read all of them. Although this writer says Denny's was the best, my personal favorite was Dunkin' Donuts:

Dunkin' DonutsVerified account‏@DunkinDonuts

Doesn't matter if it’s blue/black or white/gold, they still taste delicious. #thedress

As much as I didn't care about the dress and what color it was, I found it cute and funny when places commented on it. I find it important for companies such as Dunkin' Donuts to comment on these things because it keeps them up to date and relevant. For me, as much as I value the product itself, it's nice to know the company is trying to relate to me, the customer. I'm not sure if commenting on the dress increase sales, but it might have helped with brand loyalty in a way.