Posted by Unknown / Nov 1, 2013 / 1 Comment /
30 Day Blogging Challenge
So where do I even begin.... How did I get here ? Who am I ? What do I know about Clematis Street ? How did I become one of the largest private Social Media Users in South Florida ?
Well.... My name is Lenny Mauricio Gomez and I work at SMDigital Partners, a Full Service Digital Agency based in Delray Beach, Fl. with offices in Bogota and Medellin,Colombia. SMDP, as I like to call it, specializes in Digital Marketing for the Internet. We are 100+ employees strong and focus on 4 "Industry Buckets" - Automotive, Education, Real Estate and Medical.
I was born in Brooklyn, NYC and raised in Queens for the better part of my early childhood with a brief stint in New Jersey. Growing up in the city I was exposed to a lot of culture but also a lot of wonder and excitement. I remember my parents taking me to museums and exploring New York City but also making sure they got me out of the city and seeing the Eastern seaboard. Vacations were always a lot of fun.
In 1992 or 1993 my father decided to uproot our family and head down South to sunny West Palm Beach, Florida. I remember having this notion of what Florida looked like in my head and that all the homes were close to the Florida Beaches or had pools. Boy was I wrong !! I think the biggest shock was not seeing homes that were two or three stories tall as well as the zero lot line and lack of backyards space. Moving to West Palm Beach was a massive culture shock not only because it was SUPER HOT but also because it seemed like the people weren't as a friendly as my northern neighbors.
Over the years, I came to realize that it probably had to do with the weather and the fact that it gets pretty hot during the Summers. Living in Wellington, I had a great pre-adolescent and teen years; it was the closest sense to my childhood in NY/NJ. The people were friendly and some neighbors said hello to one another. As a by product of the Palm Beach County Educational System for Middle and High School, we were challenged to think but it was in no means as challenging as what I was exposed too in New Jersey. 1995 was the first year I ever stepped foot onto Clematis Street in downtown West Palm Beach. My brother was an avid hockey player and at that time there was a hockey store, I believe called Hockey Heaven, so one day I tagged along.
As I got older, I was able to play travel soccer for various communities on teams such as: Palm Beach International, Wellington Wave, Royal Palm Beach Dragons and Palm Beach Gardens Kicks. It was there that I was exposed to different kids my age from different schools and areas. High school was a lot of fun and I got to take some fun classes, that now looking back have influenced the very nature of who I am today. I was able to take Drafting and Computers, something I was always fascinated with.
My father was a mechanical engineer and my mother a bridal gown designer / seamstress, so creativity and problem solving was a part of my DNA. Moving forward I was able to attend Florida State University, where I majored in Entrepreneurial Studies and Small Business Management aka ESBM. I dropped out of FSU 4 years in and moved back to West Palm Beach, FL to work at Breakers West, at their Country Club. I really enjoyed working there and playing golf everyday after work. There, I found a passion for reading due to the weekly book club meetings they had there, in which I served coffee and cleaned up dishes. After being passed over for a management position, I quit and went back to FSU to finish.
As I was going through my final year at FSU, I ended up getting my first consulting / marketing job at Paul Consulting, a tech / government based company in Tallahassee. I really enjoyed working there and had the opportunity to be mentored under the owner, Marc Paul. I worked on RAMSrent, an online rental payment portal for the real estate industry that was a little too mature for people to understand let alone sell. It was there that I got a first rate education on sales, marketing and a whole level of professionalism that FSU and other universities would never expose a student too.
Oh, I forgot to mention I was a Florida Bright Futures Scholar, INRoads Scholar and a Bealls Scholar recipient because of my semi-high SAT score and good grades all through my High School career and had started working for my dad at engineering firms such as APEX in Broward and Curt G. Joa in Boynton Beach. I was very fortunate to be an Intern at FPL for two years and worked under Mark Hatcher, who is still to this day my mentor and friend.
So at a young age I was exposed to work.
Anyways, unfortunately the year was 2007/08 and the severe economic recession forced my principal at Paul Consulting to lay me off. They say things happen in threes... And personally I can attest to that. Within a 3 week span, I was laid off from my job, kicked out of FSU for non-payment (Paul Consulting was paying my tuition but didn't pay my Spring Semester) and the transmission in my vehicle died. It was a testing time for me mentally and emotionally, so I called my best friend Marco Paez and he came up to Tallahassee to visit and give me ideas. I had always been a fan of house music since a young age and threw a couple of parties at local FSU bars/clubs.
As soon as I moved back to West Palm Beach, a local DJ I was close with, DJ Supreme 1, invited me to attend a job hiring fair for Hotel Nightclub, the best nightclub WPB has ever seen. I got hired and started doing my thing on Facebook and networking at night.
Marco and I created Palm Beach House, a lifestyle brand dedicated to bring the best House Music to the Palm Beaches and boy did we succeed. We did a few parties with the 'Spaniards' as I like to call them, Julian Pabon and Luis Rodriguez, the manager at Off the Hookah West Palm Beach these days. We did events at Praia, Eurolounge, Cocoon and one of the best parties the Palm Beaches has ever seen, the Dissident House Party - You can view the videos from ICTV1 Here. I made a decision to move to California and join my dad in Sacramento. It was in Sac-town that I learned everything I could about Facebook Marketing but I learned something that still serves me today - How to bridge the gap between online marketing and offline marketing but also how to tie that into repeat business.
During the tough recession it was really hard for me to find work. No one was hiring and I was being told that I was over-qualified. It was a major ego blow, so I did the next best thing... I taught myself everything I could about anything I could get my hands on: Philosophy, Marketing, Dan Kennedy, Auto Biographies, pretty much anything I wanted too. My parents were very patient with me but also worried and I always assured them that this is what I had to do. Even though I was able to select my own course load at FSU ranging from history to marketing to philosophy, it never made feel like it was what I wanted to really learn. I ended up working for Visao Media, by answering a Craigslist ad for Alex Trujillo, one of the smartest and most creative individuals I have ever met. He had just gotten back from Ibiza and wanted to throw parties and do more for the house scene in Sacramento. His office was an entire warehouse, where we threw underground parties as well as art parties. He introduced me to Will Rodriguez, another talented and creative individual who I still talk too on a daily/weekly basis. As I continued to learn more about Facebook, I started a page called the City of Sacramento and used it as a feeder to engage people but also to drive people to sign up to guestlists to clubs such as Social and The Park. The time was for me to move back to West Palm Beach and I boarded a plane to PBIA in the fall of 09.
While living in California, I created feeder pages on Facebook such as Clematis Street and Palm Beach County (not in use). My best friend Marco had already started to network with the club crowd and was playing shows at Monarchy. One day he invited me to meet Mr. Paul Brown and see if I could use my marketing platform to help market the club. He allowed me to work there and paid me for my efforts. The defining moment for me was the day Oscar G played Thanksgiving Eve and my Guestlist App generated 143 verified guests.
His words still stick with me... "I can't believe the Internet could do that - that's one of the biggest guest lists I have ever seen".
I worked at Monarchy until the last day Paul Brown worked there...Memorial Day Weekend with Roger Sanchez... I picked up my check that night and said good bye. The next day Marco and I were fired because of the new management. That club has never been the same.
Well being on the streets almost everyday for about 2 years of my life I saw people come and go but there was a core set of individuals who went out every weekend - Myself included. I have seen places come and go but also have seen the dramatic change from 1995 to 2013. I have seen West Palm Beach flourish into a city that rivals Miami, not in terms of size or people but in the sense that it really is nice and culturally rich if you can look between the lines.
To date, I can't be certain as to how much money the Clematis Street fanpage portal has generated but I am safely assuming over $3,000,000 in earned branding for the City of West Palm Beach - easily.
I stopped tracking how many impressions we have generated but at least over 500,000,000... I know that number sounds soooo large but I normally post 3-5 times a day. These days my posts from our South Florida Social Media Network reaches anywhere from 8,000 to 25,000 South Florida users on any given day. In the past when Facebook had lax restrictions, your posts were more openly seen and there was more of a viral coefficient involved.
As with anything, Facebook had to make money and started to limit reach of each post. As time went on, I was able to win a few awards such as SEMA's 35 under 35 at my former job, NAV-TV and was able to become a graduate of Leadership West Palm Beach, class of 2013. That's me in the back with a blue shirt on, I guess I forgot the memo to wear a jacket :)
I understood what people wanted to know in terms of geographic news but also in the sense that Facebook is a direct marketers "Paradise" if used well for targeting. I basically built my own Ad Network within Facebook that targeted people who lived in the 561 but also in Florida. Some of the pages I own and manage include - Clematis Street, Florida Beaches and Dine Drink Dance... in total we manage about 74,000 users spread around 20 or so fan pages, making us the largest private social media owner in South Florida other than the guy who owns the South Florida page, who I helped grow and market with Arthur Dosik of Broward. He is pretty much the equivalent of me but for Broward and a great guy ! This is the first time I have been transparent about my social media marketing. Thanks and I hope you enjoyed my first 30 Day Blogging Challenge Blog Post.
30 Day Blogging Challenge -
I will be focusing on the people and businesses who make downtown West Palm Beach special, so if you are a local business and would like to receive free publicity through our Clematis Street marketing channels, please give me a call directly at 561-404-9787 or email me at Lenny@SMDigitalPartners.com -
Thanks for reading and warm regards,
Lenny M. Gomez
Senior Digital Analyst
SMDigital Partners
601 N. Congress Ave. Suite 430
Delray Beach, Fl 33445
View Larger Map
Well.... My name is Lenny Mauricio Gomez and I work at SMDigital Partners, a Full Service Digital Agency based in Delray Beach, Fl. with offices in Bogota and Medellin,Colombia. SMDP, as I like to call it, specializes in Digital Marketing for the Internet. We are 100+ employees strong and focus on 4 "Industry Buckets" - Automotive, Education, Real Estate and Medical.
How did I get here.....
I was born in Brooklyn, NYC and raised in Queens for the better part of my early childhood with a brief stint in New Jersey. Growing up in the city I was exposed to a lot of culture but also a lot of wonder and excitement. I remember my parents taking me to museums and exploring New York City but also making sure they got me out of the city and seeing the Eastern seaboard. Vacations were always a lot of fun.
In 1992 or 1993 my father decided to uproot our family and head down South to sunny West Palm Beach, Florida. I remember having this notion of what Florida looked like in my head and that all the homes were close to the Florida Beaches or had pools. Boy was I wrong !! I think the biggest shock was not seeing homes that were two or three stories tall as well as the zero lot line and lack of backyards space. Moving to West Palm Beach was a massive culture shock not only because it was SUPER HOT but also because it seemed like the people weren't as a friendly as my northern neighbors.
Over the years, I came to realize that it probably had to do with the weather and the fact that it gets pretty hot during the Summers. Living in Wellington, I had a great pre-adolescent and teen years; it was the closest sense to my childhood in NY/NJ. The people were friendly and some neighbors said hello to one another. As a by product of the Palm Beach County Educational System for Middle and High School, we were challenged to think but it was in no means as challenging as what I was exposed too in New Jersey. 1995 was the first year I ever stepped foot onto Clematis Street in downtown West Palm Beach. My brother was an avid hockey player and at that time there was a hockey store, I believe called Hockey Heaven, so one day I tagged along.
As I got older, I was able to play travel soccer for various communities on teams such as: Palm Beach International, Wellington Wave, Royal Palm Beach Dragons and Palm Beach Gardens Kicks. It was there that I was exposed to different kids my age from different schools and areas. High school was a lot of fun and I got to take some fun classes, that now looking back have influenced the very nature of who I am today. I was able to take Drafting and Computers, something I was always fascinated with.
My father was a mechanical engineer and my mother a bridal gown designer / seamstress, so creativity and problem solving was a part of my DNA. Moving forward I was able to attend Florida State University, where I majored in Entrepreneurial Studies and Small Business Management aka ESBM. I dropped out of FSU 4 years in and moved back to West Palm Beach, FL to work at Breakers West, at their Country Club. I really enjoyed working there and playing golf everyday after work. There, I found a passion for reading due to the weekly book club meetings they had there, in which I served coffee and cleaned up dishes. After being passed over for a management position, I quit and went back to FSU to finish.
The biggest surprise was yet to come in my life.
As I was going through my final year at FSU, I ended up getting my first consulting / marketing job at Paul Consulting, a tech / government based company in Tallahassee. I really enjoyed working there and had the opportunity to be mentored under the owner, Marc Paul. I worked on RAMSrent, an online rental payment portal for the real estate industry that was a little too mature for people to understand let alone sell. It was there that I got a first rate education on sales, marketing and a whole level of professionalism that FSU and other universities would never expose a student too.
Oh, I forgot to mention I was a Florida Bright Futures Scholar, INRoads Scholar and a Bealls Scholar recipient because of my semi-high SAT score and good grades all through my High School career and had started working for my dad at engineering firms such as APEX in Broward and Curt G. Joa in Boynton Beach. I was very fortunate to be an Intern at FPL for two years and worked under Mark Hatcher, who is still to this day my mentor and friend.
So at a young age I was exposed to work.
Anyways, unfortunately the year was 2007/08 and the severe economic recession forced my principal at Paul Consulting to lay me off. They say things happen in threes... And personally I can attest to that. Within a 3 week span, I was laid off from my job, kicked out of FSU for non-payment (Paul Consulting was paying my tuition but didn't pay my Spring Semester) and the transmission in my vehicle died. It was a testing time for me mentally and emotionally, so I called my best friend Marco Paez and he came up to Tallahassee to visit and give me ideas. I had always been a fan of house music since a young age and threw a couple of parties at local FSU bars/clubs.
So..........
As soon as I moved back to West Palm Beach, a local DJ I was close with, DJ Supreme 1, invited me to attend a job hiring fair for Hotel Nightclub, the best nightclub WPB has ever seen. I got hired and started doing my thing on Facebook and networking at night.
Palm Beach House.....
Marco and I created Palm Beach House, a lifestyle brand dedicated to bring the best House Music to the Palm Beaches and boy did we succeed. We did a few parties with the 'Spaniards' as I like to call them, Julian Pabon and Luis Rodriguez, the manager at Off the Hookah West Palm Beach these days. We did events at Praia, Eurolounge, Cocoon and one of the best parties the Palm Beaches has ever seen, the Dissident House Party - You can view the videos from ICTV1 Here. I made a decision to move to California and join my dad in Sacramento. It was in Sac-town that I learned everything I could about Facebook Marketing but I learned something that still serves me today - How to bridge the gap between online marketing and offline marketing but also how to tie that into repeat business.
California......
During the tough recession it was really hard for me to find work. No one was hiring and I was being told that I was over-qualified. It was a major ego blow, so I did the next best thing... I taught myself everything I could about anything I could get my hands on: Philosophy, Marketing, Dan Kennedy, Auto Biographies, pretty much anything I wanted too. My parents were very patient with me but also worried and I always assured them that this is what I had to do. Even though I was able to select my own course load at FSU ranging from history to marketing to philosophy, it never made feel like it was what I wanted to really learn. I ended up working for Visao Media, by answering a Craigslist ad for Alex Trujillo, one of the smartest and most creative individuals I have ever met. He had just gotten back from Ibiza and wanted to throw parties and do more for the house scene in Sacramento. His office was an entire warehouse, where we threw underground parties as well as art parties. He introduced me to Will Rodriguez, another talented and creative individual who I still talk too on a daily/weekly basis. As I continued to learn more about Facebook, I started a page called the City of Sacramento and used it as a feeder to engage people but also to drive people to sign up to guestlists to clubs such as Social and The Park. The time was for me to move back to West Palm Beach and I boarded a plane to PBIA in the fall of 09.
Monarchy Nightclub.......
While living in California, I created feeder pages on Facebook such as Clematis Street and Palm Beach County (not in use). My best friend Marco had already started to network with the club crowd and was playing shows at Monarchy. One day he invited me to meet Mr. Paul Brown and see if I could use my marketing platform to help market the club. He allowed me to work there and paid me for my efforts. The defining moment for me was the day Oscar G played Thanksgiving Eve and my Guestlist App generated 143 verified guests.
His words still stick with me... "I can't believe the Internet could do that - that's one of the biggest guest lists I have ever seen".
I worked at Monarchy until the last day Paul Brown worked there...Memorial Day Weekend with Roger Sanchez... I picked up my check that night and said good bye. The next day Marco and I were fired because of the new management. That club has never been the same.
So what do I know about Clematis Street.....
Well being on the streets almost everyday for about 2 years of my life I saw people come and go but there was a core set of individuals who went out every weekend - Myself included. I have seen places come and go but also have seen the dramatic change from 1995 to 2013. I have seen West Palm Beach flourish into a city that rivals Miami, not in terms of size or people but in the sense that it really is nice and culturally rich if you can look between the lines.
To date, I can't be certain as to how much money the Clematis Street fanpage portal has generated but I am safely assuming over $3,000,000 in earned branding for the City of West Palm Beach - easily.
I stopped tracking how many impressions we have generated but at least over 500,000,000... I know that number sounds soooo large but I normally post 3-5 times a day. These days my posts from our South Florida Social Media Network reaches anywhere from 8,000 to 25,000 South Florida users on any given day. In the past when Facebook had lax restrictions, your posts were more openly seen and there was more of a viral coefficient involved.
As with anything, Facebook had to make money and started to limit reach of each post. As time went on, I was able to win a few awards such as SEMA's 35 under 35 at my former job, NAV-TV and was able to become a graduate of Leadership West Palm Beach, class of 2013. That's me in the back with a blue shirt on, I guess I forgot the memo to wear a jacket :)
How did I become one of the largest private Social Media Users in South Florida.....
I understood what people wanted to know in terms of geographic news but also in the sense that Facebook is a direct marketers "Paradise" if used well for targeting. I basically built my own Ad Network within Facebook that targeted people who lived in the 561 but also in Florida. Some of the pages I own and manage include - Clematis Street, Florida Beaches and Dine Drink Dance... in total we manage about 74,000 users spread around 20 or so fan pages, making us the largest private social media owner in South Florida other than the guy who owns the South Florida page, who I helped grow and market with Arthur Dosik of Broward. He is pretty much the equivalent of me but for Broward and a great guy ! This is the first time I have been transparent about my social media marketing. Thanks and I hope you enjoyed my first 30 Day Blogging Challenge Blog Post.
30 Day Blogging Challenge -
I will be focusing on the people and businesses who make downtown West Palm Beach special, so if you are a local business and would like to receive free publicity through our Clematis Street marketing channels, please give me a call directly at 561-404-9787 or email me at Lenny@SMDigitalPartners.com -
Thanks for reading and warm regards,
Lenny M. Gomez
Senior Digital Analyst
SMDigital Partners
601 N. Congress Ave. Suite 430
Delray Beach, Fl 33445
View Larger Map
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A fellow NY born, transfer to Tally, member of the #SMCSFBlog Challenge? Who'd of thunk it?? Por supuesto BB read to the end, y que interesting!! For such a young man to have accomplished so much is very impressive and I congratulate you. Hopefully you'll be able to teach this old Babushka some new tricks in Social Media and help me #StopTheStigma amongst Latinos. Great start to the Challenge; BB2U.
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