This week, we speak to the co-founders of Hashbrown Media, Asaph Teo and Bryan Khoo, to find out what made them start a social marketing agency and the challenges they faced when building it from scratch.
Can you share with us what is Hashbrown and how does it work?
Hashbrown Media is a social media marketing agency where we handle clients social media pages to help them brand themselves better and advertise their offerings or services better. The company was intentionally called #(hash)brown because of the hashtag, to brand ourselves as a social media company specialising in food (although we do explore projects in other industries as well).
We have a firm belief in helping new and upcoming companies to get their name out as quickly as possible with the least amount of money required. Our functions include ideation, creating content, graphic design, photography, copywriting, handling customer replies and coming up with social media campaigns.
What were you doing before setting up Hashbrown?
We were undergraduate students when we decided to start a full-fledged social media agency before graduating. During our school days, Bryan did stints with social media agencies while I worked in the digital marketing field for a renowned hotel in Singapore.
How did the idea come about?
During our days working with other companies, we saw a need in the area of social media marketing especially in the field of F&B. Despite how widely it is used, many of the older generation F&B outlets (i.e. hawkers) did not know how to harness the power of social media to their benefit. I started out managing a young hawker’s social media pages freelance (you can check them out on Facebook and Instagram at @wangbbqloklok) and saw the company’s revenue generation grow three-fold. Because of the great success of our first client, we decided to get more clients on board.
What were the initial challenges you faced and how did you overcome them?
There were challenges such as the business administration side of things. Since it’s our first time starting our own business, we had to learn everything ourselves and on our own (such as paying CPF for example). We also needed to hire staff despite not having enough revenue. The starting few months were extremely tight financially because we started the business with zero capital and worked our way through with the money we were getting along the way from our clients. Since we were also still studying at that time, we also had to juggle between running the business and handling our school projects and exams at the same time.
What were the reactions of your loved ones when you told them your plan to run your business?
We were very thankful that we had the support of our loved ones. There were no significant objections, and we always kept them in the loop about our business so that there wasn’t a need for them to worry. However, during the initial stages, my parents (being extremely traditional people) were rather persuasive about asking me to go out and get a job to gain experience first before starting out on my own.
Where do you see Hashbrown in the next five years?
We see social media becoming a more attractive platform for businesses to come on board. We see ourselves growing bigger, handling more clients, having more staff. In the next five years, Hashbrown Media also seeks to leverage on future digital marketing trends such as artificial intelligence to explore more ideas on how we can capture the interests of people.
Any tips for readers on how to better manage their social media platform?
Have good content and excellent visuals. Content that other people will want to read and want to see, and engage with. Have a plan on the kinds of content you intend to churn out and be consistent – if you’re going to use Singlish, do it with pride and make it extremely intentional. The easiest way to do it? Just give us a call, we’ll handle everything on your behalf
Hashbrown Media is currently housed at The Carrot Patch.