You know what they say; if you love what you do, then you will never work a day in your life. Unfortunately, this concept isn’t true for the majority of people, with many of us forsaking what we are truly passionate about for the chance at a great job title and salary. We tell ourselves that pursuing what truly interests us is a fool’s dream that can never financially support both us and those we love. But what if we are actually lying to ourselves?
From what started as a passion project for recommending restaurants and hidden food finds, has now developed into a cult of over 2 million hungry followers across two social media handles. The epitome of turning a passion into a dream career, this is the story of how Rita Agoulian went from Instagram foodie to becoming the most sought-after social media marketer in the hospitality industry.
“Passion is the recipe to success,” declares Rita. And passion is exactly how LickYourPhone Media was born. Rita Agoulian is a passionate Instagram marketing & social media management expert. The Chief Eating Officer of LickYourPhone, however, didn’t intentionally set out to create a social media marketing agency. “I love food,” says Rita, “And I love discovering new places to eat and sharing them with people.” This love is what first prompted Rita to document her new food finds on social media. Finding novel meals, posting deliciously aesthetic photos, and candidly raw captions soon started gathering the attention of Sydney-siders searching for new food haunts.
Although initially setting out just to recommend great restaurant experiences with others, Rita began to see the untapped potential within the traction her social media content was causing. With an unwavering hunger for success, Rita took a chance and committed herself early on in her social media career to learn all that she could from the best in the business. Rita worked to build relationships with the teams at Insider, LadBible and UniLad, to name a few, allowing her to work alongside and be mentored by some of the highest-performing marketers in the industry.
From there LickYourPhone Media have become known as the go-to specialists for social media marketing for the hospitality, food and beverage industry. Having worked alongside a multitude of high-profile brands such as McDonald’s, E! News Online, CocaCola, TimTam, Krispy Kreme, Ben & Jerry’s, Subway, Hungry Jacks, Oporto and Insider, Rita and her team are only getting started.
“Social Media Marketing is our bread and butter,” Rita says. “I live and breathe it”. This love is what has allowed Rita a 100% strike rate to viral videos in partnership with E! News and NBC. In 1 year, she achieved over 978,355 unique shares and over 207,895,768 unique million video views. Many and Instagrammer’s dream, Rita was also personally invited by Insider to capture content on their behalf for their audience of over 375 million, catapulting LickYourPhone Media’s exposure exponentially.
Rita Agoulian is single-handedly paving the way for social media in the hospitality sector. To date one of her biggest accomplishments is having LickYourPhone become the first agency ever hired by Milky Lane. Having no problem getting customers through their doors, the main struggle the company was experiencing was getting business owners to notice that franchising opportunities existed for the iconic burger bar.
This is where LickYourPhone called on their esteemed partnerships with global media brands. Reaching out to their viral network, The LickYourPhone team created a video campaign like no other. The viral video marketing campaign achieved such immense success, Milky Lane was blown away by its popularity!
Generating a combined total of 10.5+ million views across Facebook and Instagram, 14,879 people re-shared the Milky Lane #FoodPorn videos to their personal social media accounts. “E! Online partnered with us and we got to showcase Milky Lane to 274,000 users & 123,000 video views in 14 days on their digital series,” says Rita. With 10 locations and growing steadily, Milky Lane is now one of Australia’s fastest-growing burger brands.
Pursuing a passion and not being afraid to take a chance on the opportunities it presented has turned into a dream come true for Rita. And it is only the beginning for her and the LickYourPhone team.
If you would like to lean more, or work with Rita and her team, click here.
