This post appears courtesy of New Market Wilm. View the original post here.
Gaby Indellini is a social person. As one of the OG digital marketing mavens in the city, Gaby was an early evangelist for Facebook, Twitter and the rest. She spent four years as the voice of Wilmington tourism on social media before being asked to lead the city’s “It’s Time, Wilmington” social campaign. Now with her own business – INCdellini – and an office on Market, she’s helping a roster of clients navigate an ever-changing digital world.
Navigating change, as it turns out, is something of a Gaby specialty:
“I grew up in Bellefonte – it was not the sexy neighborhood it is now – but we came down to the city all the time. I remember getting school supplies at Woolworths, right before it closed. I remember thinking it was super cool to get off the bus at Rodney Square and walk across the street to my dad’s office at Dean Witter and watch the stock ticker.”
“But when I was 6 years old, I took a trip to Los Angeles, and one of my dad’s best friends took us on a field trip to the set of ‘Columbo.’ When I left that set, I thought, ‘These are my people.’ I was going to go to film school, but my mom made me have a second major, so I doubled in TV/film and communications.”
On going west:
“I listened to Tom Petty’s ‘American Girl’ on repeat on the plane to Los Angeles. That song’s all about experiencing something bigger than where you’re from and keeping that promise to yourself that you’re going to do that.”
“I started in scripted television and at CNN, in research. This was when the Internet was fairly new as a medium. I worked on a very short-lived show about the Pentagon called ‘E-Ring.’ I got to meet Dennis Hopper … and I got to get Dennis Hopper’s dog some rice and chicken from the commissary.”
On the glamour of Hollywood:
“I used to deliver scripts in the Hollywood Hills for extra money. I had this $700 Nissan Sentra from 1993. You had to shake the entire center console of the car while turning the key to get it to start. That car barely made it, every time.”
On building an IMDB.com resume that includes “Bad Girls Club,” “Kitchen Nightmares,” and “Wife Swap”:
“We were in The Hollywood Reporter as the best casting department in Hollywood.
But then ‘Wife Swap’ got canceled and I had my quarterlife crisis. I was standing outside at Sixth and Broadway, sobbing on the phone with my best friend, and I decided I didn’t want to work in television anymore. I told her I was just going to come home and work for a little while. My backup plan was always communications, so I thought I’d do that.”
“That was the first year of the recession. I applied for 250 jobs that year.”
After several years of building a resume, Gaby became the social media lead at the Greater Wilmington Convention & Visitors Bureau:
“It ended up being the best career decision I made. For one, I got out of an industrial office park in Newark, where I was working. But also, I had the opportunity to teach. I met with members almost weekly, to talk about their social presence. I became involved in the community. I became almost obsessed with promoting the area in a way that was very well known, and I think I built a reputation as someone who’s a community builder.”
“I remember when I started, I posted this dumb graphic when we hit 3,000 fans on Facebook. Four years later, we had almost 20,000. It wasn’t free. There was a lot of money that went into that. But the impressive thing was that we kept them. When you put a lot of money behind getting new followers, that’s the trick. You have to keep them.”
On using some of those old reality casting skills:
“Our Instagram became a way for people to see the area through the eyes of tourists. It wasn’t us putting our own pictures on there. It was me finding people who were genuine visitors and asking if I could share their photos. And they were gorgeous.”
On finally moving into the city:
“My husband and I, we were seeing shows, we were hanging out with our friends in the restaurants, and new restaurants were opening. It didn’t make sense to us to be spending so much time on I-95. We wanted to live where we played.”
“We love being able to walk everywhere. We have one car that we share and it doesn’t leave its parking spot very often. Clementine loves going to happy hour at Tonic. That’s where we got her, at Tonic, at an adoption event. She loves walking in the park. I’ll take her to the Rodney Square Farmer’s Market and she’s in her glory, talking to everyone.”
On starting her own social marketing company, INCdellini.
“I decided to open my own company because there was a gap between what small businesses and nonprofits needed and the quality they could afford. It always hurt my heart a little to see an organization buy some digital marketing program from a person in Wisconsin who took a class online and was basically reselling them Hubspot. They were wasting their money. I’ve worked hard to gain the knowledge I have, and I think it’s nice to have someone who knows what those bigger agencies know, but who is close to home.”
On how we can boost this story on Facebook, because yes, we asked her for free advice:
“If you wanted to boost it to the right people, I would say you would want to boost it to your followers and their friends, but make sure to geographically target them, because people have friends who aren’t in Delaware. You don’t want to be targeting my cousin in Italy.”