It’s an exciting time here at BrandGlue as we continue to grow our client network, which means we are also growing our team! I’d like to introduce our newest team member, Rai Masuda , Senior Social Media Strategist. He boasts more than 17 years of marketing experience and has used social media to strategically execute numerous campaigns. Most notably, he’s helped raise over \$750,000 for nonprofit clients and scale products from dozens of orders a day to thousands!

Since he’s new to the BrandGlue team, I thought it’d be nice to highlight him more closely so you all could get to know him better. So, we recently sat down for a little Q&A session. (In fact, I plan to do this with all of our employees over the coming months!)

1. How did you get started working in social media?

   I’ve always enjoyed creating websites and spent many hours building Angelfire and Geocities sites in middle school. As social media grew during my college years I became much more fascinated by user journeys and the way social networks were becoming the most effective digital attention grabber I’d ever seen. Once the platforms opened up to advertisers I knew this was the future of advertising for ANY brand, corporation, non-profit, university, you name it. After graduating from LSU (Geaux Tigers!) I found a job with a company where I could build their social media presence and advertising from scratch and, as they say, the rest is history.

2. What's your favorite thing about managing social media for brands?

   It gives me a chance to learn everything I can about a brand. That is a lot of fun because it opens me up to new ideas and ways of thinking. Being on the brand side of this relationship it always helped to have someone with fresh eyes come in because it’s human nature to settle into what you’re comfortable with. Managing social media for brands gives me the opportunity to bring those fresh eyes and help them try new things to take their campaigns to the next level.

   The other part I really enjoy is the education. Many of the brands I’ve worked with have either been very skeptical about digital marketing because they were burned by a lot of false promises or have done nothing and don’t see what all the fuss is about. Being able to teach them the why behind social media and getting all of their data tracking correctly sets them up for sustained success long after our partnership ends.

3. Tell us about a favorite social campaign you've managed. 

   This is tough because all of them have their highlights. If I had to choose one I would say it was the spring fundraising campaign that I ran for 412 Food Rescue. This is an organization that does AMAZING work fighting food insecurity by helping to end food waste. They had never done more than boosting a handful of Facebook posts and were skeptical that what we were proposing was going to deliver. I mean, we were going from never running an ad to a sustained, six-week long Facebook advertising campaign that needed to deliver a positive ROI for the campaign to be considered a success.

   We hit some hurdles early on in getting conversion pixels set up, but their team was amazing and began to understand why we insisted on ensuring our data was clean. They asked me to walk them through everything I did in Google Analytics, Facebook Business Manager, and Google Tag Manager so they could really understand how important these components are. Heck, you have to be able to explain what we’re doing to your boss, right? At the end of the campaign we raised $182,580 for their spring fundraising campaign, with 48% of that total being raised through Facebook ads on a $10,000 budget.

   I loved this campaign because we:

   • Helped an incredible organization that prevents people from having to decide whether they should feed their kids or pay rent
   • Grew their donor base through Lookalike audiences and optimized interest targeting
   • Laid a foundation for future campaigns to build on
   • Got to work with really great people who were eager to learn

4. What's one thing you love about BrandGlue?

   The people. Everyone is very helpful and willing to take time out of their day to answer any questions that I have about the campaigns we’re working on. Plus, the team has a great sense of humor. Work is always more fun when you can laugh.

5. What do you do on a typical weekend?

   During the fall, every Saturday aside from bye weeks is spent watching LSU. We do volunteer work in the animal rescue community so that takes up a good portion of our weekends too. I really just like to spend time with my wife and son. Whether we’re going to the park to kick a soccer ball, staying inside and reading, or just listening to my son say “what’s up, boss?!”, we consider it a great day as long as we’re making him laugh.

Welcome to the BrandGlue team, Rai! We’re super excited to have such a stellar guy on board. Stay tuned for more employee highlights coming up!