Meet the Founder of Digitale Social Media & Creative, Natalie Koutsikas

You could say that for Natalie Koutsikas ‘digital’ is in her bones. It’s rare to see her without at least one phone in hand (sometimes more) and a laptop is always close by.

Coming up in the days of Myspace, she quickly realised that the tools of social spanned far beyond ‘who knows who’ and ‘who’s doing what’. Instead she began to look from a bigger picture perspective, devising ways to maximise branding online. When she found herself working in real estate several years back, she harnessed these skills to implement a content marketing & social media strategy which saw her recognised as Adelaide’s most influential agent on social media, two years running. It’s hard now to picture, but social simply wasn’t a real estate space back then. How far we’ve come.

This ingenuity and drive led her to dominating in the social space for some of the country’s most notable and elite online businesses, including Sweat and Ryderwear. Here her skills were further honed as these multimillion dollar comapnies understood the importance of what many others did not: data was about to be king.

So, long before there was the Cambridge Analtyica data scandal, Natalie was analysing what makes people tick and what makes them click. In 2020, amidst a pandemic no less, she decided to make the bold decision to start a business that could help others clear up the murky mess that can be the online world.

Since then she and the Digitale team have helped businesses big (Eos by Skycity) and small (Look Academy) grow online, from the ground up. Using both a deep understanding of community and connection, backed by strong strategy and data she has quickly cemented Digitale’s position as a leading social media agency in Adelaide.

For more details, visit their website here.

Here we sit down with Natalie, to know a bit more about her journey as a social media marketer.

Q. What inspired you to become an entrepreneur?

Natalie: To be able to do what I love doing every day and build a positive team environment where my staff feel supported and continue to grow.

Q. How did you get started?

Natalie: Accidentally — After leaving my full time job I took a break to work out what I really wanted to be doing and within 3 months I had 10 clients all from my own personal reputation within the marketing industry. At that point I decided to take it seriously because i was truly loving what I was doing and it never felt like work, despite the long hours. So I registered the name and begun working with contractors and other service providers before hiring my first employee just 6 months in.

Q. What was your biggest startup challenge? What steps did you take to overcome it? What did you learn?

Natalie: Juggling working on the business vs working in the business. In the early days your priority is doing the work because that’s what drives revenue but prioritising working on the business is also essential in order to grow and build the business to where you want it to be. I found it always fell to the bottom of the to do list and i started to see the impact of this so I started committing to at least 6 hours a week of working on the business — whether that was our marketing or systems and processes, and even one on ones with my team.

Q. What is the Most Memorable Thing You’ve Done Since you Started your Business?

Natalie: We are so lucky to work with so many amazing clients but I think the most memorable thing to date was launching @eosbyskycity on social media in June 2020 while the hotel was still under construction. We developed all of the content off site but still managed to build hype for a hotel that technically didn’t exist yet. We grew the account from nothing to 15.9K followers and the ‘it’ place to stay when in Adelaide.

Q. What is one book you recommend, and why?

Natalie: The Resilience Project — it’s one book I can read over and over and still manage to find something new that stands out. I think running a business it can be really easy to get caught up and forget about what’s really important in life and this book is perfect to ground you and get you centered.

Q. What are your top 3 favourite online apps, tools, or resources and what do you love about them?

Natalie: Later — social media scheduling. not only is it an absolute time saver but the data is so valuable and it acts as a content library for your team.

Asana — project management, in our team we have so many different projects on the go and it’s really important for me to be able to step back and see a snapshot of my teams workload and any outstanding works

InShot — video editing, makes optimising video content for multiple platforms so easy

Q. In terms of legacy, what is the mark you’d like to leave on the world?

Natalie: For me, I think it’s important that I’ve helped people to think differently about social media. It’s so valuable to businesses and makes connecting with people near and far so easy yet it gets such a bad wrap. I love to promote a positive relationship with social media.

Q. In one sentence, what’s the best advice you’d give to someone just starting out on their entrepreneurial journey?

Natalie: back yourself. it’s honestly the one thing that’s got me through some of the hardest times. knowing that failure isn’t an option and that you’ve got this honestly makes it so much easier to respond to challenges as opposed to reacting.

To keep up to date with Natalie and her journey, connect with her on LinkedIn, and Instagram.