About
Hi there,
My name is Stephen and I'm the owner of SMT Entertainment. We help artists and businesses grow their brand through social media and online marketing. I founded the company back in 2012, however the story begins much earlier. It was 2009 and I had just landed my first "real job" after spending the entire last year searching for one. Obama had just been sworn into office and while there was hope in the air, many recent college graduates like myself were still feeling the sting of the recent economic crash. I was lucky enough to land a PR job at a boutique entertainment firm on Fifth Avenue in NYC. I've always interested in marketing and this job gave me the opportunity to gain lots first hand experience. Spending the next few years writing press releases, working with journalists and media outlets, I handled everything from album releases to book signings to special events.
At the time, social media marketing was just starting to form. The job title "social media manager" was not widely known. Having been deeply interested in what social media can do for marketing, I dove into it in my spare time. Eventually, I got permission to try some of what I had learned on a few of our clients. Through a lot of trial and error, I found things that worked. Over time, I learned and developed strategies to increase engagement, grow followings, and sell more products. As my skills and results improved, I began getting approached by individuals and businesses who wanted me to handle their social media exclusively. This was the beginning of SMT Entertainment.
For the first few years, my work was exclusively in entertainment: recording artists, authors, actors, fashion, events, etc. Entertainment is the world I come from and has always fascinated me. Both of my parents worked as performers growing up, and I hold a bachelor in Music Business from Berklee College of Music. Over the years, I have worked with every level of artist, from local coffee shop artists to Grammy Award winners and Academy Award nominees. I've also worked with every level of media outlet, from local paper to national TV.
Through doing great work with my entertainment clients, I was approached a few years ago by companies who were not in the entertainment business. Most were small businesses who wanted to see if I could help them with their marketing, so I decided to try. The results were impressive. What we found was, the strategies that work so well in the entertainment world for building hype, creating buzz, selling albums and events, etc. work really well for small business. Raising awareness, generating interest, motivating your audience (potential customers) to act, and selling product were the results.
With the success of these first few businesses, we decided to take on more. Now we have two sides to our company: the entertainment side, and the small business side.
As our company has grown, so have our services and staff. What started out as a one-man operation (myself) has grown into a wonderful and diverse team. In addition to extra hands helping with social media and PR management, we have web designers, photographers, graphic designers, a video production crew, and music production services all available to our clients. We are also experts at online advertising which has become intertwined with social media marketing in the last few years. Facebook, Google, YouTube, and Instagram ads are standard for most of our clients.
It is our number one goal at SMT Entertainment to take care of our clients and do a great job. Most of our clients are long-term clients as they are satisfied with the results we provide year after year. If you are considering our services, I would love to sit down and have a conversation with you about your goals. We are located in Los Angeles, however our clients span the US and we have worked with English speaking clients overseas as well. Phone, Skype, and FaceTime are options for meeting if we're not in the same city.
If you have any questions or would like to set up a meeting, please email us at SMTentertainment@gmail.com. Thank you for taking the time to visit our website and consider our company. I hope to speak with you about your business or project very soon.
Sincerely,
-Stephen M. Thornton