Today’s edition of Social Studies features Jomboy Media’s Director of Social Media Kyle Kondor. Kyle joined the team at Jomboy during 2020 at a critical point for the company. Jimmy “Jomboy” O’Brien and his partner Jake Storiale had established the brand as a destination for baseball fans but it lacked a uniform look across social media platforms. Kondor helped get Jomboy to that point.
Kyle discusses the growth of Jomboy on social media and how the digital brand measures success. We also examine strategies for different platforms and why posting baseball highlights is more than just a way to score likes.
Be advised our 30+ minute conversation has been edited for clarity and brevity. For the extended interview, visit Barrett Media’s YouTube channel.
Alex Reynolds: Tell me about the explosion of Jomboy Media content and what it looked like from your perspective on the social side.
Kyle Kondor: I honestly think that I came in after Jomboy had already laid the groundwork. The Breakdowns were the big thing that took him from this Yankees guy to a national baseball guy.
I came in after that and I knew from day one, that this is going to be something that continues to grow. It was just a matter of when we felt like doing it, and when we felt like adding more people. I think I’ve helped us become more of a brand because when I started we didn’t have branded social media accounts. It was basically just Jimmy and Jake’s accounts and the Jomboy YouTube page. So, I’ve taken a lot of pride in making sure that people recognize the brand.
AR: Why is it important to have a brand and a brand message on social media?
KK: It’s all about recognition. Everybody knows what Bleacher Report is, but you don’t have to know who the writers are. I see Bleacher Report. I respect it. I know that they’re in this world and it’s going well for them. So anything they post, I should be taking seriously.
Any accounts they have, I should just click the follow button because I know it’s going to be good. It’s going to be reliable. It’s not just some joke. I think that’s what’s important to have established for Jomboy Media because you want people to see it and think, ‘I may not love everything about it, but they’re respectable and their pages are worth following.’
AR: Tell me about the team that you work with right now. What’s your process like on a regular day?
KK: I am the Director of Social Media. There are currently seven of us on the social media team at Jomboy. That’s fluctuated a little bit. We’ve been anywhere from six to 10 people over the last year and a half. And during the first two years of my time at the company, it was really just me.
Our day-to-day is pretty wacky. It’s tough to describe. We all have different shows that we are associated with. So somebody has ‘Talkin’ Baseball.’ When the show comes out, they [promote] “new show.” They have to clip certain parts of the show and post it.
Jolly Olive does all these baseball trivia videos. We have editors take parts of his videos and repurpose them for socials. When the editor is done with it, I take it and schedule it or post it right away.
Jimmy’s ‘Breakdowns.’ I help him upload those. He does them, sends them over to me and says, ‘Hey, you know what time is best and how to title it and do the description.’
The other part of it that’s big is we do shifts. So that way somebody from our social team is online at all times, and ready for things to happen. During the MLB playoffs, we have two people on a shift because we want to make sure that we’re covering the playoffs to the best of our ability.
And then if anything else happens, whether it’s breaking news in baseball or something crazy on Monday Night Football, we have enough people online who are ready to go.
AR: What in your eyes does success for Jomboy on social look like?
KK: Followers are first and foremost, subscribers. That comes from your likes, your comments, your reposts, your shares. But it has to happen in a way that it’s not people wrecking you.
Now that happens because it’s the internet. The bigger we get the more it happens and you can’t post anything without upsetting someone.
But that’s first and foremost where it starts. But truth be told, it is a business. We have to feed ourselves. So you try to think of all the different avenues where you could bring in revenue. We always say that the way you sell on social media and your platforms is based upon how large your floor is because you have to tell the brands that want to advertise with you, ‘Hey, we’re going to guarantee you this many engagements on a post all the different platforms have a button you can hit and it says how many people have seen it.’
That’s what the advertisers want to know. How many people are seeing what you’re posting?
Now, you might have something blow up. That’s really good for followers because you’re going to have people latch on and be here to see the rest of your stuff, but that’s not what you can tell an advertiser.
AR: Do you have any campaigns or content that sticks out in your mind as being super successful at hitting those key metrics?
KK: So, the ‘Breakdowns’ are the cream of the crop at Jomboy. That’s what everybody knows us by. If you don’t like anything else, you like the ‘Breakdowns’. People who hate sports, like the ‘Breakdowns.’ Those who think baseball is boring, don’t think the ‘Breakdowns’ are boring.
We’ve recently started turning the longer ‘Breakdowns’ into 30 to 60-second TikToks and sharing those everywhere.
The other thing is that you just sit and wait for moments. We interviewed Aaron Boone this year. Those were awesome all year long, and as much as people were critical of the way we talked to him or critical of the things he said on the show, we could post what he had for breakfast and people were going to go crazy.
That said, you never know what’s going to be your big win. So this year when the camera zoomed out and showed [Boone] sitting crisscross applesauce while talking to us, I knew that people were going to enjoy that. That’s because they enjoyed (or hated) everything he did or said.
We posted Aaron Boone sitting crisscross applesauce, and it ended up getting millions of views across the platforms, and that just goes to show, you never know what your wins are going to be. But, you’re not going to get the wins if you don’t try at all.
AR: X Instagram, and TikTok have exploded since you’ve been there. What are the different strategies you use for those platforms and what you’ve seen so far.
KK: Twitter is your big one for news. Everything and anything can go on Twitter. Whether it’s a player getting injured, or you have a new podcast episode available. That can all go there.
Instagram is similar, in that you can just spam links in your stories. And you can post news on your feed or reels on your feed.
The other ones start to get a little more niche. You could post highlights on your TikTok, but then everyone’s going to love that and bury your original content. So I’ll keep our TikTok to our original content because that way if people like it, they’ll keep getting fed our original content. That’s how it works. TikTok is all algorithm-based, and it’s only going to feed people the things that they want to see.
Facebook is really odd. Obviously, it’s a different audience. It’s kind of an older audience, but it’s important to hit every single age bracket and demographic. We understand that we can’t just tune out the 45 and older crowd. People love the breakdowns over there.
YouTube is our bread and butter for longer shows. So, like I’ve been bringing up a bunch, it’s the Jolly Olive trivia videos. The warehouse stuff we’re doing is biggest on YouTube. We have now 250,000 subscribers on that.
You just have to make sure you’re not absent on a platform. You’ll see people and they’re just on Twitter and it’s like, why are you just on Twitter? You might as well post on the other platforms too, man. You’re limiting yourself.
AR: What advice would you give to smaller-scale brands that are trying to have a social digital presence?
KK: What I would say is be careful where you set the bar. You have to give your followers an expectation and then know that when they follow your page, you’re going to be able to keep it coming. What I’m saying is you don’t want to do too much that you can’t keep up with it because people will say ‘this is the sloppiest social media page ever’.
Make sure that you set an expectation for yourself and that you can keep going consistently. People are going to be able to follow this page and know that this is what they’re going to see.
If you’re going to be a football guy, you better cross off your Sundays and be at your laptop working all Sunday. If you’re going to be a college football person, clear your Saturdays. If you’re going to be a Mets guy, buckle up for 162 because if you’re there for 73 of the 162 games, you’re not going to win in that space.
So that’s my best advice. Set an expectation and make sure you can keep up with it. If it’s one post a day, that’s fine. If it’s one great post per week, wonderful. But don’t do seven posts on Monday and not come back until Thursday.
AR: How do you balance that original content that you’re talking about with reposting memes and videos from other sources?
KK: That is the biggest challenge because of course people are more interested in the Adolis Garcia home run than Talkin’ Jake giving his opinion on the Adolis Garcia home run. However, you want to build up your platform that way you can sort of infiltrate it with original content. If I was just posting podcast clips of Talkin’ Jake and Trevor Plouffe going back and forth about how amazing Corey Seager is, we’d get a following, but not as large a following as if we were posting every one of Corey Seager’s home runs.
A Corey Seager home run is more engaging than the podcast clips. If you can get people to come for the Corey Seager home runs and stay for the podcast clips, then your clips are going to get three times the amount of engagement that they would had you never posted the Corey Seager home runs.
You may get some trolls, but many times it’s like, yeah, I came here for the Corey Seager home run. I’m at least somewhat interested in hearing what someone had to say about it. So it’s just all about building up your following that way you can infiltrate it with your original content. Now people start to say, ‘Oh, Jomboy. The guy behind this page that posts every single baseball highlight. He’s got 750,000 Instagram followers. He must be doing something right. I better listen to what he has to say.’
Alex Reynolds serves as Barrett Media’s Digital Director. In this role, he oversees all social media scheduling and content creation, monitoring of the brands analytics, and contributes to the brand’s newsletters, conferences, and websites. Originally from Rockville, Maryland, Alex is a passionate lacrosse fan, and graduate of Elon University. He can be found on Twitter @Reynolds14_.
