Today we’d like to introduce you to Erin Seilhan.
Erin, let’s start with your story. We’d love to hear how you got started and how the journey has been so far.
First, I’ve always been a cat lover. I grew up having several cats, but I always wanted a Persian. One day, I met a guy who owned a Persian cat, and I thought it was the cutest one I had ever seen. He then said “Well you can have her if you want.” He proceeded to tell me that she didn’t get much attention, and he already had another cat & two dogs. After being completely shocked that he was willing to give her to me, I decided to try it out and took her home with me.
That same day, I gave her a bath and realized that underneath her fluffy white hair, she was infested with fleas. I turned to my childhood best friend, Andre, who had become a veterinarian for advice on this. Andre told me to bring the cat to the vet clinic that she worked at & that she would help me get her back to good health! This cat’s name at the time from her previous owner was actually Ana- but shortly after having her, I renamed her Shelby.
Several months after all of this, I created my own Instagram account and only started posting pictures of Shelby. Around the same times as this, Grumpy Cat became this huge online sensation- but not long after that, so did all cats everywhere. It’s like even people who hated them found a way to see humor in the strange characteristics of cats.
As time went on, I would hear gripes from some of my Instagram followers/friends about “too many” Shelby posts, so it gave me the idea to create an account just for her. Not only did I already think that Shelby had this unique, star-quality look, but I figured that this could be a great way to be that crazy cat lady who posts too many cat pictures without flooding my friends’ newsfeeds if they weren’t interested in seeing those posts. This way, only people who truly wanted to see the cat pictures could do so & I’d be more than willing to deliver the content.
Initially, I started posting for a few months & then stopped. I think everyone who creates a pet account believes that their cat/dog is the cutest animal on earth, we think one post is going to simply go viral & that our pet will be discovered by someone big & powerful right away. But what happens is that it feels like you’re talking to a wall. You try to deliver great content while your audience is seemingly non-existent, and it feels like you’re hitting a dead end with each post. A good amount of time had gone by & the account had accumulated about 1500 followers. While this was nothing, a lot of people would still say “Well that’s twice as many followers than what I have!” So I started thinking that maybe it was time to really commit to the account and make something big of it.
My first thought was that the secret formula was to simply make one post per day. I started putting little shirts and costumes on her & posing her in silly positions. Now while I can’t give away all of my secrets & efforts into this, one week later after doing the daily posts, she gained one hundred new ones followers. My goal was to keep doing what I was already doing, posts better pictures, higher quality pictures, add videos, etc. and hopefully increase the number of new weekly followers. After ten months of this, I finally reached 10,000 followers. Right at this time, I happened to post a picture that ended up trending & this was the first time this had ever happened. What made the post so popular is that I did my usual thing of dressing Shelby up, but I used a relatable caption that anyone could relate to. Using a cat as the voice and as the character to portray an idea just happened to work extremely well! I knew at that point that all future content needed to follow with that same type of content- and within only two months later, the 10,000 follower count doubled to 20,000! Another two months went by, and it then grew to 30,000.
By this point, I had not only led with the same type of relatable/humorous content, but I developed a character for Shelby that remained constant in all posts. She’s known as a diva, wine & alcohol lover, she has a sassy attitude and she’s a fashionista. Fans & followers fell in love with the personality & they grew to look forward to her posts in an “I can’t wait to see what she posts next” type of way. The cool thing about how the account has grown is that it’s been completely organic. I can’t give credit to one major thing as jolting it off into success, but there are many factors that gave it a nudge in the right direction.
Now, she has more than 42,500 followers on Instagram and another 9,000+ on Facebook. Since the success of the account has taken off, we’ve worked for Fresh Step Litter in an annual campaign that they host using “famous” cats, we’ve been on USA Today’s online channels for a video interview, we are on a TV show called “Make You Laugh Out Loud” in the U.K. which aired on a cat edition episode about internet-famous cats as well. Recently, we moved to Dallas and got to spend some time at CW television station for a new segment that she was “interviewed” for. There are tons of cat products that I’ve been given in order to advertise for as well as requests for collaborations and affiliate marketing of other products. There are some other opportunities coming up in the near future that I’m excited to announce as well!
One of the most interesting aspects of this whole experience has been connecting with other owners that have had the same success. There have been famous cats that I’ve followed over the years from my own Instagram account long before Shelby’s was created and they have now become fans of Shelby! The owner of the Pet Winery Company lives in Florida and I’ve done some collaborations with her and have gotten to know her seemingly well though we’ve never met in person! I’ve gained a lot of interesting new friendships and contacts that I would’ve never imagined, and it’s been really exciting.
Overall, has it been relatively smooth? If not, what were some of the struggles along the way?
Things didn’t just take off. Growing a social media account requires a lot of patience, consistency, and diligence. It’s tedious and it took a while for me to fine-tune the actual personality for the account. It’s continuous effort in thinking of new ideas, staying on top of trends for strategic purposes, and a non-stop cycle of trying to outdo the best post that I’ve done in order to stay relevant.
Please tell us about Shelby’s Instagram account: @Officially_Shelby.
Being the content creator for a “larger than normal” social media account can definitely be exhausting sometimes as you try to grow it and beat the algorithms in order to be seen. When I first started running Shelby’s account, I came across so many other similar accounts that were ridiculously successful that I had never even heard of. It made me wonder how to ever achieve a level even just a fraction of where they were. I guess you can say that the competitive drive steered me into the right direction, and there’s still plenty of room for me to grow much bigger! But what separates my account from others is that I don’t just market Shelby as a cat. This allows anyone to enjoy the account even if they aren’t necessarily “cat-lovers”. The account revolves around relatable humor such as diet struggles, relationship problems, drinking wine, etc. Then when you combine the relevance of whatever is trending and going around in the world on social media whether it’s a topic stemming from the entertainment industry or politics, I make posts conveying comical messages through a cat wearing clothes (Lol) It’s definitely its own niche.
If you had to go back in time and start over, would you have done anything differently?
I would’ve started sooner! Haha I would be a lot further along by now. But I’ve let work and just life get in the way sometimes of always being consistent with posting. Once that is done, you have to sort of start over in a sense to stay on top in the Instagram world because of how the algorithms work. Other than that, I don’t really have regrets or things I would’ve done differently. I stand strongly behind the way I’ve marketed the account, and if I stay consistent in what I’ve done, it keeps growing in the right direction!
Contact Info:
- Address: Dallas, Texas
- Phone: 3375805414
- Email: officiallyshelby@hotmail.com
- Instagram: @officially_shelby
- Facebook: www.facebook.com/officiallyshelby
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