Episode 146 – Ken Elliott

Introducing Ken Elliott

Ken lives in Columbia, South Carolina, where he is a full-time webmaster at a law firm. He’s also a co-owner of BKreative Media Solutions, an agency that supports small and medium businesses with digital branding solutions. He’s a core organizer of his local WordPress meetup, which is on a bit of a hiatus to the COVID.

Show Notes

Website | BKreative Media Solutions: bkreative.net

Twitter | @kennethspeaks

Instagram | kennethspeaks

Preferred Pronouns | He/Him

Episode Transcript

Tara: This is Hallway Chats, where we meet people who use WordPress.

Liam: We ask questions and our guests share their stories, ideas, and perspectives.

Tara: And now the conversation begins. This is Episode 146.

Tara: Welcome to Hallway Chats. I’m Tara Claeys.

Liam: And I’m Liam Dempsey. Today we’re joined by Ken Elliot. Ken lives in Columbia, South Carolina, where he is a full-time webmaster at a law firm. He’s also a co-owner of BKreative Media Solutions, an agency that supports small and medium businesses with digital branding solutions. He’s a core organizer of his local WordPress meetup, which is on a bit of a hiatus to the COVID. Welcome, Ken.

Ken: Thank you. Thank you. I’m glad to be here.

Tara: We’re glad you’re here too. Thanks so much for joining us. Can you tell us a little bit more about yourself?

Ken: Yes. Pretty much what I do is provide brand solutions to small and medium-sized businesses that are looking to kind of grow and scale for those companies that they don’t know where to get started with their actual online branding space. I provide them with kind of general solutions to get them going so they can kind of reach out to their audience.

Tara: So are you more of a front end web person than a designer? Or do you also…I see your T-shirt. I know no one else can see that see this. So tell us a little bit about your skillset when it comes to being a webmaster and also doing the branding that you do.

Ken: Yeah, absolutely. I started out doing web development pretty much we’ll say 22 years ago. So I learned how to build my first website. I was in AOL Chat Rooms, which was super popular 22 years ago. And then someone else was doing a website, they said, “I build websites.” I was like, “Well, if you build a website, so can I.” So I ended up making my first website using Microsoft Word, which was the only way I knew how to make a website at the time.

Then I also proceeded to learn how to go into the view source and grab code and go into the bookstore, looking at different resources at the bookstore on how to learn different coding. So you can kind of say I’m a bit of both. I learned HTML CSS before I entered college, and did not learn how to do PHP in databasing while I was in college. So I learned a lot of stuff pre WordPress—before I even learned what WordPress was.

Tara: Wow, that’s great. You’ve got a pretty thorough background there going back a long way. How did you get started in the branding aspect of things?

Ken: Well, what I ended up realizing was when I would build websites for some of my clients, they didn’t know what to do next. It was, “Here’s a website,” and it’s like, “Okay, thank you.” And then I guess they just assumed that the website would bring people to them. And so I was like, “Okay, so let me help guide you on how to reach your audience now that this website is here. Maybe you should put some more strategy into social media.