From Torah Scholar to Digital Strategist: How Shlomo Zalman Bregman is Disrupting The World of Online Marketing
One does not usually expect a prominent Rabbi and Torah scholar to make the transition to social media stardom and to develop the skills of an elite digital strategist along the way. But such is the unusual case of Shlomo Zalman (Sam) Bregman, the CEO of Alpha Tribe Media.
In a recent interview with Knnit, Shlomo explained that the seeds of his involvement in the media industry originated as a 24-year-old Rabbi and newly-licensed attorney who initially struggled to attract students and clients.
Realizing that being “super smart” was not good enough, he began to immerse himself in books about marketing and the topic of communication at-scale.
Along the way, he cracked the code on accessing the mainstream media and has been featured hundreds of times in North American media outlets such as Forbes, Fox News, Huffington Post, BuzzFeed, Bloomberg Radio, Microsoft, MSN, Yahoo, and others, as a go-to authority for Jewish wisdom.
Additionally, he became quite adept at social media, building a following of 250,000 on his Facebook Page, thus making him one of the most-followed Jewish Religion personalities on social media.
In March 2024, he became flooded with requests from friends and colleagues for social media and marketing assistance, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic pushing everyone online.
As a result, he launched Alpha Tribe Media, which in only nine months has become one of the most sought-after and fastest-growing digital agencies in North America.
Alpha Tribe Media specializes in building massive social media followings and communities that accelerate their clients’ influence. Their specialty is building a client’s online credibility and distribution channels for their messages, allowing them to reach their desired audiences and communicate with them at scale.
In their first year, the agency was selected to run social media promotion on behalf of clients and projects that include celebrities such as Ice-T, Richard Dreyfuss, Vivica Fox, Faith Evans, Waka Flocka Flame, Tamar Braxton, and London On Da Track.
Shlomo says in the aggregate, his promotional content reached more than 41 million people in the first nine months, with 11 million hours of video watch time, and 639,000 Likes and Shares on the content to go with it.
These numbers strike us as impressive, especially in the context of having been accomplished in the midst of a severe global recession and against the backdrop of severely slashed advertisement budgets.
When asked in our interview to define his basic thesis on marketing, he explained that “attention is king.”
To him, this means that “It doesn’t really matter how good your product or service is if nobody knows who you are. While the vehicles of communication are in constant flux, the challenge has remained the same. If a person can’t figure out how to get himself known and out of obscurity, one’s skills or talents are essentially useless. And that’s where I come in!”
Shlomo also explains that virtually everyone underestimates how many other people are online at a given moment, and how difficult it is to crack through the noise. If you think 100,000 people are online, add a few zeros to it.
He also points out that while you think your competition may be other people in your industry, that’s the wrong answer. Every time you post online, you’re competing with “everything going on in the globe that can suck in someone’s attention. This includes elections, COVID, the noisy lawnmower outside, and your sales prospect’s text messages from their angry spouse.”
He elaborates that nobody online really cares about you whatsoever, they care only about themselves. As they scroll through social media, their eyes are looking for content that is relevant to them. Do you have a solution to a problem they are experiencing? Are they seeking a smile or a laugh, and you can offer that at the right moment?
With this in mind, Bregman advises that everyone become “completely other-centered” when posting on social media for business purposes. Ask yourself what real, bona fide value you are offering your audience or followers. What benefit will they have out of the post?
Shlomo concluded the interview by sharing that, to really get noticed online, he advises that you remain attuned to what he calls “everyone’s radio station – WIIFM.” This is an acronym that stands for What’s In It For Me.
