BLOGGER: Tessa Horehled
FEATURED BLOG(S):
Drive A Faster Car (DaFC)
FEATURED WEBSITE:
Tessa Horehled
TWITTER:
@Tessa
@DriveAFasterCar
FACEBOOK:
Tessa Horehled on Facebook
DRIVE A FASTER CAR
Tessa Horehled started her blog Drive A Faster Car (DaFC), in 2001, nearly a decade ago.
The term ‘blog,’ wasn’t even coined until 1999. Mull over that for a moment.
I’m talking pre-WordPress, people. These were the days when AIM and chatrooms ruled the Internets— when bloggers were rubbing sticks together in the desert, trying to create fire. Blogger itself was just a tiny, tiny baby. Capito?
To say that Horehled was an “early adopter,” of blogging would be a glaring understatement. Think back to where you were in 2001. Did you even know what a blog was back then? I know I didn’t— not really, anyway.
In fact, like Horehled, I was still in high school in 2001. While she was delving into the early days of blogging full-steam ahead, I was probably in the midst of college applications, a path Horehled herself didn’t follow, due to the fact that blogging changed the arc of her life in a major way: after launching the blog and garnering the attention of an entertainment marketing company, Horehled dropped out of high school at 17 (during AP exam week, no less – much to her mother’s chagrin) and began working full time in the music industry.
Today, nearly a decade later, could an unknown high school student still launch a blog and leverage it to secure a full-time position, let alone a position in a highly competitive field such as the entertainment industry?
Does Horehled’s experience make you wish you had paid a little bit more attention to blogs about 10 years ago?
Does Horehled have war stories and advice to share from her nearly 10 years at the front lines of blogging? You bet she does.
Tessa Horehled
I’LL GO ANYWHERE I WANT TO GO
Horehled originally launched DaFC because her friends were constantly asking her for music recommendations and she simply got tired of repeating herself. So, she started a LiveJournal community that only she could post to, where she would share music recommendations and other information with her friends.
Then, something interesting happened.
“One day I realized that I didn’t know all the people who were commenting on my posts! It weirded me out a bit, but then I realized I had an audience,” Horehled says.
As her audience grew, Horehled experimented with different blogging platforms, moving first from LiveJournal to Blogger to MoveableType, eventually settling on WordPress, where DaFC continues to be hosted today.
I WANNA BE BIGGER, STRONGER
The blog has gone through many transformations and incarnations and continues to evolve, but at the core of the blog remains Horehled’s abiding love of music. As many music lovers will recognize, the name of the blog is inspired by lyrics from Coldplay’s track ‘Bigger, Stronger,’ off of their 1999 album: “I wanna be bigger, stronger, drive a faster car,” the song says. “Take me anywhere you want in seconds take me anywhere you want to go.”
According to Horehled, DaFC (and its musical inspiration, of course) is “about taking life full on with everything you’ve got and determining for yourself what will come ahead of you – progress, change and unabashed fervor.”
This is clearly how Horehled lives her own life.
“I was really very ambitious when I was younger—I like to think I still am, but I was definitely very ambitious then. [After dropping out of high school,] I worked in viral marketing and the entertainment industry for 6 years, nonstop. We merged with a local music management and record label, and I stayed on through that and ran street teams for everyone from Third Eye Blind to Gavin DeGraw—I really had a lot of fun,” she says.
BIGGER AND BETTER
After running street teams, Horehled went on to help start a record label with the former president of EarthLink—blogging all the while, of course— but, in the end, she realized something was out of balance.
“Ultimately, I decided that the music industry wasn’t the best fit for me—it consumed far too much of my personal life,” Horehled says. “Viral marketing is like social media 1.0 – it’s the same concept, there are just new tools now. My blog is a way to stay tied into the entertainment industry on some level—but it’s a very challenging industry to work in full time.”
As for her current full time gig, Horehled works as a Senior Strategist at a well-known interactive agency in Atlanta, Think Interactive, where she focuses on social media strategies for all of the company’s clients, as well as on internal social media education at the agency itself (fellow Social Media and Community Managers, take note: “There is huge value in having your technology department and your accounts team and other teams within your company communicate via social media and really understand it,” she says).
I CAN GO ANYWHERE I WANNA GO, AND DRIVE AROUND MY FASTER CAR
As Horehled’s role at Think Interactive evolves to allow her more time for blogging, she aspires to inject new vigor into DaFC’s brand. She says she is working to re-brand the blog from what began as primarily an Atlanta-centric music blog and move it into the realm of hyperlocal culture and entertainment blogs, eventually integrating the nearby towns of Athens and Decatur, GA, which she calls “little liberal islands in the state of Georgia.”
Horehled’s reasons for this intended expansion all come back to her true passions: music, her hometown, and building community. Horehled obviously loves Atlanta, but it’s clear that she also loves Decatur and Athens as well.
“Decatur is essentially just another great neighborhood in Atlanta in a lot of ways –it’s even more progressive than Atlanta – it’s a great little city. And Athens, [the home of the University of Georgia) is a young and vibrant city,” Horehled says.
Nevertheless, Horehled says, the music communities in Decatur and Athens are completely distinct from one other another, in addition to being distinct from the music community in Atlanta, something she would like to change.
“[The well-known Atlanta street] Ponce de Leon is a cultural divide in the city, especially for the younger side of the city. I think you can definitely look at Athens and Decatur as part of this as well—consider it in quadrants,” Horehled says. “There’s a very different type of music that’s being booked north of Ponce – singer songwriters, for example—than there is south of Ponce, which is known mostly for indie rock. Athens is it’s own scene, as is Decatur, which is where John Mayer and the Indigo Girls come from. The scenes tend to keep to themselves. There is some crossover, but it’s not in any mainstream sort of way.”
Horehled says she would love to redevelop DaFC in a way that brings all of these divergent music communities together. “Having DaFC really be able to bridge those gaps in a meaningful way would really help the music scene as a whole, but also, personally, I think [the current divide] is really holding Atlanta and those other cities back, as a whole,” she says.
But perhaps the most compelling reason for the blog’s rebranding after such a long time is that Horehled believes a rebrand may be necessary in order to ensure that DaFC remains relevant, compelling and engaging in the ever-changing landscape of the blogosphere.
“It’s always kinda been a little bit of a labor of love for me,” she explains. “I honestly don’t know what I would do without my blog. It’s definitely still a big part of who I’ve become, and ultimately I would love DaFC to be my full time job. I would love to be able to grow it to be a Gapers Block of Atlanta.”
AT THE TOUCH OF A BUTTON…
In the meantime, DaFC is like a really fun friend who knows everyone and always has the hook-up for the show, complete with the backstage pass.
“Being born and raised in Atlanta, people know me and they’ll say, ‘Oh, you’re DaFC !’ – that’s definitely fun,” Horehled says. “It’s also been fun seeing how the blogger meet-ups have evolved since I’ve started blogging – I love watching the interaction between bloggers from all different niches. In general, I tend to trust bloggers, because I know they’ve been in many of the same situations I’ve been in. I just love the overall culture of it all.”
When asked what some of her most memorable experiences of blogging have been, Horehled doesn’t hesitate:
“Shooting Nine Inch Nails at Bonnaroo 2009. It was supposed to be their last US show ever, in front of about 50,000 people. It was one of the biggest natural highs of my life,” she says.
“Also, David Arquette taking myself and a few others for a steak dinner at Chops during a promo tour for his directorial debut in ‘The Tripper.’”
Did I mention I wish I’d discovered blogging sooner?
I WILL SETTLE FOR NOTHING LESS
Horehled believes DaFC could be an alternative source of culture and entertainment news in Atlanta. She hopes to expand the blog and hire paid writers in the near future. She believes she can do this if she’s able to put as much energy into the blog as she did in 2008. “Back in 2008, I was laid off from Turner, and I took the opportunity to put a lot of time and energy into the blog,” Horehled says.
According to Horehled, DaFC reached its peak in December 2008, when it enjoyed some 40,000 unique visitors and about 120,000 total monthly visits. While the numbers are significantly lower right now, Horehled believes she can ramp her numbers back up once she’s able to get back to posting with greater frequency and regularity, as she was back in 2008.
“At that point, I had two interns and four writers writing for me on a regular basis. It was really fantastic – we were dong 4-10 blog posts a day and our audience responded really well to the increase in content. It’s something we’re looking to do more of, definitely.”
Even at a time when she’s not posting to her blog as often as she once was, Horehled remains well known in Atlanta. “Right now, in 2010, I can’t go even a day without receiving 1000 emails from publicists,” Horehled says. “It’s ridiculous – and it’s great! To this day, I still have Coldplay’s publicist emailing me, but to this day the traditional news source will still get the ticket to the show before I would. A lot of publicists are still generalizing that the larger the source, the more valuable the placement.”
Horehled thinks that the smaller news sources could prove to be valuable investments for publicists, however. “I tend to go back to my viral marketing roots,” she says. “I find that the smaller bloggers may have fewer influences on their content and may have a more dedicated audience, so they could have a bigger impact.”
I THINK I WANT TO CHANGE MY POSITION
Horehled is certainly hoping her blog can have a bigger impact than some of the larger publications saturating the Atlanta music, culture and entertainment market. She says that while only half of DaFC’s traffic comes from the state of Georgia (the rest comes from the Southeast as well as big cities such as New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco and Chicago), she still sees the blog as an Atlanta-centric venture and knows that she can leverage her own knowledge of the Atlanta scene to further promote DaFC’s evolution into a culture and entertainment blog.
“The big opportunity for DaFC is that I was born and raised in Atlanta – I know the city better than [national publications such as UrbanDaddy] they do,” Horehled says. “I didn’t just hire some writers [and create a publication]. I think the UrbanDaddy’s of the world will do nothing but benefit DaFC , however, because they condition Atlantans to look to these alternative news sources. It’s a very encouraging city, for sure, with the music and entertainment scene.”
For my part, I certainly hope Horehled is able to transform DaFC into the culture and entertainment source she envisions for it – and, as she’s unquestionably a pioneer in the world of blogging, I don’t doubt she’ll accomplish it.
Maybe that’s the best thing about blogging – there are no hard and fast rules, especially if you’re an innovative leader of the pack. If you’re willing to gas it up and treat it right, your blog – like the biggest, strongest car – will take you anywhere you wanna go. Don’t settle for nothing less, dear blogger.
HOREHLED’S FAVORITE BLOGS
Apartment Therapy
Brian Oberkirch
Brooklyn Vegan
Captain’s Dead
Daytrotter
Force of Good
Gapers Block
Garance Doré
Indexed
Kung Fu Grippe
Lifehacker
NOTCOT
Said the Gramophone
The Sartorialist
A Softer World
{this is glamorous}
Wooster Collective
HOREHLED’S FAVORITE ATLANTA/ATHENS/DECATUR-BASED BLOGS:
Andy 2000
Arjan Writes
Asian Cajuns
Burn Away
Cable and Tweed
Dead Journalist
Fresh Loaf
inDECATUR
Inside the Perimeter
Thought Marker
Running with Tweezers
P.S.: If you’d like to be featured in our ‘Bloggers We Love’ series (or you’d like to nominate your favorite local blogger(s) for inclusion), we’d love to hear from you! Simply send an email to esther[at]outside[dot]in.
