How I Became A Familiar Face Around Town

It’s funny how life works sometimes. Last week, I could not come up with a podcast episode idea to save my life. I had been busy with all the tornado coverage, everything was hectic, and I didn’t want to throw together some random episode just to say I did one. So I waited. Then, one morning while I was out on the trail doing my usual morning video, I asked people for ideas. I said, “Hey, give me a podcast topic.” Somebody suggested I talk about how I became a familiar person around town.

At first, I thought, “Eh, I don’t know. That sounds kind of weird. Maybe even a little lame.” But then today happened. I had ordered something from Amazon and needed to return it, and I discovered I could drop it off at Staples instead of UPS. Since our Staples is usually pretty quiet, I ran it in. A lady I didn’t know came up smiling and said, “Aren’t you Curtis Tucker?” I said, “Well, yes, I am.” She said, “I see your videos. I thought that was you, but I wasn’t sure until I heard your voice.” We had a nice little conversation, and I went on my way.

Later in the day, I had the Culligan guy come out to look at something under the sink. While he was working, he looked up and said, “You’re Curtis Tucker, aren’t you?” I said, “Yeah.” He said he watches my videos. Then tonight, Denise and I went to Hideaway Pizza. She saw one of her dental hygiene patients and went over to say hello. A few minutes later, he came over to our table to introduce himself to me because he watches my videos and had seen my tornado video. So that was three people in one day. That doesn’t usually happen, and that’s when I thought, “Okay, maybe the universe is telling me to go ahead and do this episode.”

So here we are. Now, I want to be very clear. This is not about me being famous. I’m not famous. I’m not a celebrity. I’m just a familiar face in Enid, Oklahoma, and there’s a difference. But it is interesting how an average, everyday guy like me went from working for someone else, to building websites, to running Enid Buzz, to eventually being recognized around town by people I’ve never met.

Back in the early 2000s, I had quit my regular job and started building websites and blogs for a living. My big idea was to build around 100 websites and make money from advertising, affiliate links, and Google traffic. That was the business model. Build the sites, keep them updated, rank high in Google, get visitors, and make money when people clicked ads or bought things through links. At some point, when you’re trying to build that many websites, you start running out of ideas. So I thought, “Why not build a website about Enid, Oklahoma?”

The original idea for Enid Buzz was not news. It was not events. It was not a community media brand. It was just me blogging about my memories of growing up in Enid. I wanted to write about the restaurants I remembered, the stores, old photos, fun memories from the 70s and 80s, and all the things around town that made Enid feel like home. So in 2005, I bought EnidBuzz.com and built a website. I also added a little directory with links to places like the City of Enid, the police department, the symphony, the YMCA, churches, sports complexes, and other local resources. I thought it would be helpful to have one place where people could find links to everything in town.

But back then, it was still mostly just a personal blog. There was no social media like we know it today. No live streaming. No reels. No TikTok. People weren’t uploading tons of video. Websites needed to load fast, so everything was mostly text and photos. I also didn’t really put myself front and center. There wasn’t some big “About Curtis” page. Most people didn’t know who was behind Enid Buzz. It was just one of the many websites I was running.

For about 10 years, I built and maintained websites. I made money through Google rankings and advertising. Things were working. Then, in 2012, everything changed. Google rolled out a major algorithm change called the Panda Update. Basically, Google started pushing down what it considered “thin content” websites and giving more weight to large, established sites. One day, my websites were ranking well. The next day, they were gone. Traffic disappeared. Money disappeared. My AdSense account showed almost nothing coming in. At first, I thought it was a glitch. It wasn’t.

I started searching for my websites in Google, and they were nowhere to be found. All those rankings I had built over years had vanished almost overnight. I spent the better part of a year trying to figure it out, trying to recover, trying to understand the new algorithm. But eventually, I had to face reality. My business had collapsed. So I had a decision to make. Was I going to quit the internet completely and go get a regular job again? Or was I going to start something new?

Out of everything I had built, Enid Buzz was the one thing that didn’t have to depend entirely on Google search rankings. It was local. I could build an audience directly in Enid. I could use Facebook. I could connect with people in town. I could create something that wasn’t just waiting for Google to send traffic. So I rebuilt Enid Buzz and started taking it seriously. Facebook pages had come along, and I started an Enid Buzz Facebook page. That’s really where things took off.

The day I decided to make Enid Buzz my full-time business, I started posting constantly. I treated the Facebook page like a newsfeed. Not one post a day. Not one post a week. I was posting news, events, press releases, community updates, photos, business information, weather, road closures, and anything else I thought people in Enid might want to know. Some people thought I posted too much, and honestly, I understood that. But I also knew what I was trying to build. I wanted Enid Buzz to be a constant stream of local information.

Today, that’s what TV stations, newspapers, and media pages do on Facebook all the time. But back in 2013, especially locally, that was not as common. I didn’t have a huge plan. I just knew people were on Facebook, and I knew Enid needed a steady local information source. So I put those two things together.

For the first several years, most people had no idea who ran Enid Buzz. Some people thought it was a woman, probably because a lot of the content leaned toward things like shopping, food, family events, and community happenings. Some thought it was connected to the newspaper. Some thought it was part of the City of Enid. Really, people just knew there was this thing called Enid Buzz putting out a lot of local information.

Then video started becoming easier to upload. YouTube was growing. Short videos became more practical. Social media started changing. So I started doing more video. If I went to interview someone, I would be on camera with them. If I went to an event, I might record a video. Eventually, people started seeing my face connected to Enid Buzz. That made me different from the newspaper, the radio stations, and other local pages. In a way, Enid Buzz started becoming Enid’s version of a TV station.

We don’t have a local TV station focused only on Enid. Oklahoma City and Tulsa stations will come here for big stories, but they don’t cover the daily life of Enid. So when I started showing up with a camera, interviewing people, covering events, and doing live video, people started recognizing me. Todd and I even did a weekly video show called E-Talk, where we interviewed people at a local coffee shop. You could hear cups clinking and people talking in the background, but it was real, local, and familiar. My face started showing up every week.

Then live streaming came along, and I started doing that too. I would go to an event and start with something like, “Hey everybody, Enid Buzz here,” or “Curtis Tucker here with Enid Buzz.” Over time, people started saying things like, “Hey, aren’t you that Buzz guy?” or “Aren’t you Enid Buzz?” Sometimes they’d say, “I know you from somewhere.” And I’d say, “Enid Buzz.” And they’d say, “Yeah, that’s it.”

For a long time, I did not like vertical video. I liked horizontal video. That was what made sense to me. I didn’t really understand reels, stories, or TikTok. But about a year and a half ago, I decided I needed to force myself to learn it. Before that, I had already been going out every morning on the trail and taking sunrise photos. I would post those on Enid Buzz with the day’s weather, holidays, and local notes. People got used to seeing my sunrise photos. Then I decided to turn those into short videos.

Every morning, I started doing a one-minute video. The first 30 seconds would be me talking: “Hey everybody, Curtis Tucker here with Enid Buzz.” I’d talk about the weather, what was going on that day, or something happening around town. Then the last 30 seconds would be footage of the sunrise. I’d add music, captions, and post it to TikTok, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, stories, and reels. And I kept doing it. Every morning. For almost 500 days. Even when there wasn’t much of a sunrise. Even when I was out of town. Even when the weather wasn’t great. I rarely missed.

That consistency changed everything. Before, people would ask, “Aren’t you that Buzz guy?” Now they ask, “Are you Curtis Tucker?” That daily repetition made my face and voice familiar. The videos don’t always get huge numbers. Some might get a few hundred views. Some Enid Buzz videos might get 600, 700, or 800 views. Some might get more on Instagram. But the power is not in one viral video. The power is in showing up every day.

A different group of people may see the video each morning. Over time, those videos have probably passed through just about everyone’s feed in town at least once. That’s how familiarity is built. Not overnight. Not by accident. By repetition.

Recently, I filmed tornado footage near Enid, and that video got a lot of attention. That wasn’t really a “me on camera” video in the usual sense, but people connected it back to me. It added one more layer to people recognizing what I do. They see the sunrise videos. They see Enid Buzz posts. They see weather updates. They see event coverage. They see local interviews. Then they see tornado footage. After a while, it all adds up.

Here’s the strange part. I didn’t set out to become recognized. I didn’t sit down one day and say, “I want people in Enid to know who I am.” It just happened because I kept showing up. I kept posting. I kept doing videos. I kept covering events. I kept answering questions. I kept putting my face and voice out there. And now, because Enid Buzz has a large local audience and reaches millions of views each month, people see me all the time. That’s the real reason people recognize me. It’s not fame. It’s familiarity.

It can be a little awkward sometimes. I walk around not thinking anyone knows who I am. But then someone will come up and talk to me like they already know me because they’ve seen me so many times online. And I get it. We all do that with people we see on TV, hear on the radio, or follow online. You feel like you know them, even though they don’t know you. Most of the time, I enjoy it. I really do. I’m not saying, “Don’t come talk to me.” I like meeting people who follow Enid Buzz or watch my videos. But it is a little strange when someone knows your face, your voice, your vehicle, and your daily routine, and you’ve never met them before.

It also means I have to be careful. Because people know who I am, I have to watch what I say and do in public. If I do something dumb, rude, or weird, there’s a good chance someone will know exactly who I am. I also try to avoid taking strong public sides on certain things, especially politics, because Enid Buzz serves the whole community. I don’t want half the audience thinking I’m against them because of a yard sign, a comment, or a post. That can be tough sometimes, but it comes with the territory.

Another funny part of running Enid Buzz is that people assume I know everything happening in town. If a helicopter flies over Enid, people ask me why. If a big plane lands at Vance, people ask me what it is. If police tape goes up somewhere, people ask me what happened. If the power goes out, people ask me why and how long it will be out. If a business is opening in an old building, people ask me what’s going in there. At Christmas, people ask me where Santa is going to be. If there’s an earthquake, people ask, “Was that an earthquake?” If it snows, people ask whether school will be canceled.

The truth is, most of the time, I don’t magically know the answer. I have to go find it just like everyone else. For power outages, I know where to check the OG&E outage map. For school closings, I have to wait until the schools announce it. For police activity, I usually don’t know unless there’s a press release or I’ve heard something reliable. Sometimes I do know what business is going into a building. Sometimes I know but can’t say yet. And sometimes I have no idea. But people ask because Enid Buzz has become one of the places people turn when they want to know what’s happening.

Enid is a city of around 50,000 people. We don’t have a local TV station dedicated to covering us every day. The Oklahoma City and Tulsa stations will show up for big stories, but they aren’t covering our daily events, ribbon cuttings, restaurant openings, community questions, school updates, local weather moments, and neighborhood happenings. The newspaper does its thing, but it’s different. The radio stations have DJs, but unless you see them at remotes or events, you may not know what they look like.

So in a strange way, I think I became something like a local TV anchor for Enid. Not because I planned it. Not because I had a journalism degree. Not because I was trying to be famous. But because I was the guy who kept showing up on camera, talking about Enid. And over time, that matters.

If there’s a lesson in all of this, it’s pretty simple: consistency works. If you’re trying to build a brand, a business, a podcast, a page, or a following, you don’t have to go viral every day. You don’t need every video to get 50,000 views. You just need to keep showing up. Use your face. Use your voice. Be helpful. Be consistent. Let people get familiar with you. That is how trust is built. That is how recognition is built. That is how a regular person becomes a familiar face in their community.

For me, it happened through Enid Buzz, Facebook, live video, interviews, morning sunrise videos, weather updates, and years of posting local information. It wasn’t fast. It wasn’t fancy. It was just steady.

I’m at an interesting point now. I could keep Enid Buzz about where it is: a strong local website and social media brand with some video mixed in. Or I could grow it into something more like a full local video news source. The question is whether I want to take on that much more work and responsibility at this stage of life. I’m not retiring, but I am old enough to think carefully about how much more I want to build, manage, and maintain.

For now, I’m just going to keep cruising. I’ll keep doing the morning videos. I’ll keep posting local updates. I’ll keep showing up when there’s something happening around town. And if you see me out somewhere, yes, you can say hello. Just don’t be surprised if I look confused for a second. You may know me from the videos, but I may not know you yet.

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