Mia Fileman 0:05
This is Got Marketing? – a podcast with ideas, strategies, and tactics to help small businesses create smarter marketing. I’m Mia Fileman, a professional marketer, and the founder of Campaign del Mar. In this show, I chat with creatives and strategists about the different aspects of marketing, but without the fluff. Let’s dive in!
Hello, friends! Welcome back to the Got Marketing? Podcast!
I don’t know about you, but I’m feeling a little over social media lately, and I’ve heard many small businesses say the same thing. Not only are social media platforms becoming increasingly unfriendly to small businesses; they’ve also become, well, boring!
Joining me today on the show is one of the marketers that I respect the absolute most, and that is Erin Morris from Young Folks Digital. We’re going to get into this. “When did social media get so boring?”
Erin is the founder and director of Young Folks – a marketing agency on a mission to make a positive difference. Following a successful career, working as a marketing and digital technology leader for Australia’s leading independent publisher, Hardy Grant; global luxury travel specialist, Mr. & Mrs. Smith Hotels; and global creative communications company, WPP Group; Erin has seen first-hand the incredible power that marketers and brands yield. Now, with her team at Young Folks, Erin accelerates the growth of game-changing brands and helps them achieve their greatest positive impact.
Welcome, Erin!
Erin Morris 1:50
Oh, my gosh! I sound so amazing when you say it like that!
Mia Fileman 1:53
No, but you are amazing!
Erin Morris 1:57
I’m blushing!
Mia Fileman 2:01
Thank you so much for joining me! I know that you feel the same way. Tell us, when did social media get so boring?
Erin Morris 2:09
Well, first of all, I was going to say I feel totally the same way – that you are also a marketer that I really respect. But, yes, one of my favourite words to describe the vibe on social media for the content at the moment is vapid. I just think “vapid” is the perfect chef’s kiss word.
Mia Fileman 2:27
Chef’s kiss!
Erin Morris 2:28
Yeah, but it’s just kind of bland and not really stimulating or challenging. It’s tuneful. It’s there. It’s something that we can scroll and engage with, but is it actually inspiring us or giving us new information or educating us or adding value to our lives? I think a lot of the content that we’re seeing does not tick those boxes.
Mia Fileman 3:00
I completely agree. Let’s get specific. I’ve got examples, but I would also love to hear yours.
Erin Morris 3:09
I feel like you and I have talked a lot about the pointing and dancing on Reels. I know when we talk to us clients, we’re like, “So, Reels is definitely a place where you can tap into a wider audience in terms of reach and awareness. If you’ve got a brand awareness goal, Reels can certainly help with that, and you can just see them all.” These are modern brands as well. These are not people that are afraid of technology, but they jump back in their seat a little bit. “Do I have to dance?” If you’re going to ask me to dance, I’m not doing it!” There’s definitely the dancing and pointing on Reels – the fact that so much of what makes Reels and TikTok successful is jumping on a trend and repurposing that trend.
But I feel like not a lot of repurposing is happening. It’s more just regurgitating the trend verbatim. That creates a bit of a vortex of not particularly exciting or engaging content. If you spend two hours on social media, you actually end up seeing the same thing about 25 times.
Mia Fileman 4:16
I completely agree.
I definitely feel like one of the worst things that happened on social media was the trending audio where the social media managers are telling brands to use the same audio on their Reels. As a result, in my feed right now, I could quite easily have ten brands in the space of two minutes all using the exact same audio track. I can’t speak for everyone, but the thing that I do, my user behaviour is just to completely scroll past that track. I’m not interested in seeing somebody else’s impersonation of the exact same track. I want the creative original content.
Erin Morris 5:02
100 percent. That’s what we all want, isn’t it?
Social media scrolling used to be something. I always like to think that your social media feed should feed you. It should give you something that inspires you and nourishes you as a creative communications professional or whatever kind of professional that you are.
If you’re running a business, it should give you ideas and inspiration to tap in to really evolve your own content strategy. It shouldn’t just become this vortex that you feel bad about spending time there. We don’t feel bad about spending time on Google because we go and Google things and they get great new information that we can use, but we do feel bad about time on social media. That’s probably because, a lot of the time, it is a waste of time.
Mia Fileman 5:47
Correct.
I have this talent where I can look at social media content as a professional marketer and say, “Wow! That leads nowhere! That is not going to drive interest, engagement, saves, traffic to the website. That is not going to build empathy or affinity. That is just content for the sake of content.” That is unfortunately how I feel about a lot of specifically Reels content. They have prioritised entertainment above any sort of marketing objective. When you think about how long brands are spending to create those Reels, prioritising entertainment over those objectives, I feel is not a winning business strategy.
Erin Morris 6:49
Not at all.
I think a lot of brands make the mistake of looking to creators and influencers and seeing what they’re doing because they’re the ones that are going viral and are reaching really wide audiences, but it’s really important to remember that going viral is how those people get paid. They are paid to have a big following. They’re like a micro-publisher. They’re like a micro-entertainment channel. They can only monetise their audience if they have a significant audience for brands to tap into.
But, for brands, it’s not necessarily about behaving like a creator or an influencer. I’m going to make myself sound mature here. It’s about good old-fashioned marketing – getting back to being strategic more than playing tactical games to win the algorithm. You can win the algorithm and have a Reels go viral and it would have absolutely no impact on your bottom line.
Mia Fileman 7:44
Absolutely.
I think we need to accept that, with Reels, a certain amount of talent is required for those transitions and for the raging extroverts who are happy to dance and who are happy to perform and who do have those great video editing skills. It is probably not within the remit of every business owner to be able to create viral Reels.
For me, as a professional marketer, I’ve made Reels. I have not reached more than 6,000 people. I can achieve a much bigger reach with good old-fashioned posts. I actually have had very recently – just in the last two weeks – posts go absolutely gangbusters. One post in particular being saved 86 times. That is going back to the point that good content will perform anywhere – in the feed, in stories, in emails, on a blog. Good content is good content. It’s not the channel. It’s the quality of the content.
Erin Morris 8:54
100 percent. I think this goes back to something that we’ve talked about a little bit in the past as well. By a little bit, I mean a lot.
Brands get really very one-dimensional. They focus their strategy as a channel strategy, but they don’t tap that in or link that back to a broader marketing strategy or a broader campaign strategy. And then, you have content that might perform really well in a particular channel, but what’s that doing in terms of the bigger picture to move the needle towards those bigger goals that you have for your business? Is it getting you more traffic to your website or more inquiries for your service or more sales for your product? Or is it just getting you more success in that platform?
Certainly, social media plays and absolutely important role in success from a marketing perspective, but I think there’s so much danger in looking at things in a very one-dimensional, singular way. It’s so important to zoom out and think about the role that social media plays in the context of all of your marketing. When you are creating that great content that could perform anywhere, that usually is because you have a marketing strategy or a content strategy or a campaign plan in place. It’s all connected.
Mia Fileman 10:07
Absolutely! You’re speaking my language, of course – being an integrated multichannel marketer. However, I do feel that there has been a wake-up call, and definitely recently, I’ve seen a lot more people come to understand that that’s what they need.
I run an email marketing workshop. It has sold out twice. The more recent Facebook and Instagram outage for the whole day was a bit of a shake. Every day, I see another brand that says that they’ve been hacked, and their Instagram account has been taken over and they are full panic stations because they over-rely on social media.
Quite frankly, I’m afraid for small businesses who have all of their eggs in the Instagram and social media bucket because a recent Instagram engagement report from HubSpot showed that the average engagement rate of a post is 1.42 percent. That is so freaking depressing!
Erin Morris 11:18
Is Instagram the new display ads?
Mia Fileman 11:24
Yes!
Erin Morris 11:25
I remember back in the day, the average click-through rate on a display ad. If the click-through rate was like drink-driving, you were fine. If you were over 0.05, you’re doing well. Far out! It’s just such a platform where you can be in real danger. If your eggs are all in that Instagram basket, like we said, it’s so powerful. You can do so much with it. But, if you’re reliant on it in a singular way, you could really be caught up.
Imagine if you had a campaign launch on the morning that Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Messenger were all out for that whole day. That could be a whole day’s revenue lost if that was the channel that you were relying on.
Mia Fileman 12:14
Correct! If you were doing a seven-day cart-open launch and that was one day out of seven, that is not good odds at all. But, also, can we talk about how time-intensive social media marketing is?
I’ve seen this over the last couple of years where my Instagram following has grown, but not to a lot. I still only have something like 2,500 followers on Instagram. But, with that even small growth, the time I need to spend on Instagram has multiplied because now I get more comments I need to respond to, and I get more DMs that I need to respond to. It is a lot of work for a channel that actually doesn’t drive a lot of profitability for me.
I say this to everyone that will listen: “Social media is where I go to make friends, but email marketing is where I go to make money.” It is so much more sustainable to create email marketing content and to engage with my audience using email marketing than with social media which is just so time-intensive because it’s one-to-one in those comments and in those DMs.
Erin Morris 13:39
100 percent.
When I started the Young Folks Instagram account, it was growing hundreds of followers a week – off just posts alone because there weren’t Stories available then, and there wasn’t IGTV or Reels or any of the other cool functionality that you have on Instagram now.
It’s great that the platform has really expanded the different ways we can connect with our ideal customer, but – oh, my gosh – the time that it takes to create the content for a week’s worth of marketing for Young Folks, if we include Stories, if we include Reels, and if we include our feed content for our Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, it’s like three full days of content creation and scheduling. That’s for somebody that’s in marketing and can do it pretty quickly. I’m also not sending it off to anybody to get signed off on. I sign off on my own content. But, if you’re doing this for a client, it takes longer because they’ve got to review it. If you’re doing this and you’ve got a manager, that’s going to take longer because they’re going to give feedback.
There’s certainly a big time investment in creating that. I would say, just social media alone, it would be a day a week to create a week’s worth of content which is great that you can get it all done and scheduled, but then I reflected on that and thought, “It probably takes me three hours to write a really good long-form, 2,500-word SEO article that could rank number one within a week and could bring in a hundred people a month to our website forever.” That effort has a compounding benefit for a long time.
I think it’s similar with your email marketing. You can get that content out there and connect one-to-one. Maybe an email takes an hour or two to put together – a really good one – and the results that you get from that commercially are going to be far more significant than going viral.
Mia Fileman 15:43
Correct.
For me, it takes around two hours to write my weekly roundup, but I then repurpose that as social media content. I can pull at least three posts out of one EDM, but that EDM makes me money as well. It’s just a different way to approach whereas, I think, if small business owners are being honest, the way that they approach their marketing is “What do I post today?” It is all from the lens as – exactly as you said – tactics first, execution first, strategy maybe never.
Here’s one of the other things that I’m finding very boring about social media lately – the lack of awareness around the content that has already been published by a million other people and therefore perhaps best to let that go. I’m talking specifically about all of these recent Instagram announcements around whether the hashtags go in the caption or whether they go in the first comment. Instagram is talking about how now you can do a collaboration with somebody else on Reels.
The most recent one was that now all accounts are going to get link stickers – whether you have 10,000 or not. Great! However, I opened up my feed this morning and saw at least ten different social media managers share the exact same thing using almost the exact same language. It’s boring! It’s so boring! Just like we need to read the news in the morning and go, “The Age, ABC, and News.com have covered this story.” It is done.
Unless you have an interesting angle or a counterargument or an interesting take on this, you need to agree that this content has been covered. It is done. Because of the scheduling, they’ve created this post, it’s batched, and it’s ready to go, but we need to be looking at our content before we post it and say, “Hang on a second. This has been well-covered.”
This doesn’t just apply to Instagram engagements. There are still so many small brands who are using the same Brené Brown quote, the same Unsplash stock image, the same Social Squares or Pexels stock library image, and then saying, “I’m posting every day on Instagram, but I’m not getting anywhere!” This really does break my marketing heart. I try my best to remind them that creativity is the future of business advantage.
Erin Morris 18:51
100 percent, it is, and it always has been, hasn’t it? Any time there’s newness or a unique perspective, that’s what we’re interested in as consumers of content and consumers of things that we buy. We’re wanting something that’s going to add value to our lives.
We always talk about pain points and gain points. How does publishing a Brené Brown quote hit a pain point or a gain point for a potential customer if you’re not adding your unique perspective to it? I don’t mind if you break the news. I don’t mind if you share a Brené Brown quote that’s been shared 11,000 times. But if you’re adding how that quote inspired you individually – something that’s relevant to your brand and your values and your purpose in business – great!
Add your unique perspective to that. Educate me. Help me get to know you better through that content. But if you’re going to just regurgitate it? Repurpose is different to regurgitate. If you’re just putting out what somebody else has already put out there and not adding to that, then you’re not actually adding value. You’re just adding to the noise.
Mia Fileman 20:06
That’s right.
I think that there’s a real lack of going back into our analytics and really analysing which content is performing for our brands and saying, “Actually, that Brené Brown quote, even though it did speak to me personally and it’s definitely something that guides me in my journey, it wasn’t actually all that well received by my audience.”
Go back and actually have a look at not just the likes but specifically the saves. Have a look at the profile types and the website visits to see which posts are actually driving real metrics and then base your future content on those real insights.
Erin Morris 20:47
I think that speaks to this challenge of being really tactical with social media marketing as well. When we focus on tactics only but not strategy, we can sometimes be really drawn to those metrics, and you can get anything to become engaging content and get those saves and get those likes, et cetera, but does it actually stack back up to your overarching marketing strategy or your overarching business goals? I think we see that a lot.
You know how a lot of people use social media marketing as a micro-blogging function? We almost end up seeing this tactical authenticity where, if we place a really sad story on this day and then we do a promo post tomorrow, we’ll be able to jump off the engagement with our sad story to our promo post. I can see that it’s really effective. For some people, perhaps it’s really commercially effective as well because that’s really relevant to their brand values and their overarching marketing strategy, but should every small business be feeling that pressure to go and “dear diary” on social media? No, I don’t think they should.
Mia Fileman 22:04
No, I agree. I think that there is a lot of oversharing. I think that there is a real confusion around what is brand storytelling and what is a good story versus what is just using social media as a soapbox to talk about your marriage and your children and your battles with mental health disorders which don’t necessarily relate back to your brand and what you’re asking people to purchase.
One of my absolute pet hates is virtue signalling where it’s all about jumping onto something that’s political or environmental or societal, but it doesn’t go anywhere. It’s not genuinely helpful. It’s just “Look at me! I’m jumping on the bandwagon on this topic. I’m a good person,” but there is nothing behind that. I know for you, as someone that takes this really seriously and has built that into the entire purpose of Young Folks, that would probably rub you the wrong way too.
Erin Morris 23:19
I think the flip side of that as well is it’s the equivalent of jumping on to National Donut Day and putting up a donut post when that’s got absolutely nothing to do with your core brand values, or your offering, and you don’t have a unique perspective to share on it.
Anything that we’re jumping on tactically that really doesn’t connect to our brand values, our brand strategy, our marketing strategy is actually just pointless. That is what I feel makes social media quite boring. Certainly, the greenwashing thing comes into that too. There’s so much virtue signalling happening at the moment where brands are jumping on and saying, “Hey! We need to be better for climate change.” Well, do you do anything for climate change? Or are you just telling your audience to do something for climate change?
Mia Fileman 24:07
Correct.
Erin Morris 24:08
I think there’s that too. Back it up. If you’re going to put that virtue signal out there, I surely hope that it can be confirmed that you are doing those things.
Mia Fileman 24:18
Absolutely. I think audiences today come with immaculately tuned bullshit detectors and are no longer willing to take a brand at their word. Proof points are everything. I still feel that people think that authenticity is something that you can fake which I know sounds ridiculous. It’s literally a contradiction in terms, but you cannot fake authenticity.
We’ve seen brands like Gillette spectacularly fail when they try to do that. If it is not embedded into your vision and your mission and the way that you operate, then it is never going to feel authentic. It’s never going to feel real. It’s just going to come off as culture-jacking and that you’ve shoehorned yourself into a conversation that you don’t really belong in. But I love your analogy of the National Donut Day. “I’ll just jump on this bandwagon too!”
Erin Morris 25:18
It’s such a philo post-type thing, isn’t it? “I’m jumping onto virtue signalling or jumping onto culture-jacking or jumping onto national day of something.” To me, if your social media strategy centres around national days of, that’s not a social media strategy. That is just making boring content.
Mia Fileman 25:37
Correct, and I do feel a lot of sympathy for small businesses who have been given very terrible advice – sometimes, from some really credible brands – around the fact that you need to post every day and that you need to post to Stories and that you need to be creating IGTVs and going live. All of this is just not sustainable for solopreneurs. Even for small business owners.
You and I struggle to do it, and we are professional marketers with teams! The only thing that is naturally going to happen when you have advice like that is that the quality is going to slip.
Erin Morris 26:19
100 percent.
Mia Fileman 26:19
It’s all around quantity. It’s all around “Look, I’ve already spent two hours on this today, so I’m going to quickly get it done. What’s happening? World Earth Day sounds great! Let’s schedule.” Unfortunately, I think that there is a lot of bad advice, specifically on Instagram at the moment.
Erin Morris 26:38
I really hope that this conversation that we have is incredibly freeing for a lot of people.
I always say this to people. When we hand over our marketing strategy to a client, if they’re implementing it themselves or we’re implementing part of it and their team members are implementing other parts of it, we always say to them, “This strategy is the blue sky. It’s everything.”
“If it was a burger, it would be the lot. We put every possible opportunity for you to capitalise into this strategy because that’s what you would expect from us, if you’re paying for a strategy from us, but you don’t have to do all of it at once.” It would almost be impossible to do all of it without a team of ten people working on it around the clock. Let’s prioritise what are the things that really matter and what’s going to move the needle most on the important goals now.”
That might mean that Instagram has to take a little bit of a backseat. Or it might mean, if all of the audience is on Instagram and we’ve identified that as a key channel, well, let’s put our focus on Instagram, but make sure that we’re doing something to capture data that we can tap into if that platform goes down. It’s making sure that we’re using Instagram as a conduit to get people into our newsletter list or to get people into our CRM or get people onto something where we can get to them again, if we need to, via a different channel.
Mia Fileman 27:59
Exactly, and that is the whole premise of a strategy.
A strategy is an informed opinion about how to win. By definition, a strategy can’t be templated. Somebody else’s strategy – which might be all Instagram all the time – might be perfect for them, their service offering or their product offering, and their audience, so they’re all-in on Instagram, and that’s great, but that is not you necessarily.
It’s really important to understand what’s going to move the needle the most for you. However, globally, I will say that small business owners underutilise owned channels and earned channels and over-rely on paid and borrowed channels. I see that every day, all day. There’s no email list. There’s no high-performing landing pages and high-performing sales pages.
The website is the destination. It is so sad for me to see that you’ve dragged them all the way over to the website. You get there and it’s just a little bit shite. It’s such a sad thing. All the opportunities for earned media – whether that’s PR or user-generated content or shoutouts or collaborations – all of that that you don’t need to pay for but here we are. “What do I post on Instagram today?” seems to be the number one challenge.
Erin Morris 29:33
It really is. There are so many opportunities. I’m sure you see it all the time, thinking about marketing strategy. Sometimes, it’s like, “Do we have post purchase automations in place on email? Do we have nurture sequences in place on email?” because so much of digital marketing is actually really focused on the bottom of the funnel by nature. A lot of above-the-line marketing is really targeting people en masse from a brand awareness perspective with the hope that they come to your website, or come to your store, or pick up your product in the supermarket, or whatever the objective is.
So much of digital is connecting with people that are already somewhat aware of your brand – whether they have just Googled you or they have come across you on social media. They might be the ones that are newer to the mix but for the most part, a lot of digital is at the lower end of that journey to purchase and yet so much of that is overlooked.
We treat so much of social media as a per-funnel activity where we’re going, “New, new, new – new stuff all the time!” but, actually, a lot of those people might have been following you for a long time. They maybe just need a bit more clarity around how they can take up your offer.
Mia Fileman 30:45
Absolutely!
I say this all the time to my students. I do this at the beginning of every intake. I go through their social media feeds and I’m like, “Ladies, you’ve hidden the cookie! I’ve gone through your latest five posts, each of you. At no point have any of you put down an offer.”
I think we’re so afraid to be promotional. We are so afraid to sell on social media because we’ve been told by the gurus not to sell, but they are the best at selling. They can sell ice to freaking Eskimos. As a result, if you still have customers come to you going, “Mia, you’re great! I love what you do. So much personality. You’ve got real spunk. But what do you sell?” that is a bad day. That is a really, really bad day.
Erin Morris 31:35
We had this conversation at Young Folks. I’ve been working on our content for a long time. I’m so close to it that it’s clear to me. I sat down with our content marketing strategist, Larissa, and we picked our own marketing apart and did exactly that. We realised, if you came to our Instagram account, you would think, “This account has got some great tips and insights, but I have no idea what they sell.” At some point along the line in our content creation, we’ve gotten offtrack. I’m sharing this because it can happen to anyone. It can happen to someone that’s been in marketing for 15 years. In that process of creating content, all of a sudden, they say, “I totally forgot to mention that we sell anything!”
Mia Fileman 32:20
So true!
Erin Morris 32:21
This is where you get drawn into acting like a creator or acting like an influencer where it’s all about being followed and being followed because you’ve got cool or engaging or inspiring content and building an audience around that which is what we’re told. Even Instagram and Later and Planoly and all the platforms tell us to create engaging content and create inspiring content. And so, we do, and then we forget that we have to actually make money and that it’s actually okay to make it clear on any marketing channel that you have how someone can engage with your commercially.
Mia Fileman 32:55
Correct. I think that the question for small business owners is, “Do you want to be popular? Or do you want to get paid?”
Erin Morris 33:00
Literally, yeah! If you’re going down the path of “I want to create interesting and inspiring content and be popular, then you better start thinking about getting some affiliate deals with some brands because that’s how you’re going to get paid.”
Mia Fileman 33:13
Correct. So true!
I did a little experiment recently where, for my email marketing workshop, for an entire week, all I did was post about the email marketing workshop. Every post – when I say post, I also mean Stories and Reels – all of my content for an entire week was pretty promotional. I sold a shit ton – an absolute shit ton!
It was only a week. No one unfollowed me. Well, they might have but, overall, I grew my followers and that was one of the best sales weeks that I’ve had because I was very deliberate and very clear about what I wanted people to do – what action I wanted them to take from that week which was to sign up to the email marketing workshop. That doesn’t mean that just because you have promotional content that you can’t also make it valuable. There were still great tips weaved into that content, but it was promotional. It was well branded.
That is another thing that I’m seeing a lot on Instagram. Most content is using a template that is not branded. We are overlooking the power of distinctive brand assets.
Erin Morris 34:33
100 percent.
Mia Fileman 34:35
That’s Marketing 101. Like you said – I am definitely showing my age – let’s go back to those great foundations of how marketing works. It works with memory structures.
Erin Morris 34:51
Absolutely.
I’m totally thinking, when you were saying those post templates that don’t look like a brand and you’ve seen them all before, I’m like, “Yeah, you’ve seen it before in Canva.” Everybody picks it. It’s like, “This is unique and looks trendy! I’ll use this and be different and inspiring to my audience.” Actually, everybody is having that thought. I get that thought!
I’m like, “I love archways because everybody is doing archways.” You’ve got them in Campaign Del Mar, but you’ve made them your own. It’s the window. It’s part of the whole brand structure. It’s not just doing an archway shape over a photo and that’s it. There’s a real brand strategy around it.
We’ve got a peace sign in our logo. They’re everywhere as well, but we’ve made it our own with our branding designer who put a beautiful dot point treatment over it that’s meant to reference old newspaper prints. There’s a story behind both of our brands and how they came to light.
Mia Fileman 35:49
I really love that, for you with Young Folks, any time you do a meme or a GIF, it’s always the Young Folks branding is the background. Even though you’re sharing somebody else’s content, it all comes back to Young Folks. There is that consistency of imagery throughout all of your content.
Erin Morris 36:11
It becomes recognisable. “I’ve seen that zigzag before! I’ve seen peace sign before or that dot print before!” It’s the same. You see the colours with Campaign Del Mar, and you know exactly who this is.
Mia Fileman 36:22
Yes.
Okay. Reels – that has had a meteoric rise in almost a year now. Is that right?
Erin Morris 36:36
Yeah.
Mia Fileman 36:38
What are the implications for small business owners with Reels?
Erin Morris 36:43
Well, I took a long time to get on Reels because I wanted to get on Reels in a really intentional way. I just did a classic “overthinking marketer” on it and just had to really ponder how I wanted to do that and jump on that and considering it part of the platform. It’s an advantage that we can tap into if we want to.
I feel like, for businesses, the challenge is really that there is so much of that vapid, repetitive, trend-based content on there, but the opportunity is that if you can use Reels in a way that is connected to your strategy, connected to your values, and makes your brand recognisable, you can reach a wider audience through that. That has been both strategic and tactical. The Reels part is definitely the tactical play but doing it in a way that feels right for you.
For us, it’s something that we’re testing out at the moment. It’s not about going viral. It’s about communicating our values. We’re focusing on the things that are really important to us as a brand – communicating our perspective on climate change or communicating our perspective on whether responsible brands should be distancing themselves from the Melbourne Cup and that kind of thing. We can explore those ideas and perspectives that we have through Reels in that way.
What we’re seeing for clients is that that’s the way to go. It doesn’t necessarily have to be about going viral. It’s a way to be strategic and tactical at the same time.
Mia Fileman 38:19
Yeah.
For me, I’m definitely just treating it right now as an experimentation that I’m just playing with. It is really the bottom of the to-do list right now for me. Everything else that is really commercially focused has to happen first.
If I get to a Friday afternoon and I’ve got an idea, then I can give it a crack, but I’m not putting too much hope and energy into it right now because I have yet to figure out whether the new followers that come from Reels – because it is good for getting new followers – whether are the right people. That remains to be seen. It’s too early days. I’ve only just recently started with Reels to see if these people are there for the right reasons and are actually entering the funnel or whether they just came for good times.
I really love what you said about using it as a way to showcase your values. For me, I’ve been using it as a way to showcase my personality. It’s all about getting to know Mia a little bit more and building that affinity, but then using my posts and my other content marketing to drive home the sales and the conversions and the lead generation.
Erin Morris 39:43
100 percent. I think that’s a really interesting point of different too.
If you are selling a service that’s a one-to-one offering or an offering where it’s taking up from you specifically as you are, people want to know you. But, as a brand with a team or a brand that’s selling a product, it’s not necessarily that the ideal customer wants to know the individual. They might want to know more about the brand and the values. That’s where I think that “personality versus values” shift can come into play. Neither of them are right or wrong. In fact, they’re both right. It’s more about picking what feels right for the brand.
For any of your listeners that are really thinking, “I’m a brand. I don’t want to get in front of the camera. I don’t want to put my face on stories. I don’t want to be dancing on Reels,” the good news is you don’t have to.
Mia Fileman 40:33
No, absolutely not. Actually, because everyone else is doing that, this is a real opportunity to do something quite different. One of the Reels that I did that performed okay was actually just going back through my phone I found all these existing videos that I had. I sliced them together on Canva with some music. I called it something like “Six Ways I Boost My Creativity.” It was me walking, me doing yoga, and me doing Lego with my son. It was existing footage that I didn’t even spend hours and hours filming and editing. I don’t know how to do the transitions, so I just don’t do those.
Erin Morris 41:20
So much coordination required.
This is the thing. You can learn it, but do you want to spend ten hours mastering that if it’s not going to end up being a really commercial avenue for you? Maybe not, and that’s okay. Make a good commercial decision. I feel like marketing is about making good commercial decisions.
Mia Fileman 41:38
Strategy is about choices. It’s about as much as what you don’t do as what you do do. In ten hours, we could create three killer email sequences – a welcome sequence, a sales sequence, and a post-purchase sequence – all that are going to drive some serious revenue.
Erin Morris 41:56
Yeah, that’s the kind of prioritisation that I think we always talk about as well. Get those important commercial actions done first, and then work your way up, and then you might find yourself dancing.
Mia Fileman 42:08
Yeah, exactly!
I know that you are really up with what’s happening in the digital marketing space. Do you know what happened with the Facebook and WhatsApp outage? Do you think that there is a reality where we might see these platforms disappear? Can you share anything about that?
Erin Morris 42:34
Yes, totally!
I think there’s a lot happening. We have to remember; Facebook became publicly available in 2006 or something. It was a while ago. That’s a long time in Silicon Valley. We’ve only really seen the big rise of Silicon Valley tech in the last 15 years with a big shift in the last seven years. If you observe Silicon Valley trends, what you see is that most apps and products have an exponential rise where they’re getting a lot of venture capital and a lot of traction. They peak. They plateau as they become engrained, and there’s not much customer acquisition or new user acquisition happening for them, and then they start to add in new features and what-not to try and stay relevant.
There’s this concept of apps that are sunsetting. Essentially, it’s becoming the end of their time. They either evolve or they die. That bunch of developers and innovators and creators will come up with something new that we’re going to love.
I question how much longer Facebook and Instagram can stay relevant. What we’re really seeing this year is Pinterest is making some serious moves. They’re framing themselves as the nicest place on the internet. They’re doing really cool things like banning weight loss ads and focusing on inclusivity. The trolling and nastiness don’t seem to be there where it is in some of the other social media platforms. That’s interesting to me that there’s a little bit of movement happening in the social media digital platform space.
Yes, I think that we do have to be mindful of the fact that all of these channels – Pinterest included – may not be here forever. We have to be able to build our marketing ecosystems to survive without them.
Mia Fileman 44:31
That is such great insight. Just look at Facebook; millennials have left Facebook in droves since our parents have joined the platform. It is literally the uncoolest place on the internet. Same deal with Instagram. Now, so many small brands have become so disheartened with the way that the platform has evolved. Even Instagram has shown favouritism towards young 25-year-old creators as opposed to us millennials slogging it out with our posts.
Absolutely, Pinterest is by far my favourite social media platform. I absolutely love that they are so values driven. Political ads and gambling ads are all banned on the platform. It is just such a nice place.
Erin Morris 45:28
It’s so nice. I think it’s really important to remember, as a small business owner, that all of the platforms are free, and they act in their own best interests – not ours. In their best interest is getting as much money as possible from advertising revenue – from us or paying to advertise on the platforms. That doesn’t mean that I don’t think we should advertise.
We do digital advertising campaigns. It’s a hugely important aspect of the marketing mix, but all of the things that Facebook and Instagram and any of the social media platforms do are designed to get people to spend more time there. If they can get their audience to spend more time watching crap content on Reels or TikTok or whatever it is, they will prioritise that content in the algorithm because that means more people are spending more time on site and can see more ads which gets them more money.
It’s really remembering that and keeping that in mind when we’re designing our marketing strategies. Any of these platforms could change the algorithm at any time. They’re always going to be prioritising their own commercial success – not ours.
Mia Fileman 46:32
Correct.
Whether they are here forever or not, we are never going back to the good old days on those platforms where organic reach was a thing. We are just never going to see those levels because those platforms are becoming increasingly saturated, and they are becoming increasingly greedy. We’re seeing that it’s so unfriendly to small business.
It’s never going to go backwards. It’s only going to go in this direction. If you’re finding it challenging now, it’s going to be even more challenging in a couple of years whereas I feel like there’s a lot of people who are holding out. They’re like, “No, it will stabilise.” It’s that wishful thinking. “We’ll find our feet!” and that’s not true.
Erin Morris 47:23
No, it’s all accelerating more and more challenging, more competition – 100 percent. That’s why that whole multi-channel marketing mix is so important, isn’t it?
Mia Fileman 47:34
Correct.
That’s a great place to summarise our little chat today, Erin. It’s been such a pleasure!
First thing, great content is going to perform anywhere. Don’t just jump on the Reels or the TikTok bandwagon because you see everybody else doing it. Really think about a multi-channel approach because we need to reach customers where they are.
Social media is great for certain stages of the customer journey, but not all the stages of the customer journey. We need to focus on our owned channels and our earned channels so that we can reach customers where they are and also not put all of our eggs into one basket. We need to remember that social media marketing is just one channel. It is not a marketing strategy. You need both strategy and tactics.
Did you have any others to add there, Erin?
Erin Morris 48:41
Figure out where your audience is consuming content. That might be taking a moment to sit down and think about what their day looks like and all of the different media touchpoints they engage with. Are they on Google? Are they on email? Are they listening to the radio? Are they on social media? Are they picking up the newspaper? It’s really getting into that headspace of your ideal customer.
Maybe the best place for you to invest the precious time that you have to create your marketing content is SEO. Maybe the best place is email marketing. Maybe it’s a mix of email, social, and search. I could be a different combination for everyone. As we said earlier, every strategy is unique. It’s about figuring out what that looks like for you and going all-in on what that is for your brand. That’s where the success is going to come from.
Mia Fileman 49:30
I love that. It’s such a great way to finish us off. Well, it has been such a pleasure. Thank you, Erin!
Can you let people know how they can get in touch with you? I will put all of the links in the show notes.
Erin Morris 49:43
Thank you! Thank you for having me!
People can get in touch via youngfolks.com.au – see how I went website first? Or on social media with YoungFolksDigital.
Mia Fileman 49:56
Amazing. Thank you so much!
Erin Morris 50:00
Thank you!
Mia Fileman 50:05
Thank you!
You listened right up until the end, so why not press that subscribe button and keep the good marketing rolling? You can also connect with me, Mia Fileman, on Instagram or LinkedIn. Feel free to send me a message! I’m super friendly.
