Ep.12 – Putting the Social back in Social Media with Nick Entwistle

Episode 12 – Putting the Social back in Social Media

Introduction [00:00:02] Welcome to the All About Digital Marketing podcast. The show all about digital marketing. Brought to you by Social INK, the digital marketing agency specialising in social media and content marketing for brave brands and forward thinking SMEs. I’m your host, Chris Bruno, and as always we’re here to bring you the most actionable tips, tricks, tools, and insights to help you achieve MORE when it comes to your digital marketign. You can find all the show notes and all the episodes on www.AllAboutDigitalMarketing.co.uk. If you enjoy the show, feel free to subscribe. And of course, share with a friend who you think might find this useful.

Chris Bruno [00:00:53] Hi everybody. Today I’m joined by Nick Entwistle, founder and CEO of One Minute Briefs and Bank of Creativity. Nick has been involved in the creative process at both large agencies, his own agency and more importantly an online community that he’s built to more than 20000 followers. In this episode we’re talking about creativity but more importantly we’re talking about how social media marketing should be done no matter what stage of your marketing journey you’re at or how big or small your company is. You’ll find some interesting insights into brand voice, remembering to put the social back in social media. And weirdly enough remembering that no one cares about you. We hope you enjoy the episode. Remember leave any feedback or subscribe if you enjoyed this and feel free to share with a friend.

Chris Bruno [00:01:43] Hey Nick. Thank you very much for joining us. Thank you for having me. It’s always a pleasure. I always enjoy our conversations we have. We have done a live AMA [Ask Me Anything] I believe a little while back although actually I say a little while back it’s probably a year ago now already for Social INK.

Nick Entwistle [00:01:58] Time flies. Yes that is a really good thing to do and I’m looking forward to this one.

Chris Bruno [00:02:04] Fingers crossed we can make it as good for everybody else as well. And I know we enjoyed the chats. Nick, just to get us started. For those that don’t know you. And for those people that have lived in cupboards under the stairs for many years. Tell us a little bit about yourself, Bank of Creativity, One Minute Briefs. Give us that elevator pitch so that people know who you are.

Nick Entwistle [00:02:22] Okay. Yes so. Well my name’s Nick. So I’m the Director and Founder of One Minute Briefs and the Bank of Creativity. Starting with the Bank of creativity, well actually initially became a brand actually via a One Minute Brief. It was a one minute idea to create a brand a few years ago and it just stuck as a name. I was working in a creative team for so many years at the likes of McCann, Birmingham & Manchester, freelance. And moved into film myself.

Nick Entwistle [00:02:53] In the last year I decided to take the Bank of Creativity brand and turn it into an online community slash agency and do my own, pick up my own jobs and thus start to grow and grow as well. As well as that I have also run One Minute Briefs for a number of years alongside my day jobs. And last year I was able to concentrate a lot more on that as a brand. I’m trying to turn that into more of a commercial offering.

Nick Entwistle [00:03:21] The premise of that is it’s essentially you’ve got one minute to create an advert. We started this off at uni. You’ve got one minute to create an ad. We went head to heads against each other. I think the first one we did was to advertise watches, advertise Rolex watches.

Nick Entwistle [00:03:38] One of us did a good idea. One of us did a not so good idea or quite a funny idea. What we didn’t realize at that point was that that was the start of a social media because people start to look over our shoulders what we were doing. People, other people wanted to get involved and then when we took it to Twitter. We opened it up to a different audience. The way it started to work and snowball from them by getting people involved, us retweeting them, people tweeting to us, it’s just grown and grown to over 20000 followers. So I think One Minute Briefs as a brand has really helped elevate my own sort of profile at the same time as helping to elevate other people’s profiles as well. And I’ve encompassed that in the last year all within the Bank of Creativity as an agency. One Minute Briefs has become a sort of an offering commercially, also socially. And I think is beneficial to all things. It’s a win win situation for all our followers.

Nick Entwistle [00:04:42] Anyone that wants to get involved hopefully as a brand and obviously it helps us as well so yeah. I think hopefully that. It’s quite a big thing to describe – the whole community. But I’m sure we might get into some of that in maybe some of the questions yes.

Chris Bruno [00:04:57] So actually you’ve nailed it on the head with my next question which was how did OMB actually begin. And I think that’s very interesting because it brings me to a second question. But the difference of you basically doing one of these head to head “one minute come up with an idea” in university and like you mentioned people looking over your shoulder, people wanting to get involved or anything like that. How do you think social media has changed the way that these communities, let’s call them that, that – they just didn’t exist. But this ability to be able to actually communicate and get people from all over the world involved. How do you think or how important do you think social media has been in terms of actually creating those kind of communities.

Nick Entwistle [00:05:33] Well without social media this thing wouldn’t wouldn’t exist. I mean when it very first started it was an analogue thing which is quite interesting. So just to take that back to that first moment. It was me and my mate in university. We had about seven weeks on a brief as we all know. We don’t get out in a brief in the real world. And even at that time we wanted to do stuff quickly and all sorts of different briefs at the same time. And I think what we’ve. What we did, we just said let’s do a one minute brief. We didn’t really know what one of those was at the time. And. I think by seeing the way people reacted and start to once get involved themselves and and then share their own ideas to us. It was almost a metaphor for what social media is today. And by putting it on Twitter, we didn’t realize at the time. We never intended One Minute Briefs to be as big as it is or this big community.

Nick Entwistle [00:06:33] All we were doing was sharing our one minute silly ideas onto a platform and getting one like or one favourite, as it was at the time. And each day, to the point where we actually said: Let’s open it up to a One Minute Brief of the day. Let’s see if anyone will enter this thing. And then one day someone entered. But because people are tweeting to us they’re also talking to their own followers. So that takes you back to the analogue moment where. People are looking over your shoulders. So so your friends can actually see it and they think: Oh I’ll do one tomorrow. And then the next day and then it just snowballs. But I think what social media has done is taken that first moment where we did a One Minute Brief in a roomful of students. And taking it onto a, it’s actually taken on a worldwide scale because there’s so many people from different countries now getting involved in One Minute Briefs. But what we try to do with our events is actually bring those people together and turn it back into an analogue thing and take it back to where it started. And I think that’s a nice way that social media has not – it’s not just a platform for sharing of silly creative arts. It’s actually turned into more of a community and more about the people and the friendships and jobs and advice that people are getting from it. It’s always initially started with the ideas but now via social media. You know so many people meet up offline all the time off the back of this. There’s been some real strong friendships made from it. So I think without social media we couldn’t have taken that little silly ideal we had initially onto such a big scale that it is now.

Chris Bruno [00:08:19] And I can vouch for the fact that it is an incredible community that we are really happy to be involved in. So as an agency since March I believe we’ve actually been entering every single day. And we’ve absolutely loved it especially the kind of banter as it were between ourselves and other people in the community that’s just – I think it’s fantastic. I think one of the questions I’d ask then obviously when you first started when you first start seeing this little bit of kind of traction. And you mentioned earlier you know you never thought of this as being something that would become huge or anything else but how do you get through those moments and why did you continue to do it. We meet so many people that you know try something for five weeks, give up because it didn’t work. And they’ll tell us you know social media doesn’t work for our business because they put two weeks in an effort and a couple of posts and didn’t see any results. But why did you carry it on and how did you kind of know when that was starting to kind of become something that was bigger than what you had maybe set out to do originally.

Nick Entwistle [00:09:21] So a really good question. I think initially. Initially it wasn’t wasn’t the community it was a place to, if I’m completely honestly. We just wanted to try out Twitter. People we didn’t we didn’t we didn’t quite know. A lot of people have not been on Twitter. Just say I don’t really understand Twitter don’t get it. Because when you look at a timeline it’s so many different things going on. Short snippets of things that when you first look at it can be quite daunting as opposed to Facebook that people are very familiar with and think so.

Nick Entwistle [00:09:59] But we want to just try it and I think. In terms of my own career I always try and get on all different platforms as much as possible to see how they work, how people interact, and then I can apply my ideas to it. Well that’s moving onto somethinga little bit different. But. I think we just want to try and we had a few assets to be able to post because we’d been doing a few of these One Minute Briefs. And so we thought let’s let’s just try and see see what happens if if anything, it’s just a gallery of our ideas. So we. Yeah we we just kept posting them maybe each day would do a one or two One Minute Briefs while we worked for our first agency. Yeah I say we got a couple of favourites maybe a retweet here and there. Followers probably got up to about a hundred.

Nick Entwistle [00:10:52] And at that point at the time we probably thought we were we were big dogs.

Chris Bruno [00:10:58] Rock stars.

Nick Entwistle [00:10:59] Yeah. Hundred followers right. Well everyone’s gonna want to do this now. And so at that point it was then that we thought. I just wonder if anyone else would would do this. We’re getting a few likes here and there. And so we open it up to a One Minute Brief of the day. We didn’t know what was going to happen.

Nick Entwistle [00:11:21] We hadn’t really persevered beforehand, it was putting briefs on here and there. So we didn’t have to do it every single day. And when we did the One Minute Brief of the day. We thought, well let’s keep it up. We’ll start. Well we’ll set a brief every morning.

Nick Entwistle [00:11:37] Let’s see what happens.

Chris Bruno [00:11:40] How long ago was that. I was going to ask.

Nick Entwistle [00:11:42] Yeah. 2010, 2011.

Chris Bruno [00:11:46] Wow. So you’re coming close to the decade of having a daily one minute brief.

Nick Entwistle [00:11:53] Oh yeah. I mean it’s in certain ways it takes over your life and it’s a it’s a thing that’s become a responsibility to be able to do it every day. And you know sometimes I have to take a break from it, because it is me. And I know you guys yourselves have actually taken over the responsibility of it [before]. So you see how how many interactions it’s getting every day and how you’ve got to try and keep up with it. It’s not easy.

Chris Bruno [00:12:22] I can definitely vouch for that.

Nick Entwistle [00:12:25] But obviously it’s great to have such kind people like yourselves to sometimes take the responsibility off me. Because it can be quite intense at times. Because I am doing every single weekday. And let’s say I don’t know I sleep in till midday one day or if I’ve got a day off. In a way I can’t really do that because I get people tweeting because they’ll be waiting for today’s brief. So it’s. It’s quite a responsibility and quite intense at times. However the rewards massively outweigh the time that I put into it. Going back to the original question of persevering with that and not sort of giving up on it. When it becomes a responsibility I think you sort of have to stick with it. People are sort of expecting something in particular and I think that’s a great thing if you can you can actually achieve that for your own social media. What’s that. Let’s say it’s not about winning the race it’s about something. You know if you’re posting something every day and people are waiting for that moment then you’re onto a winner. Because people are going to be connected and come back to your social media feed every day. But again going back back to the original one we didn’t really know what we were doing. [00:13:45]What I what I would say is – advice wise – is just sort of stick out, stick at what you’re doing and see what happens. And don’t expect to know all the answers when you first start as well. Because. It’s grown and formed and and gone in different directions. And people have then asked us to do talks. People have asked us to do workshops off the back of it and it all started with just saying right: Does anyone want to do a one minute brief?[30.8s]

Nick Entwistle [00:14:17] [00:14:17]So. Start small and don’t try and take on the world and think you’re going to go viral. We never expected this. [10.0s] If we thought we were going to let’s try and get 20000 followers create this big massive community. I personally think we may well have failed and probably would have needed a lot of investment. So I think just start. Start by being active and posting each day if you can. Yeah. Who knows what what might happen off the back of it.

Nick Entwistle [00:14:52] We never expected all this. But by adapting to what’s going on. Let’s say we get in. We’re getting it. I mean when we first started doing it, we posted all of them on a website on a blogspot at the end of the day. I made up the time decision after probably about a couple of years. At the time it wasn’t well necessarily well received by absolutely everyone. But I had to say, we’re going to take the albums to Facebook. Some people weren’t on Facebook. But I had to make that decision to make it even more social, and a place where people can then vote and like etc. In the past year I’ve moved One Minute Briefs within the Bank of Creativity website, an umbrella. I didn’t know whether to do a One Minute Briefs website on the Bank of Creativity. So I thought. Let’s put them all in one place and then the blog goes through that etc. So there’s a lot of different decisions made along the way. But it’s all about adapting to what social media feeds happening. You know if, if Twitter dies we need a Plan B. There’s got to be other avenues that we can go down. And I think just by keeping an eye on all the different social medias, it’s important to see how people are reacting to it. Should we be migrating to Instagram for our imagery? That’s very engaged. However it doesn’t that isn’t adaptable for albums as posters. Because it’s very singular.

Nick Entwistle [00:16:28] However it is very engaged and the followers are growing. So we do need to keep an eye on that and look at how we might utilize that in future.

Nick Entwistle [00:16:36] So I think it’s a will elaborate on the question but.

Chris Bruno [00:16:40] You’ve answered about six other questions. You’ve ruined everything that I was going to ask you.

Nick Entwistle [00:16:47] Well yeah I think. Don’t try and I would say don’t try and take on the world right at the very start. Otherwise you’re probably destined to fail.

Chris Bruno [00:16:58] So interestingly because we both obviously work as agency people when we work with clients. And the first thing we set out is what are we trying to achieve. Like everyone, we start with the strategy, we always – what does uh, I think it’s Stephen Covey who called it, you know, begin with the end in mind. Start with why, whatever it is. But I think is really important for people to understand the differences between that. So your core offering your core business what you do and understanding what it is that you’re trying to do is one thing. OMB has now become an integral part of your day to day life and also your brand. And everything as you mentioned it isn’t something that forms that initial part of, we know we want to create an agency around that. It’s actually the other way round. This was a side hustle, a side project that’s grown into something that today is a behemoth with an incredible community that’s massively engaged on a daily basis.

Chris Bruno [00:17:52] But I think that’s the differentiation. So what would you say to anyone who is currently a business that’s currently online. You know they know they have to do social. They’ve got goals in mind and what they’re trying to achieve. But they’ve got this little spark of an idea. Would you recommend that they run it as a separate entity and just see how it goes and see how that develops?

Nick Entwistle [00:18:10] Definitely. Whenever I’m doing talks and things I think about how how are you going to differentiate yourself against your competition. It might be that the product is very similar to the next person or service or I mean One Minute Briefs was a side thing for me. There’s no doubt that got me into talks that I had no right to be in as a junior creative at the time. It’s raised my own profile by helping others to raise theirs, which I think is good. Don’t. Don’t just try and don’t talk about your own brand necessarily. Just give someone else or a group of people something to get involved in. And then the results will come off the back of that. I think if you try to just say “Look at me I’m not actually offering anyone anything” then that’s likely to fail. But I think just. So just go back to the question again?

Chris Bruno [00:19:14] It was just about the idea of you know when people have these ideas to create something as a project as a side hustle or whatever it is. But reminding people that you know having your core objectives as a business is one thing and continuing with that on social media. But when they are trying to do something like this or when people see the success that OMB has you know over a eight years nine years. I think it’s really important to try and kind of reaffirm for anyone listening. Your core business, your core strategy, your core why, what you’re doing. And why you’re doing it is very very important. These sorts of things are almost created, I don’t want to say by accident but they’re created on the side as I like an additional. It’s not your core focus as your business because I think that’s why you mentioned that and you said you know if you’d set out with this to try and build a community for 20000 you would have used a massive amount of investment and possibly not actually have made this work. This possibly wouldn’t have actually worked out the way it has. So I think that’s the kind of thing that I’m trying to find out from from your side. What would you advise to other people that maybe you know they might have a florist business or a cupcake bakery whatever it might be that they want to do something. They’ve got this idea of how they could kind of create this community. But to help them understand that it’s not part of your core business as such.

Chris Bruno [00:20:29] It’s like would you agree that it’s like an additional? It’s something that you kind of run on the side and try and build and see what happens?

Nick Entwistle [00:20:36] Yes I think it’s probably I would say it’s best to try different things. I think as long as it’s not going to harm your business why don’t you try and do a daily question to however many followers you have. Someone might answer. Open up the conversation. The reason OMB began to be so much bigger was when the conversation began to be opened. I never realized at the time what this One Minute Brief of the day thing just invites so many, well basically invited the world to come along and do a brief. Anyone in the world could have done that. That was on Twitter at the time. So who knows who’s looking. So invite people, invite your audience in. Don’t talk about yourself. Why don’t you ask them a question. I think, thinking about social in that way and also trying different things. Like I’ve tried different Instagram feeds, I’ve tried different Twitter feeds and not all of them have stuck. I’ve had some that I thought were going to go viral. They’ve had five followers but I’ve tried it. And you’ll get a sense of whether you should continue with it. Very early on. But it’s worth if you have a quick idea in your head. One idea I had was pictures of random people charging the phone in different places. Just just because people are so desperate to charge a phone like they’ll charge it they’ll stand with it. Coming out we’ll see you know.

Nick Entwistle [00:22:15] And it was just a silly idea. I thought you know what. People will love this. It’s a it’s a feed. Guilty as charged. Call that something stupid like that.

Nick Entwistle [00:22:26] And I thought, people will love this but just didn’t pick up. So I just thought you know I tried it. It doesn’t matter. It’s not caused any issue. I’m not going to carry on with that.

Nick Entwistle [00:22:39] I think one thing I have had to do over time is not do too much because I do have a lot of different social media feeds. You don’t necessarily need to be on absolutely everything and you’ve got to potentially pick and choose your platforms that are working the right way for you.

Nick Entwistle [00:23:01] Like I’ve got a side project called “What the Book” which I just do on Instagram. I don’t always have to update it. It’s just a gallery of things for me. I could do that on Twitter and Facebook as well. But. I would just run myself down by trying to update everything.

Chris Bruno [00:23:17] That’s actually a really good segway and something I want to stop here just for one reason because otherwise we’ll go off on a tangent again. But so what you’ve just mentioned there. Unless you’re a huge company with huge resources and you have agencies or even in-house teams to be able to cover all these different platforms. I want to reaffirm what you just said there in terms of picking and choosing. There is nothing wrong with that and reminding people this is something I’d like your input on. But from our side. The content you put up if it’s great content on only one channel I believe that’s more powerful than putting out content for the sake of content on five channels. Would you agree?

Nick Entwistle [00:23:59] Absolutely. I think. There’s, I mean for my own personal brand. Or from sharing stuff in the business, I would go to LinkedIn. I wouldn’t share it on my own personal Facebook. I sometimes do cross-channel stuff where I think. This this would work because it will get more of a, if it’s an announcement I need to make, and I need to share it with followers on different channels for example on my LinkedIn. They may not be the same as my Twitter followers. Or my Twitter followers might not need to know something I’m going to post on LinkedIn because it’s more business wise. So I think definitely don’t. It’s a funny one with OMB bometimes I do want to show it on different channels where possible, certain things. Well I do pick and choose certain things when I’m – and knowing the actual audience that communicates somewhere. So you might want to. If you’ve got something that’s perfect for Facebook if you put it on Twitter it’s probably like it might be likely that it will have no traction. However on Facebook it’s the type of thing that will get a lot of traction. On the different platforms work differently for different audiences. Even the way they, the audiences interact with it. You’re more likely to get engagement on one or the other.

Chris Bruno [00:25:26] It’s it’s interesting because we find that way too many people are looking for the latest and greatest tool or platform that they believe is going to help them skyrocket their business.

Chris Bruno [00:25:40] And something you mentioned earlier about you know you go on to all the channels when these new platforms arise. Because you want to understand it. Because it’s part of your your kind of creative process as well of knowing what you can and can’t use for other businesses and what would be right and wrong for other businesses. But I think so many people are just looking for that quick win. So the latest one now that people seem to be talking about and one thing other is you know you got to get on TikTok. And I’m on TikTok and I had to play around on TikTok. I’m not a massive fan of TikTok. I don’t like the way you consume on that. It’s not really my thing. But again understanding it is really important. But from a business point of view we keep trying to tell people. Stop trying to be all things to all men, and actually start focussing on who you are and what’s right for you, your brand, your services, your product, or whatever it is. And where that audience is and how they consume the content. Because ultimately like you said social media isn’t about that bullhorn and you’re pushing out what you’re doing and who you are and everything else. The idea is supposed to be that you’re trying to bring people in. It’s social. And I think most people forget the social element. You’re supposed to have conversations. You’re supposed to have, you know, or get engaged with other people you’re supposed to make that effort to have that conversation with people online. And I think that’s where so many especially small to mid-sized businesses, where they can’t necessarily afford an agency solution for example, they get caught up in the latest tool. The latest growth hack. One of my pet peeves in the office when I hear people talk about that or when I see people writing about it. Stop looking for the growth hack. The growth hack is doing something on a regular basis consistently that is good. That is great. That really helps people to understand or engage or get value or ask questions or whatever it might be. So I think that some that’s kind of an interesting point for people.

Nick Entwistle [00:27:28] I think definitely what you said about being regular and for example. One of things I’m probably going to look to, probably look to close is the One Minute Briefs LinkedIn. I have it sat there. I don’t really do anything with it. People tag it every now and again.

Nick Entwistle [00:27:49] But LinkedIn is the only place where it’s actually my own personal profile. I don’t have that elsewhere. So I can still link to my Twitter feeds and Facebook etc freely through LinkedIn. I don’t need to have something sat there that I’ve honestly not got a lot of time to do it. It’s not quite relevant. And if you spread yourself too thin across all your channels. Like say, we could 100% get a TikTok. It might even be that it sounds like it’s a good idea for something like One Minute Briefs but if I’m not going to devote the time to it and devote the resource then there’s no point doing one thing now and then be inactive for five months. And so I think it is important to streamline and do what is working best for you.

Nick Entwistle [00:28:39] And that might be the most traditional medium or the the oldest one like Facebook. That’s. Just don’t, you don’t ,you don’t need a Snapchat if you’re a builder’s yard. It’s like sort of what people do do it.

Nick Entwistle [00:29:00] Be the builder’s yard that just does TikTok and makes it famous. I don’t know. There are ways of doing different things. Well it’s got to be appropriate for your audience and actually benefit your business. There’s no point in putting resources if it doesn’t actually add value or return on investment.

Chris Bruno [00:29:20] I think interestingly actually you mentioned them in terms of return on investment. I agree completely that everything you should be doing should be helping to build your brand, to build awareness, to build your end goals, KPIs, which are usually for most businesses. You know we want to sell more or we want to make more money.

Chris Bruno [00:29:38] But I think there’s an element here actually and I wanted to ask you about this and what your opinion is. I had a conversation recently and the person very much was of the opinion or the belief system that you know everyone else is doing this. People are creating blog content and video content. And one thing that what’s going to make me stand out what why should I do it if everybody else is doing it? And what’s the direct return of investment that I’ll get. So if I input two and a half thousand pounds into social media tomorrow what do I get out of it next week. And when I have those conversations there’s something inside me that dies a little bit. But basically from your point of view in your opinion and then again you’ve just sort of mentioned that you know you want it to be adding value to who you are so what you do as a business but there is something I think to be said for not looking at it in terms of I spent a hundred, what did I get back. Because I think there’s a much bigger picture. Especially with digital. Especially like you said, building communities. Having conversations, relationships that are made online. All of these things that a lot of them don’t actually have trackable metrics. You know we’ve all grown up past the idea of, oh yes we’ve got a hundred Likes. And like you mentioned at the beginning one hundred followers sort of rock star status. But realizing that’s not actually the metric that is important for OMB. The metric that’s important for OMB: how many people enter these briefs, how many people share these briefs, how many people engage in that conversation that are bringing other people in that are bringing other brands into it. How much of that awareness is built because of that. And I think from from my side anyway, I kind of get frustrated when the only conversation is about ROI but at the same time I completely understand that you’re looking at what the values are. So from your point of view what’s the biggest value that people should be looking for when it comes to social media, digital marketing.

Nick Entwistle [00:31:26] Well I think. I think awareness is a huge thing. Visibility. Thinking back so you know, don’t do as much TV stuff these days. But thinking back to the adverts for sofas on TV. You don’t. Sometimes you do. You go straight to the website and buy a sofa. Or you might see the advert again a second time. I like the look of that. And then you see the logo at the end and it’s in your head. Or let’s then let’s go compare. When you need that particular product or that service. When your insurance is up. What’s in your head? You might not need it. You might not get a return on investment on a social film or post. You might be posting.

Nick Entwistle [00:32:19] Regular posts for weeks but your followers are seeing your brand. That connects. Might be a clothing range. Or I know we’ve done the One Minute Briefs for the the sparkling wine. The sparkling wine company for example might not get loads of sales immediately. However that ground and thatlook is across all social media and it’s in people’s heads when they think of that point where they want to. Purchase something like that. So I think visibility and awareness will indirectly be a return on investment. If you’re not visible at all online. Then you’re not the one that likely to get people going towards you. If you’re not on TV you’re just not visible. And you know you’ve got to be potentially creating good content for people. But you have to just be you have to be the ones doing it. And people are just more likely to go to you. Paddy Power were are all over social media. If you, if you’re on Twitter and you follow them guys, means you’re more likely to go with them.

Nick Entwistle [00:33:32] They’re not offering any better odds than anyone else. But they are appropriate to their audience whereas someone like William Hill. Would be a bit more of maybe an older audience with content appropriate to them. So I think it’s it’s making people aware that you are there. What you can’t expect to even to get your money back immediately. But if you keep sustaining and keep building your followers and things like that that money will return to you. And going back to the One Minute Briefs model. I worked on it for years completely free. No commercial gain. Because I had to build up a certain amount of followers to be able to. And at that point we had a value of our offering to ourselves, to a brand a potential brand or a cause, as well as our followers for getting my work out there and raising their own profile as well. So only then by building something like that where we’re really able to. And it’s not a commercial thing still. It’s it has that place now where we can build an offering around it that is commercial towards brands.

Nick Entwistle [00:34:57] So I think. Don’t expect- put the work in and be visible. Get yourself out there. And once that following has been built. Then you’ll reap the rewards.

Chris Bruno [00:35:11] I think that’s really important the last bit there. Put the work in. Everybody’s looking for the growth hack, the magic button, the secret sauce, whatever they want to call it.

Chris Bruno [00:35:21] And I think that’s the key there. Putting the time and putting the effort in coming up with content that’s good. That’s creative that’s engaging and actually building that. Because I think it’s. Well, Seth Godin calls it a dip. I refer to this a lot but all the efforts that you put in. Usually the results come after that kind of lull and how you kind of ride that dip in terms of you might put in a huge amount of effort today and you’re not seeing the ROI. So you think that’s it, I’ll stop. But actually those results come at a later stage. It comes from having that continuous relationship going. Having those people continuously see who you are, what you’re doing, and then actually sort of building that up for that for the long term rather than the short term. I spent one hundred I only got 50 back. Therefore I’m 50 quid out of pocket which is unfortunately actually the kind of conversations that we have had as an agency.

Chris Bruno [00:36:14] Okay. In terms of user generated content this is something I think that’s huge obviously for not just for OMB but for other businesses as well.

Chris Bruno [00:36:23] How do you feel user generated content fits in and how would you recommend for especially small to mid-sized brands to be able to to find a way to bring that together for them and actually get the most out of their followers, get the most out of their audience.

Nick Entwistle [00:36:39] I think it’s very difficult to expect – expert followers to create content. Obviously when we’ve worked with yourselves, we’ve collaborated with yourselves and a brand. Because we have a user generated platform and you can power it through collaboration I think with other people. That’s another point. Collaborating with people. Not it’s not trying to do everything yourself. Even if it’s people in your own industry don’t be precious about being rivals with them. Why not create something that’s a group of you all to create something a bit bigger. Well what you would be the pinnacle of that. You would have created that for people, and so you would get known for being the person that facilitates a group for other people.

Nick Entwistle [00:37:33] For example Bank of Creativity meet ups. I don’t have any real gain for putting in the time to put these together. Apart from connecting people, making friendships, new connections. In some ways I will probably work with some of the people by creating a bigger Bank of Creativity in the future. And who knows by putting in the work. Someone at one of these things might say say to me, I’ve got I’ve got this thing into a do you fancy collaborating on it. Or you know connections and I’m actually opening something up. So user generated stuff, I would always, I would always try and collaborate with people but it doesn’t even have to be. It doesn’t have to be that they create loads of posters or selfies for you. It could be just n answer to a question. If you if you’ve put a Facebook post saying: What would people prefer this A or this B? You’re quite likely to have people just go, Oh B. People will probably – even comments and things. Just opening up, again it’s opening up the conversation.

Chris Bruno [00:38:49] Remembering the social in social media.

Nick Entwistle [00:38:53] Yeah 100%. No one cares about you.

Chris Bruno [00:38:58] They care about their opinions.

Nick Entwistle [00:39:00] They care about, they care about themselves. And if you can give them a platform to be able to share their opinion on things then great. Generally no one, unless you create a community. That’s – I mean if you’re selling anything, you’re a company a product and a service. That people you know you’ve got to make them, like Paddy Power. I’ll mention that one again because I think their great because they know what that what type of people they want. And they stick to the way they communicate. They say what does everything think to this, or they’ll post a thing that’s really hilarious. And people respond to it because they know their audience and then they know that they’re bringing people in.

Nick Entwistle [00:39:43] But. If they have no voice it’s just another betting company. You know or I’m trying to think of another good example of someone.

Chris Bruno [00:39:54] Kentucky Fried Chicken.

Nick Entwistle [00:39:56] KFC. Yeah of course. They’ve obviously they’ve collaborated with us as well.

Nick Entwistle [00:40:01] This is a good example of the user generate content. They could quite easily have asked their own audience to themselves. But it’s not quite the right audience. So the collaborative was to open it up to a creative audience which then goes out to a wider audience organically.

Chris Bruno [00:40:20] And they they are fantastic and when it comes to, especially on Twitter.

Nick Entwistle [00:40:25] They respond to people they put they put questions out there to their audience, they’re engaging.

Chris Bruno [00:40:34] They tagged their competitors the other day.

Nick Entwistle [00:40:36] Yeah exactly so. You know it’s that – I mean it’s a bit like what I said a minute ago. You could be. You could quite easily collaborate with your, or befriend, your neighbours, your rivals, and they have this great secret ingredient thing that they’ve built up over the years and it’s it’s a distinctive taste. However building their brand and their audience up. I mean when we’ve done the One Minute Briefs with them. I’ve definitely been going out for a KFC after I’ve been doing it. And I bet a lot of people have as well so just by the visibility of the brand and what you’re talking about it does work. It’s not doing it for the sake of it. It’s being visible online. If that brand is in your head. Thinking about when, even if you just checked your Twitter feed, “Oh KFC. They’ve said something. I’m thinking about them. Oh I’ve just seen this.” Those people are then going to go into the shop and buy a bucket of chicken.

Chris Bruno [00:41:38] We were we were guilty as well. It was the I love you bacon burger one. Which I don’t mentioned because of the fact that we won, but we were very happy about that, but I think literally about an hour into it we got a post. Obviously we’re a distributed team. And Anna literally took a photo of, an “I love you bacon burger” at her desk as she was eating it. So it definitely works and I think that’s probably the single biggest thing that people that remember. The touch points that you have with your audience are invaluable. They’re not you know you can’t define them by a return on investment. You can’t define them by, I spent one hundred quid and we got 30 engagements but how many sales did that bring up. And I think that’s where people kind of forget and even small businesses all the way up to large ones. Obviously we talk about KFC and people like that but even small businesses they forget that. So they think you know if I’m going to spend an ad money, spend on advertising on Facebook or on Twitter. It’s gonna be an offer, I’m going to track how many people click through, and then I’m gonna track how many people buy. And that’s that’s how simple ROI is and how we measure it. And I think that’s the hardest part especially for small to mid-sized companies is learning and understanding a little bit about you know, it’s not just about the offer and the sales. That’s one part of it. But it’s also looking at the general overview. How many people are getting involved with your brand. How many people are really sort of responding to it. How many people are seeing it. And then being able to see the organic growth potentially in your sales and whatever else might be happening on the backend, and actually being able to justify that by having a bigger brand by having a more engaged brand. You do get more sales down the line.

Nick Entwistle [00:43:16] Absolutely. And then also let’s say.

Nick Entwistle [00:43:20] On the KFC example. If one person goes in that hasn’t been for years or it’s the first time probably, like it’s a go again and again I’m being loyal to your brand. Brand loyalty will come from the invisible and being connected to that certain brand. That’s when you are purchasing more than once. I’m just thinking of an example that came to my head then, if you’re selling.  If you’re a window company what content can you do. Can you make them exciting. I don’t know what but you can. I mean KFC do it with chicken and chips and burgers and things. So a window company can do it. You know. It doesn’t have to be about windows and sales and offers it can be about. Going out in the daytime or looking out you know that type of thing and things to do or or stuff like that. So. They can do it and they can connect with their audience through consent and responding to people. But. If that leads to one sale for a bigger company that sell bigger products like. And you’ve spent six months on social media. Something when it’s a bigger purchase will probably pay for your entire social media.

Chris Bruno [00:44:37] Yup, off one sale.

Nick Entwistle [00:44:40] Yeah one sale through your windows for your house. So. It is important to just be visible and be that person that you will have rivals for. You’ve got to just stand out from them in one way or another. One window’s no better than the next one. The person that’s being active on social media is much more likely to get someone. If I note, know know of someone or following them or the brand’s in my head, the brand name, I’ll just probably go to them rather than. Sometimes I might go to google. But if I’ve got someone in mind, in my head. Then I’ll probably search them. So again going back to visibility. And. Just being on there.

Chris Bruno [00:45:26] It’s like you mentioned earlier with the Go Compare or the Meerkats or whichever insurance comparison website you’d like to use. But the thing is though again you don’t necessarily need it right now and you’re not going to get a return on investment of me watching the TV and quickly typing it into my phone and then going wow I need to get my insurance. But the honest truth is like you said you get to the end of the year your insurance renewal does come through and you go. I’m just going to quickly have a look at. And there’s no, no one has any issues remembering which ones or what those website URLs are, whether it’s the annoying GoCompare singing man or the the little ferrets, sorry Meerkats. Sorry not, in France they’re called ferrets. They literary copied the brand completely. And yeah I agree. So the additional kind of touch points that those brands that you’re engaged with on social. Definitely get the rewards at the end of it. So I’m going to start wrapping up because again I don’t want this to go on for too long even though you and I could talk for hours about all these things. But what’s the one biggest piece of advice that you would give to any small small to mid-sized businesses or start-ups. We’re not talking about you know your FTSE100s but for any small to mid-sized businesses. What would be the one single biggest piece of advice you’d give them in terms of social media or digital marketing?

Nick Entwistle [00:46:43] Think I would say to be themselves. So think of what your personality is and how you want to come across and reflect that online. So if you want to be seen as very professional. Or you want to be this fun loving brand.

Nick Entwistle [00:47:02] Innocent drinks is a good example that are smoothie makers. Some are more sophisticated some want to seem to be healthier. Innocent take on this great brand language and tone of voice. And it’s what they stand for. And I think if you’ve got that in mind if you’ve got your tone of voice and how you want to put yourself across. Own it.

Nick Entwistle [00:47:29] And then take it in so everything you do. Because you might need help with that social to work out what you want to do, because you might feel like you don’t have a brand language.

Nick Entwistle [00:47:42] But I think keep that in mind in everything you do. So every tweet you post. One Minute Briefs has always been fun so I will react to people in a – it’s not – I wouldn’t say it’s unprofessional. But I would react with a gif of something stupid to someone, when hey’re happy that they just won an OMB. Or OMB could go completely professional and just be about strict ideas I think it’s important to speak as if you are a person. Even if you are a brand. That’s what KFC’s so good because you feel like you know the person that’s on the other end of the thing. If if they were just sharing offers, and not actually communicating with anyone. Then you’re gonna switch off. You’re not going to follow them. Not going to care. It goes back to me saying. No one cares about you.

Chris Bruno [00:48:45] Well the biggest takeaway from this podcast is no one cares about you. But I’d like to also caveat that with if you’re feeling a little bit like bad or anything else please reach out to either Nick or myself. Have a chat before you do anything crazy.

Nick Entwistle [00:48:58] I would say no one cares about you. But it’s how you make them care. So I’ve been doing that through film a lot more lately. But how do you make people care about you? And I think that that is just by being personable and open to conversation. And not really being a salesy brand. I think having to having that voice online. People will care and will invest in you. You know. You’re going to. You’re going to gain interest. You’re going to gain following. And ultimately in the longer run you’re going to gain sales.

Chris Bruno [00:49:41] Agreed.

Nick Entwistle [00:49:42] So yeah I think that’s hopefully puledl it off. My advice: make people care about you.

Chris Bruno [00:49:49] Nick this has been awesome. Where can people find you online.

Nick Entwistle [00:49:53] Yeah you can. You can follow us at @OneMinuteBriefs on Twitter. You can go onto the website www.BankofCreativity.co.uk.

Nick Entwistle [00:50:06] And you’ll find all of our other Twitter feeds etc, Instagrams, all through that as well.

Chris Bruno [00:50:12] Nick this has been awesome. I’m hoping that we’ll get to do this again and not wait another year before we are we have another chat like this. And thank you very much for your insights. And we hope to see you soon and we’ll carry on watching and being involved in OMB as much as we can.

Nick Entwistle [00:50:27] Nice one, thanks so much.

Chris Bruno [00:50:29] Take care.

Chris Bruno [00:50:33] Thanks for listening. We hope you’re enjoying the All About Digital Marketing podcast. Brought to you by Social INK, the distributed digital marketing agency specialising in social media marketing and content marketing for brave brands and forward-thinking SMEs. When it comes to your social media marketing. We understand that not all businesses are ready to work with an agency. The resources and the budgets required don’t always fit into an SME’s plan. If this is the case for you we have some great news. We’ve recently developed a social media coaching platform that gives you access to an agency team at a fraction of the cost. Tired of not getting results from your social media efforts? Now’s the time to do something about it. Find out more on our website. www.PostLikeShare.com. We look forward to seeing you there.