Key Takeaways
- The Value of Social Media in Business:
- Social media is no longer just about likes and follows—it’s a business-critical tool that can drive growth, brand awareness, and even revenue. Marketers need to approach social media from a business-oriented perspective, framing it as a key contributor to business objectives rather than a “nice-to-have” channel(To make a compelling business case, link social media efforts directly to measurable business outcomes like increased reach, improved customer sentiment, or lead generation.
- Tying Social Media to ROI:
- One of the biggest challenges in justifying social media investment is proving return on investment (ROI). It’s essential to move beyond vanity metrics like likes and impressions and focus on metrics that matter to business leaders, such as reach, conversions, and customer lifetime valueMichael Corcoran discussed how at Ryanair, social media was tied to a key business problem: improving perception among millennials. By tracking this over time, they were able to demonstrate the real-world impact of social efforts on brand sentiment
- Strategic Social Media:
- Social media strategies should be built in the same way as brand strategies, focusing on solving business problems. Michael emphasized the importance of developing a social media strategy rooted in brand identity, customer insights, and the social media landscapeThe guiding principle of any social strategy should be to connect social efforts to the broader business goals, ensuring that every post or campaign has a purpose and contributes to solving a business problem
- Managing Expectations with Senior Stakeholders:
- A key challenge in making the business case for social media is managing expectations with senior stakeholders who may not fully understand its nuances. One common misconception is that having a large number of followers automatically equates to reaching all of them, which often leads to unrealistic expectationsEducation is critical. Marketers should focus on educating stakeholders about the role of social media, how it works, and how success is measured beyond vanity metrics. It’s important to demonstrate the time, effort, and resources required for effective social media management
- The Role of Strategy and Simplification:
- Strategy is not about creating complex frameworks but simplifying your goals and efforts into a single, focused plan. By doing so, you can eliminate unnecessary distractions and concentrate on activities that move the needle for the businessCorcoran emphasized the importance of having a clear, strategic focus that is agreed upon by all team members. This helps ensure alignment and prevents getting overwhelmed by non-essential tasks or channels
- Metrics that Matter:
- The key metric for social media success is reach—both organic and paid. It’s critical for raising brand awareness and ensuring that your message gets to the right audienceHowever, different objectives may require different metrics. For example, conversions may be the focus for a sales campaign, while brand perception may be the priority for a brand-building effort. Tailor your metrics to the specific goals of each campaign
Practical Tips and Tools:
- Platform-Specific Strategies:
- Tailor your social media strategy for each platform based on where your audience is most active and how they engage. For instance, LinkedIn might be a better platform for B2B audiences, while Instagram or TikTok might work for a more visual or consumer-driven brand
- Use tools like Hootsuite or Buffer to manage multiple platforms and analyze performance in real-time.
- Proving Value to Stakeholders:
- Regularly update senior stakeholders with digestible reports that clearly link social media efforts to business outcomes. Use metrics that matter, like customer sentiment, engagement rates, and ROI.
- Tools like Google Data Studio and Sprout Social can help you create visually appealing, data-rich reports that resonate with non-social media professionals
- Continuous Learning and Adaptation:
- Social media is always evolving, so it’s important to stay up to date on the latest trends and platform updates. Educate yourself and your team regularly to ensure that your strategy remains relevant and effective.
These takeaways focus on demonstrating the business value of social media, aligning strategy with business goals, and educating stakeholders on its impact.
Full transcript (captured by AI, may contain errors)
Speaker 1: Hello, everyone, it’s so lovely to see you all here today. Thank you for taking the time. I’ve seen Michael dancing on his video already, so I think we’re going to have a lot of fun today. Thank you all so much for taking the time. If you haven’t already, do pop in the chat where you’re watching from. I’m already seeing plenty of synonyms for folks saying that it’s raining where they are, but do pop in the chat where you’re watching from. And If you haven’t already, don’t forget to switch your chat messages, as you can see on screen right now, to everyone. So everyone can see your messages, just as Patrick, Robert, George, Hayley, James, Caitlin, Connor, Lucy, Amelia, from the likes of Los Angeles, Bristol, Birmingham, and so many more places have done already. You’re all absolute heroes, and it’s really, really fantastic. And hello to Erica in Cape Town. It’s so fantastic to have you here today. Today, we have the amazing Michael Corcoran, who is the former head of social at Ryanair and the current managing partner of Frankly. I’m thrilled to bits to have Michael involved, as he’s someone who could genuinely be described as one of the most influential, but potentially more important than this. And he’s pulling a face at that, because, you know, the humble vibes are coming out. Probably more important than influential is impactful people in social media marketing today. As Mel says in the chat, excited for this absolute legend, said much better than I can. Over the course of these webinars, we’ve been chatting social media. And so while it’s been great to get tactical today, hopefully we’ll be speaking the business case for social media as well as taking your questions. With that said, if you do have questions as we go throughout today’s session, do pop them into the Q and A feature which is found down below. that’ll mean that Michael and I can get to those later in today’s session. As a point of admin, when Michael actually comes full screen in a second, you’ll see a little Easter egg as to the fact that there may be some swearing today. So I just wanted to put that up front, that’s the disclaimer. So if you’d like to opt out at this point, then no hard feelings. Before we get going, I just wanna say a big, big thank you to Nicole, says rightly, Michael swearing never. So before we get going I want to say a big thank you to this week’s feature sponsor who are Frontify. Now Frontify are fabulous because they help marketers bring brand consistency across your across your work which is fabulous because I don’t know whether you’ve ever felt the pain of seeing someone in your team post something that is inconsistent your brand but it hurts and Frontify help you solve that. They’ve got an un-gated, no need to log in, no need to give any details report which is at the QR code right there where they surveyed 60 creative directors about the biggest barriers to creativity. You can find that right there, I hope you enjoy it. Also a big thank you to Exclaimer, Cambridge Marketing College, Redgate and Score app. We’ll speak about those at a later date. With all that said, let’s get Michael involved. And I’m liking the chat comments here. We’ve got Rosie and we’ve got Deaglin who’s saying, oh, swearing, we’re grownups today, huh? And we’ve got un-effing believable. So let’s get going. Michael, you’re a hero, mate. Thank you for taking the time today. Good afternoon. we get going on just what keeps you coming back to a career in social media? Because it’s hard, it’s hard, it’s hard yards and so I’d be interested why you stay in?
Speaker 2: It’s a good question. It’s probably because it’s all I’ve known since I’ve kind of tore off the marketing bubble, since I kind of entered the world of marketing after a weird stint as a bouncer, the next stint is a degree in health science and I did a little dabble in PR. I guess it was new, I become native to it and you know being young and almost like Gen Z years of today, somewhat born with it more than the rest of the actual population that existed at the time. It’s all I’ve ever known, it’s all I’ve ever obsessed about and I’ve had this healthy obsession with the content platform stories and communicating. So it’s not a complex, it’s not a difficult answer, it’s all I know and it’s probably the greatest opportunity for me to do and get the best return. So as we said before, we dialed in Joe, so I can get back to farming as quickly as I
Speaker 1: hand. And I shared likewise my dreams of becoming a postman one day, so you know there’s there’s some parallels there, I love that. You referenced the the bouncer job and so I’d like to think I’d do my research before these sessions and I heard you speaking about being a bouncer in your university days I think it was. Yes. So let’s let’s loop this into social media. So you used to be a bouncer, what would you kick out of the social media club if you could? Oh kick out social media club,
Speaker 2: it’s probably people who are top leaders in social media, I would kick them out immediately. People who are monetizing and creating newsletters for the sole gain of building a career in that space to allow more people who work in the industry talk about the work they’re doing so we can all learn better and not have black and white views and absolute views that these guys do just to make a fast buck. Sorry, not sorry, they’re barred, they’re banned, they’ll never be let in Phoenix Nights ever again. If you’re too young to understand that reference, sorry about that too.
Speaker 1: I think I caught Phoenix Nights on the DVD at my mate’s house. I remember watching it teenager, which is funny. But I guess that answer prompts a genuine question, which is one of the things I really struggle with social media. And I don’t know whether you’re the same, is that lack of nuance sometimes. And I guess as someone who I would describe as a social media expert, even if you wouldn’t necessarily put that label upon yourself, do you think there is genuine space for nuance in social media? like when we’re striving to create on there?
Speaker 2: There has to be.
Speaker 1: Okay.
Speaker 2: There has to be. And it goes back to, again, a ride or die for me. Like if you’re not thinking strategically, especially even now on the platforms, you’re just adding to the cannon fodder and the see a sameness that everybody’s doing at a mediocre level. And I know that comes across as harsh, but nuance is important because if we all act the same, be the same and behave the same in these news feeds, nobody stands out. we just become clutter. And it becomes even more difficult because we’re not only competing with other brands, we’re competing with other people on the internet, whether it’s creators, whether it’s public, whether it’s your sister putting pictures of her mucky dog after a park walk, or the other example I normally give is the, you know, your mom on her bottomless mimosa brunch with her besties, like it’s a difficult space to win. So nuance is important to grab attention, stand out and land a compelling message. And you see that even becoming more of a challenge. And I’m talking about this small little plug at a TikTok Central Europe event on Thursday where there’s a great strategist out there called Eugene, I forget his surname, it could be Mulcahy, but he talks about trend inflation and culture flattening, that Ryanair kind of, for the exception, back at the time a couple of years ago, not the norm, but many brands are becoming more nimble. They’re getting more licensed and more freedom to be more responsive to things that are happening at the speed of the internet. when it comes to trends, but what’s happening now is, yes, you’re jumping on that trend, yes, you’re inserting yourself into it, but are people really remembering you, your brand, or your message, or are the algorithms just feeding your content to them because you’ve tapped into that trend? And that becomes the most interesting challenge. So we moved from, I see a sameness of corporate vinaigrette content, which some brands are still on the journey of becoming social first, to now another challenge of trend flattening and trying to stand out within those moments. Because the window of trends have gotten so small now that the second one or two brands insert themselves into that moment, it becomes boring and uncool. But now everybody’s trying to get there faster, it becomes flatter, even quicker. And even if you do go in there, it’s a challenge to stand out. And that’s where nuance is important. And that’s where stepping back and actually being more strategic, finding your why, what’s your problem? Why are you showing up in the first place? and then connecting that to relatability and culture and moments, and then finding the best way to deliver on that in a way that is different. And I know that’s hard, and different is quite a general word, but unless we have that nuance, you’re never gonna get there. We’re all gonna look the same, sound the same, and act the same, and we make social boring, and people don’t like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, fully. Well, it’s so interesting, because I guess what we’re speaking about here is a version of good old-fashioned positioning, right? You know, a company being able to show up in the market and be differentiated or distinct from one another, therefore customers are able to distinguish yourself in the market at a point of buying. However, what’s really interesting about that is when you engage on social media, it feels like a lot of companies are engaging with that sort of unhinged tone. You know, it’s almost become that flattening that you described, you know, there’s that, everyone is speaking the same on these things. So I guess my, there’s so many questions that come off the back of that, but like, it strikes me that that unhinged nature is almost becoming the vernacular of social media. This is how brands should show up on social. And your body language is picking up on this, so I’ll shut up now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it’s a lazy attempt at trying to deliver and learn from what some of the brands have done. Like Reiner, Duolingo, certain brands are the exception, not the norm. That tone and that approach came natural. There is this kind of original legacy of this conversational tone that everybody speaks about that’s quite different from normal advertising. That is this origin social tone. And I think it’s born from, credit John Thornton in his innocent days, now working at Surreal. It’s just, it became this go-to reference point of this is how you speak. And it’s become really difficult to find yourself and position yourself and evoke an emotion. There’s more ways to do it than just shitting over people or talking unhinged. Like again, look at the hot topic right now. It is like everyone’s looking at nut butter. Nut butter has spent the last year trying to build that consistently over time. And they’re being, I guess, unhinged for a reason. There’s a method, there’s an audience, there’s a type of people they’re trying to reach and there’s purpose behind their thinking, the position you go on to. But just because nut butter, Duolingo, Ryanair and everybody else are doing it, It doesn’t mean you tackle it in the same way. That was born from something. And there’s more than one way to evoke an emotion. There’s several other ways to unlock humor. Like, there’s several other ways to capture attention beyond what the others are doing. And I think what’s happening is, and again, unpopular opinion or not, I don’t really know if it’s an unpopular opinion, is I think people are looking at what brands are doing and they’re thinking that that’s the solution or the reason why they took that direction, where it was probably a little bit more informed than they think, and it’s rooted in something connected to, let’s call it the four Cs that normal brand strategy is built upon. The company, the category, the customer, and culture. I normally go brand, category, customer, social media, landscape, same, same, but different. And by following an actual strategy and building towards that, that would probably unlock the right route for the people to take that gives them the agent point of difference. Because now we’ll get to a point where even like everyone speaks unhinged, everybody stands as them and become, we’re just navel gazing and chasing. We’re not finding a purpose or an identity or finding something bespoke to stand out and that becomes a scary challenge. It’s a probably roundabout way to answer the question really, really badly. But, you know, I think the big takeaway, if people are like, yes, unhinged is a way of doing marketing, but it’s not the only way. It’s one of many. You also see people who are the counter of that, saying that, oh, Gen Zs have made marketing shit by being on Hinge. And it’s like, no, it’s kind of existed since advertising was a thing. You look at the Tango ads of years ago. You look at American advertising, where they behaved in this weird, lo-fi, crazy way. And when it came to TV spots, it’s nothing new. But for some reason, Gen Zs are getting the blame for this type of marketing. No, they’re just expressing themselves in the way that works in the platforms. It’s clever, it’s a great start, but not the only way of doing it.
Speaker 1: Love it. And that’s, you described it as a roundabout way of answering the question, but I think it is a much needed way of describing it. There’s a couple of folks to my discredit here who are pointing out in the chat that my microphone is a lot quieter than yours. So folks, if that’s the case, then just let me know. I’ve hopefully rectified that. I’ve turned my gain up, which is all technical and stuff. Thank you, though, Michael. When we get to speaking about the idea of strategy, then I think that is such a perfect lifting-off point for the rest of this conversation. So could we speak about how you would go about building a strategy, or in your case, heading into a business, and the things that you are looking out for when you are auditing or just sort of intuitively looking at a social media, a brand social media?
Speaker 2: Well, I treat social strategy, just like anyone would treat brand strategy. And like, let’s caveat, I am not the best strategist in the world. I’m this jack of all trades who’s trying to try and make what we do a bit better. But when I normally go in, I would try and do discovery work. So again, I build as much intel and experience. I gather as much research and insight across those four areas we touched. So brand, category, customer, and again, the knowledge of the social media landscape that we would bring, but in the context of that brand and category. We would then work that together and develop that thinking. But as part of that discovery, I also talk with the people in the business because nobody knows the brand or business more than the people working there. And what you try to do with that insight, you try to turn it into a thought or insight that nobody else has thought of. And that’s the starting point of going on the journey of developing a strategy that has a point of difference. And within those, we start to then drill down because there’s a lot of information sometimes and a lot of insight. And if people are really self-aware, there is no right or wrong way to do it. And you could have 10 strategists come into a business and they both unlock a different insight in a different way and express it in a different way. But what we would do then is with that insight, we would drill that down into what we would call four core insights, which would be one really interesting statement or opportunity or gap or problem that is across company, category, customer and the social media landscape. And from that, then we’d start to identify, well, what is the one, maybe two really problem, big problems or opportunities that we feel social media can solve? How does that manifest in the world of social? We then think about how do we think it can work and how do we think can we make it a success? And when we try and answer those problems into statements, we then start to construct a strategy. And then that strategy is a statement. And it basically, in that strategy, it answers how we do it, not anything else. It tells you how we’re going to solve those problems in a way that gets us from where we are now to where we need to get to next. And what helps that then below that is a set of guiding principles. Now, those guiding principles are not pillars. They’re not content pillars. They’re not that because, again, unpopular opinion or not, people may hate me for being blunt about this, But there’s so many people in our industry that use the word strategy flippantly when they talk about what we do. And tactics are not strategy, and it annoys the shit out of me. And again, caveat, I’m not the best strategist. So even some of the words I might use now are absolutely ridiculous. And we might get in the comments, you’re full of shit, Michael. But what we need to ensure is like, strategy to me is, what is a problem that we’re trying to solve and how are we going to solve it? And within that then are the guiding principles, which I talked about, which are the spine of the things that we need to constantly reference and go back to every time we think about how we use a platform, how we develop content, how we maybe community manage. That becomes the things that make sure that we are trying to solve that problem that’s in that strategy statement. We then bring this down into a really tight, what we call a strategy on a page that you print out, you present, you get buy-in, you try and convince, you educate, you maybe put it on a pretty tote bag and that they can wear it going on their commute to work if you want. It’s something that everybody follows. And even if that strategy is 50% or 60%, right, once everybody’s bought into something and we’re all aligned and moving in a good direction going forward, you’ll try and do something or cut through or do something different. Then once that’s kind of bought in, then we go into execution mode. And that’s all about then building platform strategy, content strategy, tone of voice, style guides, and the operational model of how you actually make it happen. And the most important part of that is that’s based on the realities of time, resource, and budget. So it’s not taught about organic is separate, creators lives are PR, paid lives are paid. It’s about how you can use all of the things available across the whole infrastructure social to deliver on that strategy with the greatest impact. And sometimes that means actually not doing organic at all, but it’s again, making decisions. And like, again, the last little bit of fluffy line I’ll give you is strategy is also about sacrifice. The most important thing is not about the problems you solve but it’s also all the shit you don’t do to avoid Tom and accounts telling you to put the stupid post up on social. It’s about making and blinkering all that. But you can’t do that or you can’t get buy-in from people without having that strategy, that buy-in where we think about brand and business. You can go up to the big boys in the big room and tell them how to do it, show we actually think like big people and actually do better work.
Speaker 1: Bloody hell, that was just incredible. Thank you so much, mate. What a masterclass to sort of work through that. I mean, I can’t help but reflect on everything that you speak there and you speak about it in a very social centric manner. I’m curious how when you’re heading into organizations, you interact with other marketing, so either the overall marketing strategy or other channels that aren’t social, because it strikes me that one could do everything you have just described purely for social, or a lot of that work may have already been done up front in a broader marketing strategy and you’re more there to deliver. How’s that work for you?
Speaker 2: You think it’ll be done, but if you probably ask the 274 people on this call maybe working for brands, can you all answer yes or no, does your head of brand or brand team have a brand strategy? I could guess or hazard a guess the majority of will say they fucking don’t. The reason why I bring this rigor in is because most of them don’t have a brand strategy there in the first place. And that’s absolutely mental. Like we’re working with partners at the moment where that isn’t happening. And by even for us taking this rigor on social alone, they openly admit they have learned so much from what we’re trying to do because we’re trying to think like brand to do our best work. And they’re actually now going, hey shit, we don’t even have our shit together over here. We’re gonna try and solve and do that. And they’re very self-aware of that. So we treat it in that way to try and actually make it work. And that becomes very, very difficult. But for me, it’s important because if we don’t start thinking and talking brand and business, especially where I can see people talking like one man bands, teams of one, we’re never going to be able to unlock getting more resource and getting more respect for the big opportunity that social is, unless we do this type of thinking and speak their language. You know, if we don’t, they’re just going to treat us like 12 year olds posting shit on the Internet or like going, my 10 year old intern can do it because that’s how they think about what we do right now. and they actually don’t understand how to do it properly.
Speaker 1: I just love it. It’s so useful. Thank you very much. We’ve got Andrea in the chat saying just word, which is a fabulous way to sum it up. You mentioned the senior stakeholders there. So let’s spend a little bit of time because we titled this Building the Business Case for Social Media. And a big part of that is going to be the senior stakeholders. So, can you speak to some of the common misconceptions that you run into with senior stakeholders most regularly? And actually, before you do, I think what’s actually really useful is that the way you just described your process actively seeks to alleviate what I imagine are probably quite a lot of the common misconceptions around social, you know, a plan that is grounded in insight, et cetera, et cetera. Presumably you’ve experienced those regularly enough that you’ve built your process in such a way which alleviates these things. So it’s a different way of framing the process question, but I’m interested why you ended up where you did to battle the misconceptions that you faced.
Speaker 2: I just got tired of the disrespect and the lack of knowledge and rigor that nobody else was doing. Like, again, you talk to senior stakeholders and they still think that, oh, you’ve got 100,000 followers, we reach 100,000 people, let’s stick that boring clinical message on the platforms because everybody’s going to know about it. The lack of the right education is always going to be the problem. And I partly blame them, but I also put the accountability on us as professionals because I don’t think we’ve put that much strategic rigor on our thinking. Now, again, it’s also because people aren’t investing in it, supporting us and delivering it. But what are the small steps we’re taking to speak their language, to bring them on the journey of education, to get respect in the room. You know, even how we report every element of what we do on social. Again, I know I’m being frank, but that’s what I’ve built a business on trying to do right now and bring in the likes of Beth, who works with me. We’re trying to make this easier for people to understand and educate. It’s hard to drill down on one or two misconceptions. I just don’t think so many people really don’t understand it and don’t treat it for the opportunity that it is. And I think we just don’t do a good job of it. So we have to start developing and be more strategic. Yes, it sounds boring and it gets in the way of having fun, but it’s clarity, it’s direction, it’s buy-in. It can be the difference of going, okay guys, rather than trying to run 11 channels and post all this ridiculous fragmented content on our channels because all we are is servants that spray and pray content on behalf of brand X because head of brand, head of PR, head of ESG, Tom and accounts and the CEO wants all this content on the internet. If we actually have focus and a decision to solve one of these problems for the business, and you let us go do that for about six to 12 months, and we’ll try and come back with some signals of that it worked and how we measure it, not just by vanity metrics. If we do that, can you give us a buy-in that we can do something bigger than this? Can we have more investment in people? Could we have more investment in budget? Can we take the managing? I think it’s a bigger, wider issue than a couple of misconceptions. I think there needs to be an overall in how we operate. There needs to be an overall and how we are respected. But the big thing we need to do is we have to earn that respect too. And we’ve got a lot of way to do it. And I know that’s uncomfortable for people to hear, but that’s the truth. I’ve experienced it for 12 years. I’m going into every business I’m talking to, consulting with, and the same problems are happening. They don’t understand strategy. They don’t understand how to do it. They want internal operations, but they actually don’t understand how much time things take to deliver on social. I’ll give you an example. Like in most of my strategic primer slides, I break down, if you want to do this at a basic minimal viable rate, you might think it takes this time, but this is how much time it takes. And I literally break down by the hour what I think it takes to deliver the basic minimum required for a two-person team. But you think it’s that much. And that excludes all the meetings and all the bullshit they have to deal with outside of actually just doing their job. Like they really don’t understand the opportunity or how to do it. And like to me, and again, this sounds dramatic, it’s a full root and rebrands rebuilt of actually getting social up to a place it needs to be. Cause it’s not easy, it’s fucking hard. You know, and anybody who makes it to sound and look easy, it’s just, they’re talking bullshit or selling you a fake fucking pipe dream.
Speaker 1: God, there’s so many preach moments.
Speaker 2: I kind of just want to leave it there. I hope people aren’t crying. I hate being morbid, but we need to come to Jesus moment. And it’s not from taut leaders or people who don’t, it’s everybody on this call. There are no doubt people on this call who are doing fucking great work, but nobody’s hearing their side or how they’re doing it. We have, again, people are going to hate me, say it, but I’m going to go for it. Bet’s going to kill me. But we have gobshites like a fucking Jack Appleby talking absolute crap on the internet that’s helping nobody. He’s shitting over Gen Z’s saying they don’t have a clue and he’s not actually looking at the most knowledgeable people about social which is actually Gen Zers and how we as the millennials who actually have emotional intelligence experience and skin in the game can work with them to do this better. It’s just we we really really really have to do better work. It’s um you know it’s a grounded
Speaker 1: in realityness you know and that’s that’s that’s what I have come to appreciate about your work Because the proof is in the pudding at the end of the day, isn’t it? You know, you worked on the brand, you worked on a series of brands and you’ve ended up in the place which you have, which is, you know, exactly, you know, what we need to be doing. And as you say, it’s hard work and there is it’s become quite striking. I think you look on social medias of social media managers, etc. The amount of burnout that’s in the industry with folks who feel like they have to keep up the entire time, you know, and particularly in I would say more frequently you will see it in younger people and it’s a real shame because it’s Working so hard. So this is why I feel like this strategy piece is so important because it is that direction point, right? All right, you know, it’s that moment to sort of say yes to some stuff. No to other things. That is important Bingo, I want to I want to pick up because you you reference so strongly there the point around strategy And I think one of the things that is quite difficult and you mentioned the word valency metrics as well when you were speaking and so I want to pick up on those two points because this webinar is entitled building the business case for social media and when it comes to metrics when it comes to that sort of tying together point between social media activity and something at the end you know let’s call it ROI for want of a better phrase. I think there still remains for some people a disconnect between those two things. It’s like cool. We went viral, but we’re no idea how it impacted the business Etc. Etc. How do you start to think about that? Because I feel like that’s and we’ve got Laura and in fact in the in the chat who says ROI makes me want to cry and like it’s it’s it’s easy to make this a trivial point, but I think it’s a really important one when we come to exactly what you mentioned, which is about deploying more resource to this because we’ve justified it and showed it, et cetera, et cetera. So on the metrics front, how do you start to do this?
Speaker 2: Look, the most important metric social can provide in the pure simplest form is reach. And again, whether that’s paid, whether that’s organic, whether that’s working with creators, it’s reach. But then each of those methods maybe solve a different objective. One could be conversion based. One could be salience-based, and one could be brand-building-based. But reach is probably the one. There are elements of actually delivering really good community and engagement, but it’s very hard to… There is no one set of metrics beyond reach that is going to solve it. It all goes back to the strategy. How do you measure the problems you’re trying to solve? So one problem could be we need to change perception. So how do you… You can’t measure perception change by just saying, we got likes and shares. there are signals where you can drill down further, let’s call them advocacy metrics, where shares and saves are some sort of signal that it’s ensuring they endorse the content that you’ve created, that you could allude to that that is helping shift perception, because now people are advocating our message. But we’ve got to actually come out of social to try and measure this. You know, there’s so many different ways. Again, measurement studies, you’ve got brand uplift that comes in paid media. Most big brands, and I know it’s, again, it’s probably, it’s more rooted there for those limited to others and small businesses. But brand surveys, research, will again show those signals, give you more antidote, less than antidote references and actual pure numbers to show, is what we’re saying on a specific platform, changing a metric or a mood for this particular person or this particular target audience. And that’s what we did in Ryanair. Sure, we were getting billions of impressions, but were we actually making an impression was the actual real challenge. The problem we had was perception, particularly with the millennial audience. So we tried to actually then figure it out. So I went to the insights team. We had a brand server in Ryanair that went to 30,000 people a month. So we got questions put into that brand server to go, hey, what is the metric that makes you like Ryanair more? I actually asked them, could we put in the question, what makes you hate Ryanair less? But they wouldn’t let me do that. And in that then was a series of actual then options. And from that, social was one of those. So again, we started to then follow and track that to see was everything we’re doing on a day-to-day basis compounding to actually shift the mindset and give us an extra metric to really, really prove beyond all the fame, is it doing something? So it’s a very difficult one to answer because it’s really dependent on the problem you’re trying to solve with the content you’re trying to create. And therefore then you then build the metrics or the way of measuring beyond that. And that could be on platform, that could be platform plus another method of doing it. Nice.
Speaker 1: That’s perfect. Thank you so much. I love the way that you’ve tied that into your earlier answer about that statement. So I think by, you know, you just put in the bow on the whole strategy thing. But, you know, that I think it is really, really important to pick that up. And if it’s only mentioned once, it’d be easy to miss. But the fact you gave that example, as you did, is so, so useful. So thank you very much. That’s that’s really, really helpful, folks. While we’re here, I can see that there’s 10 open questions presently. If you have a question that you would like added in then please do pop it into the Q&A feature and I’ll make sure that we get these to Michael. If you see a question that you like in the Q&A feature then do give it a thumbs up because then we can make sure to prioritize those questions as well as we head towards sort of the back end of the second half of today’s session. But hopefully already this is incredible and I’ve got Mel in the chat just saying the ROI on my personal content is attention and good vibes, and I’m okay with that. And I love that.
Speaker 2: If that’s solving your strategic problem, Mel, you’re doing the right thing.
Speaker 1: I suspect this might be a short answer because I think what you’ve actually answered, really, I feel a little bit silly asking this, but I think it’s also an interesting question to ask, given your context, where you were reaching billions of people. is your view on virality and its actual usefulness? Because I think what we’ve established here is that you work so strongly to solve a strategic aim, you know, and that is important. Is there any benefit to virality beyond solving that strategic goal? Or is it just like, eyes on the prize, Let’s keep focused on that one thing and that one thing only. And it doesn’t matter if it goes viral or not.
Speaker 2: It depends. Again, it depends as the framing for every answer I have. Because if you’re a startup where your objective is solely awareness of the brand, mental availability in basic marketing terms, well, then it is important. And then everything you should do is try to get as much return investment of reaching as many people to be mentally available as possible. If you can then start rooting in compelling messages, emotional triggers to try and then make people consider you as a brand or business, that’s a benefit too. But I’ll give you an example. I’m working with a partner at the moment who is a retailer. They have a marketing budget of $24 million per year. Not a bad-sized budget to work with. But what we got through, they were spending so much time and previous kind of thinking of brand fame on social where they didn’t need it. They were running, I think, 24 TV campaigns a year, which is on average one per week with high frequency across most TV stations. They were having out of home and probably every touch point in the country. They were having radio ads, TV ads. So reach was not their problem. It was actually cut through. So therefore we shifted their thinking on strategy that we actually needed to deliver less messaging and we need to focus on a way that utilize that reach to change a message or change a perception. And that became then the focus of success. So again, virality helps. Reach is the one of the basic drivers of trying to actually use social the most effectively, especially organic. You’re not doing organic to potentially reach a small amount of people. You’re starting to reach a lot of people. Then it gets nuanced as you go down in your thinking. How do you build up foster communities? That might be an approach. I think what also influences too is when you work in marketing, you try not to think of social in isolation to all other touch points, because to the point of the partner I’m working with, we were reaching probably critical mass everywhere else. So we didn’t need to focus on that as much So we can make better, more nuanced decisions on the platforms. If you’re a brand where social is your main driver, that becomes a bigger challenge for you to try and win. But if it’s part of the wider mix, you can be more considerate on how it comes, and it goes back to strategy. The problems from brand strategy could be the same, whether that exists already or whether you get to that point of thinking. But how can it manifest, and what can we solve? Because it might be a case where community is important, but also reaching awareness is important, too. But you know that you’re going to reach everywhere else here. So that means then you can make the decision and the strategic sacrifice of actually, that’s not my focus. My focus is actually now to be more considerate. It’s actually then turning into community first. So I’m gonna focus on fewer, bigger, better, but build an actual pool of people who are so highly engaged that we cultivate a community in a really clever way. So it’s very hard to answer that in a single statement to make everybody on this call work from it. It helps, virality helps. It builds brand fame. It also then, let’s talk about the non-tangible things, is it buys currency in the C-suite too. If your C-suite guys are seeing you’re getting impact and people are talking about your brand, it’s currency, it turns them on. You know it’s going to work and it’s going to do. So I get why people do that sometimes as well. Virality helps, it’s reach. If you can then land a message in it, it helps even more. But it’s not the success of social. It depends, it depends, it depends.
Speaker 1: You know, I mean, what was the first answer that we had today? we need nuance, right? You know, and so it depends, is it a perfectly acceptable answer?
Speaker 2: Completely. And it doesn’t have to be over-engineered either. Like, you know, again, I can be the worst engineer of things sometimes too, but like strategy is getting to a simple point of view. Like you do all the rigor and the work to actually make it a simple thing for people to follow and then do a creative repetition. When you put in the reps and you do that work, that’s where you get to the gold. And then if you can then condition a team to do a creative repetition and be that kind of single-minded, it works, it wins. It’s why it works for Ryanair, why it works for Duolingo. Yes, there’s, they’re kind of skewing and they’re peppering around to different cultures and touch points to kind of grow with scale, but it’s rooted in language learning is fun. And they just, they play with that repeatedly in a very clever way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, love it. I mean, this is just, you know, it’s just good marketing, right? You know, it’s exactly that. We’ve got so many folks in the chat feature right now. I’m going to count them because I think there’s at least 10 folks saying yes please to a whole masterclass slash workshop on creating social strategy with Michael. So you know I think I think you have a lot of early customers for a course. Should you should you choose to do that.
Speaker 2: It’s in the pipeline. I’ll do my little pitch. I’ll get my value of this. What we do, frankly, is we’re trying to do it with businesses first. We’re trying to build a better way of doing it. We’re going to then break it out into working with smaller businesses to do like strategy retreats where we we know people can’t afford the big consultancy fees. But our job, yes, I want to make lots of fucking bank like everybody else does. But I also want to make this a better place. I know that sounds all high and mighty. I fucking sound like Steve Bartlett right now. But what we’re trying to do is like we’re trying to build a model that we can then take to others and then grow it at scale. and the dream would be actually doing a course. It will be fantastic to do it where everybody can learn right up and down. It’s just like, again, I don’t have a bottle of Huel for anybody on the chat, but if I did, like it’s the best drink I’ve ever drank. So yes, to answer, I am looking to try and do this and it won’t be just me, by the way, it’ll be the people I hire and the other people in the industry that I really respect that have really great perspectives, open-mindedness, who even challenge my thing, because the other thing is I love people who have a different point of view. Because I’m not the holy fucking grail. I’m not the Lord and savior of social media. I’m one person with a view who’s trying to make it better. And I love bouncing off people who try and actually want to challenge each other and have a rounded view, not a single mind of view.
Speaker 1: Bang on. Well, I think you have your first retreat sorted. So let us know. And I said this to you before we went live, but we’ll let the community know about it too because I think in all seriousness, a lot of folks have got an awful lot from this conversation so far. There are 20 open questions now and a bunch of thumbs up as well on the questions. So if we now head into community questions, Michael, and like this is gonna be all over the place, they’re coming from lots of different places, but hopefully this is an opportunity to get your opinions on some stuff. So the first question comes from an anonymous attendee, but it’s also mirrored by James Ellis in the third most popular question. But the anonymous question says, like many, X is becoming troublesome. Is it worth attempting to convert followers from this channel to another? And what are you seeing filling this gap presently on social?
Speaker 2: It’ll be difficult to convert them because most people left there are probably right wing dickheads who are looking to stir shit. I know that’s unpopular. some people won’t like that and jump off the call, but X is in a difficult place right now. I think the US presidential election is going to dictate, and this is my view by the way, and I could be talking absolute shit, but I think the presidential election is going to dictate whether X stays or goes. If Republicans win, Elon stays and it becomes an even bigger cesspool of shit. If he doesn’t, and you’re gonna see every country come for his head, bring him to court and take him down where it’ll come to a stage where he’ll probably end up having to liquidate the company and it’s gone. So I’m not gonna tell people what they do and what they don’t, but if you’re still on X publishing content, I will be strongly considering exiting and even your exit strategy, just stop. Yes, keep it live for maybe the current customer service things that might be coming through and some of those functional things, but every partner I’ve been working with, They’re all there. Most of them are off it already and not. They don’t exist.
Speaker 1: Nice. OK. And if we broaden that out to James’s question on what advice would you give to folks exiting channels in general? Walk away.
Speaker 2: Walk away. Throw the keys in the letterbox and get the fuck out of there. I don’t I don’t. Yes, there might be a bit of an exit work needed because there is still a high volume of people when they look for you from a customer experience point of view, they search in these platforms and you appear, there’s a value there, but when it comes to producing content, switch it off because in most cases, and I know I’m being blunt here, nobody gives a fuck. We’re brands.
Speaker 1: Hang on. No, love it. Good. Okay, let’s go to the next one from Sarah. So Sarah asks, and now there’s 24 open questions, so let’s go for the next one from Sarah Jean, who says, What is the one skill you need to hone in on to make standout posts and we’ve covered strategy a lot in here, but if you were to maybe if you’re even just to reflect on some of the folks that you’ve worked with in the past and some of the traits that you admire about them, what were the characteristics that made them brilliant for their job?
Speaker 2: That’s a difficult one because it again it depends on your strategy and your content And I normally build a team that reflect the strategy. And for example, I hired creators for 50 percent of my team at Ryanair because I needed people who understand the creative behavior and creating content in the way that was social first. I balanced that off with more of the let’s call them the traditional social media manager who was like corporately conditioned to attention to detail and brought those together. I can’t answer that in a simple question. And it is, I really, I build teams and operations based on the strategy and like what I do in my work, like take for example, with a partner I go into, when we develop the strategy, simultaneously we’re doing a root and branch review of the organization and the operation, whether that’s internally or externally. And we do one of three things, we reorg if we think it can happen, we retrain if we think we can happen, or sometimes in most cases, and I know this is tough, but it’s business, is we rehire for them, because you might not have the right team to execute on that strategy, and you can’t operationally deliver on it. So it’s a very hard one to answer. But in the context of Ryanair, I built the team over detail-oriented, creator-first. I brought in a mix of skill sets that complemented each other. And then we could build a high-performing operation off the back of the mixed set of skills. It wasn’t a case of I needed seven Michaels. I needed a Conor, a Lily, an Amy, a Megan, a Bill, a Leticia, Camilla, all of the names of the wonderful people I hired. They each came with strengths. They each came with developmental opportunities and they all learned off each other, but the combination of all their beautiful misfit brains and thinking made the team what we had. And I just don’t think we would have reached any of the heights of what we did without building that team based on the strategic needs.
Speaker 1: I don’t think that’s a trivial point to make, you know, like, I think that’s actually a really, really great insight. Um, and, and actually not hugely obvious. And I say this, um, as someone hiring right now, um, in the sense that, uh, we are hiring for someone who, um, fits the cultural, uh, characteristic of, of the marketing meetup, as well as, uh, tasks that we would like them to do, but actually to have that additional layer. I mean, of course we have a strategy, but it’s more implicit rather than avert in the sense that when you’re speaking about hiring, you’re saying, we would like to achieve X and therefore we’re going to do, we’re going to hire these people. I find that fascinating. So thank you. That’s really, really useful. Let’s take the next question from Mel. I’m going to ignore the first two for the meantime and head to the third most popular question because I just need to read the first two and make sure we haven’t covered it so far. So Mel asks, you mentioned you’ve been obsessed with social media forever, how do you manage to separate work and non-work and keep a healthy balance? Is it even possible?
Speaker 2: I don’t do a very good job of it, being completely transparent, and that’s what I’m learning so much from the younger generation come true, because they do an exceptionally good job of compartmentalizing work from life. I am a millennial who has been brought up and raised on the slog of corporate, and I’ve have slowly built bad habits, but even on social too. I find it incredibly difficult to switch off. I’m trying and looking at ways to do it, but it’s probably in this current form become even more difficult because now I’m trying to build my own business off the back of it. So I need to be like knee deep in it. It’s very difficult for us. I struggle to try and find out. I do think, again, it goes back, I know it goes back to strategy, purpose, decision-making, that once you have that focus, you can start creating boundaries and compartmentalize. Other than that, it becomes a greater challenge to switch off, and I’m probably not the best person to give advice for that because I would be a hypocrite.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s so hard. I think, as referenced earlier in the chat, that in social media specifically, it feels like that need to always be on. And even though you are right when you point out strategy stuff and sort of saying yes to some stuff and no to other things. The fact that, you know, that can help to a point, right? You know, but if something drops at nine o’clock at night on a Saturday evening, you know, and you feel like you got to be reactive to that in the first couple of hours, that’s tough. Is that just, I guess, I’m asking this, not looking for an answer, but is that just a necessary part of being a social media manager, that you kind of always?
Speaker 2: It’s necessary and unnecessary at the same time. And again, when we touched on it like when we were doing the prep work, like we’re not firefighters or doctors, we’re not saving lives, we work on bloody marketing. Like if something can’t wait till Monday, that’s a big stretch into interrupting somebody’s life. What I used to do in Ryanair, for example, because I’m a hypocrite, I just made sure that my team didn’t work on the weekends and evenings. I took the cover, I did all the work. So the reactive opportunities you would have saw in those times out of clock, that was my responsibility. Why? Because I was probably getting paid a lot more than them, which meant that I should be doing that and not people who are being paid an average wage to work an average week. I think that’s incredibly unfair. If there’s ways to balance that, whereby if they do it, they get time in lieu and get balance. If the balance is there, working the unorthodox hours then is somewhat, I guess, acceptable. But unless it’s mission critical, I think we just need to create more boundaries. I love this question I asked somebody in an interview before for a job. I asked Normie, if there’s one thing you can change about social, what would that be? Her answer was absolutely fantastic, and I actually steal it every time and use it. Wouldn’t it be great if you could create social and actually treat it like a corporate job? It opens at nine to five, or like the stock exchange. It opens at nine, it closes at five, and then we can all walk away. Imagine putting those guardrails around social. It would probably completely transform a positive way technology can actually work and a positive way the platforms can work. But I think that’s a bit of a pipe dream when all these platforms want to sell you loads of ads and lots of products and make lots of money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, interesting. Thank you for answering that. I appreciate it’s not an easy one to answer but we’ve got Anna in the chat so that’s a very good approach. So you got some got some validation. Let’s take the next question from Georgia who references something from earlier in the chat when you were speaking about your strategy. So Georgia asked the question. Do you think it’s necessary to have content pillars or guidelines alongside the SOAP and guiding principles, or does this make things unnecessarily convoluted?
Speaker 2: Yes and no, because I’m trying to unpack my strong viewpoint on that at the moment. So the program that I’m currently delivering with my partners is kind of spread out over like 12 months. And in that we have a strategy that sits on top, and then we start to break down execution of strategy work. So content strategy, platform strategy, tone of voice, style guide, and then all the tactical nuance that sits under that. I’m currently working through a framework, a content strategy, where I’m trying to get people more to a single viewer platform, like an idea platform in marketing terms. And under that, I’m currently using pillar team systems to try and make sure that the most important messages that need to be expressed through that platform, the intersection of the two of them happening. Where I’m challenging myself, and Beth working with me at the moment is, is whether those pillars actually need to exist, or I’m trying to retrofit what is content strategy of old into something that may not be needed. I don’t have a straight answer. I think they’re helpful. They’re helpful in terms of putting structure and rigor to your content planning. So the functional planning of making sure you have the right balance and distribution of messaging, I think it’s important, but I don’t know whether it’s the right approach in content strategy anymore. And that’s something I’m trying to figure out and get a stronger viewpoint on. I think where it becomes even more brilliantly simple is, Yes, you can get all those messages into content, but you’ve got to remember the story arc of social content is so small, and you’ve got a small window of opportunity. And not everybody sees the same content that you post every day. It’s different people, and there’s a compounding effect of it over time. And the route to actually doing it well is probably an idea platform that is expressed through pieces of content creatively or repetition time after time after time. There might be nuance of change of how you make it culturally relevant, how you make it relatable or how you end up message. But the silver thread is that idea of platform. And by doing that, that compound effect is going to have constant culture for you. So, again, another talk around answer, but kind of talking through the process of where I’m trying to get a better view on that. They’re important for functionality and kind of operationalizing messaging. But I don’t know if I would consider that to be strong content strategy going forward. and hopefully in time I’ll have a stronger viewpoint on that.
Speaker 1: Well I appreciate you sharing your exploration and it struck me as you were speaking there that the role of a social media manager or social media team in particular feels particularly challenging because what you’re having to do is internalize a strategy so strongly and then react to something in the moment which You know when when you were speaking through the mole it struck me that it could be quite a lot of layers and quite complicated but actually what you’re asking folks to do is internalize this and make a judgment call probably like that you know because you’re having to relate these two desperate things and so I guess in the spirit of what you’re speaking about it feels like simplicity simplicity of strategy without these extra layers is probably going to be quite useful which is completely probably why strategy on one page is is is a helpful place to get to
Speaker 2: And it might sound over engineered at first But and it will be it will slow you down at first but what what’s great is when you go into operational mode and you look about you and the other people around you and how You actually bring this into a system Conditioning happens it becomes second nature the strategy comes off the page and into the brain You start figuring out how you either do it individually or work together with others to actually then and do it, and it becomes innate, it becomes faster, it becomes inherent in your thinking. So you spend less time in trying to force, how do I strategically land this message with this moment in culture to, there’s the moment in culture, is this the opportunity? I can work, kind of develop my idea, condition it faster and actually then move, and it does get better. Like when we did it at Ryanair, it was like, it took six months to get to that eureka moment. Like we were failing lots and okay with that because we were learning and speeding up, getting better at it. And when we got to that point, we were homing. It became second nature, and the speed and the timing of what we did got better and better every time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, love it. And I guess this is in the spirit of Teresa’s question in the Q&A, who asks, can we develop and implement a strategy in small steps over time if we don’t have the capacity to do it all at once? And if yes, what are the basic steps to take? And I guess you’ve already explained your model. so I don’t necessarily feel like you need to do that, but with your last answer, you spoke about a very iterative process that sort of got better. So do you start with a more basic thing and then flesh it out, or do you go full hog and then sort of rein it in over the course of time?
Speaker 2: I think it depends on your business. And this is where, like, and again, this is where I’ve learned by failing in what I’m doing right now. I worked with a startup who were trying to move fast and accelerate fast, but I was trying to take them through a slower, taller process, and it didn’t work for them. they had a small team under pressure to scale fast. I would probably focus on trying to get a footstep and actually doing simple social that would work based on intuition or thought or fastly doing it whilst building to a point of strategy. But even your strategic thinking, it doesn’t have to be war and peace. It doesn’t have to be six weeks of frameworking. It can be fast-tracked, but just there’s an agreement, there’s an alignment, there’s a decision made on what you do and some simple steps to do it. You can try and build it and then iterate it when you feel that you’ve got momentum. So it can be done relatively simple, but like once you’re given room to breathe, like and again, I know this sounds harsh, but whether you’re big or small, if you stop posting tomorrow, nobody gives a shit. Like if you really want to spend time on strategy, you could be off the Internet. Yeah, you might have a brand who has like build consistency and frequency that if they stop, momentum will shift. But if you don’t have anything, you could literally park social for six weeks, work on all of this and then go back to it and rebuild again and probably have a better chance of actually succeeding than what you’re doing right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, bang on. And it strikes me with the steps that you spoke about, like, you know, again, it’s marketing fundamentals, but you know, that you spoke about an insight earlier on. So getting that insight is gonna be really useful. But I also, reflecting on your answers, at one point you sort of said, the problem we’re gonna try and solve is X. And you described it with Ryanair about the Gen Zs, I think it was that you described and Millennials. Yeah.
Speaker 2: So the expectations were too high. The silver spoons in their mouth were just, you know, too many of them. Go ahead. Go ahead.
Speaker 1: Sorry. Just that statement, you know, having that statement feels endlessly useful and I think that’s probably something when you ask the question earlier on about whether people have a brand strategy, even if people get to that point that is going to be endlessly useful in getting to yeses and those as you pointed to with with general strategy stuff. Michael what the hours flown by my friend. So I think that’s probably taking us to to to the end. So what I’m going to do is just capture all of these questions so that you’ve got them. I know that you’re exceptionally busy, but at least you’ve got them in case that you want to fuel that with the rest of your LinkedIn content going forwards but do you do you want to do one or two more we
Speaker 2: have time if everybody else’s time it’s it’s up to it’s up to you oh right if you’re if you’re up for it I’m up for it yeah I’m here to help and again all I ask is it’s a good return take a screenshot say Michael Corcoran is amazing at social
Speaker 1: media on LinkedIn and then we’re all happy so let’s go look at that well let’s While we’re doing that, I’m going to try and find your LinkedIn QR codes, so you get inundated with requests.
Speaker 2: I hope. I guess, but it’s also true. I got to put food on the table, guys, you got to help me.
Speaker 1: Right. I want to go to some questions that we haven’t covered so far. So folks, could you do me a favor as well? And if you see any questions that you really want to get prioritized, then please do that. Let’s just take the top question. I haven’t had time to read it in its totality. So I’m going to be reading and speaking at the same time. So Georgia asks, when initially implementing a new marketing strategy for a business, how do you prioritize tasks or channels, particularly for B2B where the lead generation is slower and it’s a longer game, it’s easy to get swept up in the quick wins.
Speaker 2: How do you know what’s important? I always start with the strategy, Then I move into platform strategy mode. There’s a period where we just naturally let things happen. If there’s existing channels that exist, we let them go. We push, we get the best set of content across multiple channels. But through that platform strategy, we start to make decisions on a channel hierarchy. We start to think about, you know, what priority secondary or exploratory channels we want to do. And we prioritize based on time and resource where we think is the best opportunity to insert ourselves. What Intel do we have that is the best channel? Is that based on demographic? is it based on insight? Is it based on experience that we have? And then we start to make decisions on what we focus on. Because again, we can’t be all things to all people. We have to make decisions on what is the best place to go. And I’ll give you another example. I’m working with a partner right now where their audience is actually business and leisure travellers. But they are first thought TikTok is a priority place for them. And again, it is a huge channel. It is a great place to reach. But if we want to find ways to show impact and accelerate and reach the right people immediately, we were like, you’re missing out on a potential opportunity by focusing on LinkedIn. Your core audience lives and breathes there. That doesn’t mean we have to be corporate Joe with white shirts and best wishes and your new role or congratulations on your fifth anniversary at GlaxoSmithKline. It’s a huge exceptional creative place that’s on tap that we were like, no, if you want to move fast, get impact and get buy-in, we need to think about how we truly prioritize channels and we prioritize it based on the strategy and we then de-prioritize everything else. Yes, we understand the opportunity of maybe other channels and the success it has, but could the compromise be we just cross-post the same content that we have tailored for our primary channels and then once we start to prove impact, once we start to build a method, once we start to find efficiencies in our day-to-day and how we operate, does that free up more time to focus then on other tactics, on other channels? Then we make that decision and we can push forward.
Speaker 1: Love it. Thank you. I mean, it’s one of those challenges that is perennial for so many folks. So again, that prioritization thing speaks to a lot of folks. Folks, the QR code is right there. If you’re not already following Michael, then please do or drop him a connection request. It’ll be nice to break his LinkedIn for a little while. So let’s go to, actually, I’m gonna ask a really naive question here, but I’m consciously asking a naive question. Hopefully it doesn’t insult you too much based on the past sort of 63 minutes of conversation. I am going to fully accept strategy and the need for strategy and everything that goes alongside it. But what we’ve also done in this conversation is acknowledge an example being X where there is a social media platform which is in decline and a certain demographic are on it And therefore it may be something that folks would not like to engage in accepting that that is an example of speaking about channels in generalities. Where are you seeing like opportunities in general accepting that it may or may not fit people’s strategies across the social media channels presently because I love LinkedIn, but I’m not on TikTok, etc, etc, etc. Is that a really naive question or is it
Speaker 2: No, I think like interesting channel LinkedIn is one of those channels. I think people have neglected Instagram I think Instagram is the biggest fucking machine on social that I think we’re all sleeping on I could put an entire team of six people on Instagram alone for one brand and we still wouldn’t be delivering the opportunity That’s there. I think LinkedIn is one there are interesting ones where obviously there’s a shift in How we actually behave on social so it’s best stuff gone to real self now it’s gone from real self to sharing with smaller groups and communities so you’re seeing community-based platforms winning and growing and being interesting places you know discord is an interesting space that people are really capitalizing on and also again a funny one which is interesting is CapCut and people wouldn’t consider CapCut to be a social media channel I know this is a ridiculous hot take so again I could be talking shit but this is just I’m trying and observing and find where the next one is. But CapCut is basically a TikTok in disguise. Gen alphas are kids of millennials like me. I have a nine and a 10 year old who have tablets but are not allowed access to social media but they are allowed access to CapCut because they like making content because they see the Jake Pauls and the KSIs and the sidemen of the world doing this that they want to be there. So they asked to download CapCut and they’re using CapCut in a way that is creating content like them, but not going on the internet. However, if you actually go into the CapCut app, you can follow people, follow their templates, comment on their templates, engage in their content, actually have community building CapCut in a way that is exactly like the interface of TikTok, but it’s not TikTok. And this is all on the tablets of people from 10 years old and above that are becoming inherently comfortable with CapCut that looks like could be a space in the place. I’m not telling you to target children by any means, but it is a place that is probably in the next few years going to be a potential social media space because they’re making templates. They’re not sharing them publicly, but they’re sharing them with their followers within that app that not many others are maybe behaving or seeing. So it’s an interesting space to actually go into to see is this an opportunity in a few years to come? But right now, I don’t think there’s a major shift. I think the direct messaging apps are potentially a place if community is the solution. LinkedIn is a no-brainer. I think if you are actually polarizing different on LinkedIn, organic reach is huge, the introduction of other people that like it or not, video in the form of TikTok and LinkedIn, I wouldn’t get too worried either because you’re seeing they’re two different feeds. And it’s a bit like Instagram. You’ve got real feed and you’ve got the other one which it makes it, provides more opportunity. So to me is if you focus on those two, they’re really good opportunities to win, even though TikTok is a challenge for someone who’s quite saturated and it’s a very difficult place for brands to win.
Speaker 1: 100%, probably the last question.
Speaker 2: Oh, and YouTube, sorry. Again, I saw it again, YouTube is, again, if you can crack the code there with shorts, you’re onto a winner. Again, second biggest search, and it’s huge. I just don’t think brands have tapped, untapped it in the way creators have, and there’s probably an opportunity there, and there’s also things you’re observing and seeing around creator-brand partnerships, creating long-form, interesting content in certain categories, where the return of that actually is starting to come back. Love it.
Speaker 1: Mate, you’re a hero. Let’s call it there, because I’ve been going through the Q&A and there’s some questions which are new, but I feel have been answered by the answer of strategy. And so I don’t feel like I want to sort of make you say that in lots of different ways. And the questions have come in sort of earlier in the chat, just so the community is aware. So, you know, like they may have been asked at that point. So Michael, you are a legend. Thank you very much. It was endlessly interesting to get that sort of grounded reality of social combined with some real sort of up-to-date information. So thank you very, very much. I’ll just quote this last one from you from Jenny, who says, what an incredible hour. You’ve revitalized a very tired social media manager here. Thank you, Michael. Brilliant in capital letters, but there are so many of these comments mirrored in the chat as well. So thank you, mate. That’s endlessly appreciated. and thank you as ever to the whole community for providing excellent questions as ever. The vitality in the chat, it just makes such a difference to these sessions. So you are endlessly appreciated. And I hope this hour was as useful as I absolutely think it was for you all today. Before we get going, I just want to say a big thank you to our featured sponsor for this week, who are Frontify. I spoke about them at the beginning, helping you bring some brand consistency to all of your efforts. And also a big, big thank you to Exclaimer, Cambridge Marketing College, Redgate, and ScoreApp. We’ll speak about those in future weeks. Michael, you’re a hero, mate. Thank you for taking the time and thank you to the whole community. We’re back next week with someone I know that you like, which is Annie May Hodge, speaking all about social media updates that you need to see.
Speaker 2: She’s a legend. I steal all her updates.
Speaker 1: I love it. The advocacy is real. Michael, thank you, mate. And thank you, everyone. We hope to see you next week. Take care, everyone. Thank you. Take care.