Why your company LinkedIn page is sh*t | E53 with Liam Currie

Emma and Ruta are joined by Liam Currie, Content Creator, Actor and Writer to discuss the importance of injecting personality into company social media pages. They explore why many companies are hesitant to push the boundaries and showcase their true voice. The fear of getting canceled, jeopardising reputation, and dividing the audience are some of the concerns that hold companies back. The conversation highlights the benefits of building trust, engaging with the audience, and creating a unique brand identity through social media.

Takeaways

- Injecting personality into company social media pages can help differentiate the brand and build trust with the audience.
- Finding the right tone of voice starts with understanding the values and vision of the founders and senior leadership team.
- Encouraging founders to be more personable and authentic can help them connect with the audience and build trust.
- Social media is a valuable channel for showcasing the company's personality, engaging with the audience, and establishing a unique brand identity. Storytelling is an important aspect of content creation and marketing.
- Authenticity and being true to oneself are crucial in business.
- Video content is highly effective in engaging audiences.
- Podcasts offer numerous benefits, including showcasing industry expertise and facilitating conversations with experts.
- Editing is a key part of content creation, allowing for the selection of the best moments and the creation of engaging narratives.

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Transcript

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Hi, everyone, and welcome back to Blame It on Marketing with Emma and Ruta. We're very excited. We're on season seven. Can you believe it? And today we are going to be talking about social media drama, the joys. And we are joined by. I feel like I don't know how to introduce you, Liam, because I feel like we're basically related. So here's Liam. Please introduce yourself to everyone. Hi, I'm Liam. I'm Emma's adopted brother. We've known each other a very long time, what I am. I am a freelance content creator, and I kind of like to focus on creating content that is not boring. And also, I think very importantly for this discussion, I think it is worth mentioning that Liam is also an actor because I think I genuinely believe that this plays into Liam's ability to create really fucking good content. So I want to include that in that. I hope your agent doesn't sue us. They're going to have to sign this off. we can't pay him. So please don't charge us. So one of the reasons I'm happy to do the little preamble about why we want to talk about social media drama, and that is because predominantly all three of us kind of tend to work for B2B companies in particular. And there is so much worry and concern in particular when it comes to people's B2B company pages on social media and what they post and what they don't post. And we have quite often on the podcast tackled, you know, from an individual perspective what you should and shouldn't be posting how to work with influencers. But we haven't actually tackled the company page. And what people get so wrong about that. So I this is a discussion for all three of us really. But like so why do we think that so many companies are worried about pushing their social media, like really pushing it to the sort of like the edge and trying to find a personality or sense of humor and what they post. I'll start. I think that, understandably, businesses are worried about getting canceled. They're worried about their reputation jeopardizing their reputation that if it's an older brand that they've taken many years to build and maybe start ups are worried because I do know that they've invested some invested a lot of money into something and and it is a huge risk. What if what if they get it wrong? What if they get that tone of voice wrong? What if they divide an audience or say something wrong? I think that's that's what they're all scared of or a lot of a lot of brands are scared of. I think Yeah. I think tied to the slots a bit. I think a lot of startups also want to seem like the kind of not a startup like that professional they've been around. They know what they're doing. So kind of also pushing that tone of voice and being more even personable. It doesn't even have to be like, funny or, you know, whatever, just sounding more like real human beings they kind of stay away from because they want to make sure that they look good and like, you know, professionally, they've been around for ages. I think that's important. That word professional, like the word professional, it's even for me, like I probably would assume that professional means being very straight laced, very business. The very shirt and tie, very polite, always positive, and kind of like lacking a bit of a bit of soul, a bit of who you are. And so I think maybe that's where some brands go wrong. They try and fit into that version of being professional. But but times have changed. Times have changed, like the way we work, the way we speak to each other in work is is very different now. Very different now. Etc.. Like, what does professional even mean anymore? Like, far beyond that like shirt and tie. People shouldn't have tattoos, people shouldn't have piercings visible, all of that kind of bullshit that we kind of all tolerated probably quite early on in our careers. Like we don't tolerate any of that anymore. You know, you wouldn't, you wouldn't want to work for a company that said to you, like you need to be dressed in even smart, casual, like C or C get fucked. I haven't got time for that. I also wonder. So I think there's a couple of other things to add to this, this point about like why companies are like, so worried about it. I think first of all, there's that whole like what the founder and the senior leadership team in particular, especially maybe bigger companies want to say about the business. So there's this sort of like pressure that like if we are not presenting ourselves in the way that we want to present ourselves and we're doing something wrong and therefore maybe we're not marketing ourselves accurately. And then I think, you know, on the cancel culture side, I think people are worried about offending their audience. I know certainly like reach or not, we've worked for a lot of high tech companies and it's always been along the way, like, you don't want to insult h.r. But you you want to show yourself to be supportive. But then with that challenge comes the fact that, you know, you are kind of grouping the audience into one bucket and you're saying like they don't want to be offended, they don't have a sense of humor, all these sorts of things, which we know is not true. And you're just talking about a very particular niche subset of people. But then what happens with that as if you people are worried that you're going to alienate certain people by making certain different types of content that therefore somehow your it goes back to that. Sorry, this is a bit of a tangent, but it goes back to that whole thing about, you know, like our total addressable market is everyone. So if we alienate one part of our audience because we make a certain type of content, we're losing business because we're alienating people and that just is not true. Like none of us. I have never seen that. I've heard it. If you have reached all of like in your careers, but like if we make like in particular content that's like comedic, I don't think I don't think I've ever seen that alienate anyone. I'm going to say that. Emma's wearing some Charlotte Tilbury makeup, and I was just thinking, I have seen content that will make me not want to buy from a brand, but it's more to do with, like, the values associated maybe with that content or that person that is posting that content. So I think you don't have to cross that barrier by being funny or being, you know, cheeky or like whatever it is that you want to do, even by being dramatic that there's certainly like a way to do it without it being not appealing to a wider audience, even. it also doesn't have to be extreme. Like, like we're we're talking about drama and comedy. Like, it doesn't mean it has to be like, full of the funny, but it can just be like a little bit tongue in cheek. It can have like a little bit of naughtiness in it or it doesn't have to be like, depends what your tone of voice is. And you you have these discussions when you're when you're like setting up your socials. Like what, what, what do we want to sound like? So it doesn't have to be ridiculous. But I think I think it is super important to have a bit of personality that that that does reflect your brand and does speak to your audience because I know we're going to get onto this. But ultimately you want you want your you want your audience and your ICP to get to know you like they want to know who they're going to be working with. They want to know, can they work with you? They want to know what your point of view is within your And it's one of the easiest ways to differentiate yourself, right? Like by sounding a certain way, by creating certain types of content. Like, your competitor might have the exact same product, but if you speak in a different way about it and you position yourself in a different tone of voice, you you'll be completely different. And you can go after complete different audiences, which again, could be really beneficial if it's a if it's a highly competitive market, like, hey, our tech, for example, is. that like, and this is and I apologize in advance for everybody's listening to this. He's like, I've built this amazing product and it's very different. It's probably not. I genuinely believe your differentiator is genuinely it's going to be your people, the people that work for you, and it's going to be your marketing and your ability to market yourself. And if you if you don't do those two things, you don't invest in those two things. Like at the moment in particular the way the economy is, you're fucked. yeah. Amen. I mean, let's be honest. Some products, especially within the SAS world, aren't actually that interesting. the thing like you said, the thing that differentiates between that product, one piece of software to another is probably who the people are. That's what makes it interesting. Why So, Liam, how do you go about trying to find your voice with some of your clients? Because you have some, you have like an interesting mix of B B2B SaaS clients. You also have some more B2C, like services? How do you go about kind of trying to find their voice and encourage them into being more whatever they need to be? I guess? think it starts with the founders and the directors. I think that's where you should always go to first. they're the people that began the business. The vision came from them. And I, I always think that's where the passion lies and the passion. The passion is what will drive personality. The passion is what will build trust in your audience. And that will come through. That will come through when you do interviews, video interviews with them that will come through the voice on your socials as well. So I think, yeah, always start with the founder. What are their values, what are their points of view? Rather than trying to kind of create, create a point of view out of thin air, like use that as your inspiration, use that to route where your business comes from, where your point of view comes from. and what if you're working with a founder who is kind of really adamant on on being quite dry and, well, the old school professional, I guess. Is there any kind of tips and tricks you can suggest to try and kind of loosen them up or maybe just educate them about why they should be a bit more personable? I think I've not had that that experience yet in my career, to be honest. But I think if I was in that situation, I would probably show them some references of what we're trying to do, like, look at this guy's YouTube. He runs that, he runs a solar installer company, he's got all these followers and he's getting business off the back of this. Now he's got a booming social channel. Look at his style. And it's not about replicating that person because you can't you can't take some of his personality and be like, that's that's being an actor. But, but it kind of I think it would probably allow that kind of person that's maybe a little bit stiff, a little bit withdrawn and a little bit scared to kind of realize that they can actually just be themselves. And it's their expertise and their passion and their point of view that will that will shine in the video. So, yeah, maybe use references to to help them, I guess. I don't know if you guys have any other ideas on that. I was going to say maybe find a way to ease them into content as well, because if if you've never made content before, kind of jumping straight into video can be quite intimidating. So like finding ways to like, slowly get them through the steps into maybe video instead of just dropping them in front of a camera, because that can be quite nerve wracking You never know. Go down the pub and have a chat. one of the other things I would also say is that get people familiar with social media because one of the things that also crept through my mind as we were having this conversation is that people still and I find this very difficult to believe, but it's true, don't see social media as a as a as a kind of like revenue generating channel, but people see it as kind of like the brand awareness or they kind of like something that we have to do. And so that probably isn't necessarily always the resource and the budget behind it that it needs, especially if you are a big a company to kind of turn it into this kind of like revenue generating place or this place where we showcase the businesses personality. So I think, you know, that's one of the first challenges is if you are working with senior leaders when it comes to social media and you're looking at your company page, giving them some experiences that show that this is actually worthwhile, it's a worthwhile channel to invest in is really important. Whether you do that with data or whether you try to encourage them, say, for example, to, I don't know, spend half an hour with you and you walk them through like what engagement looks like, how they could be engaging with other people, show them people to follow, so they start to feel some value from it first and then maybe think about going down that content creation route, especially if they really like against it. And I think that is probably one of the biggest challenges that people see when it comes to the content creation side of things as well, is that they think it's easy. We're going to get onto this in a bit, but it's really, really not. And that's why people do it as a job. But one of the things I'm really interested in is like, why in the first place would you and we see this there are lots of really good examples of B2B brands that do inject personality and humor and all those other good things into that, their social media company pages. But like, why would you try and do that in the first place? Like, what do you I know we've alluded to revenue, but like, why would you guys do you want to do that in the first place? What good can it do for your company? you want your socials to have a personality because you want your potential customers, your ICP, you want them to get to know you in their own time, in their own space. You want that to be that teaser of who you are online so that they can go, okay, actually, like I kind of like these guys. They I understand where they are within the market. I feel like these are people that I could talk to and I like their product. So yeah, I'm going to keep and keep an eye on them and then maybe not be thinking this consciously, but then when the time is right, they're like, no, I like those guys. They're doing some cool stuff on socials and I trust them. I think that's it. Like, and that takes time. Like it's probably not going to happen after making one post, which is really full of personality. But if you're consistently doing content that has a personality, then you have your audience. And I know you guys have talked about for your audience that just kind of lurk there and observe. They don't engage, they don't give you any likes, they don't give you any comments, but that they're watching you. And and when the time is right, you'll be front of mind. Because if you spent the time building and showcasing consistent personality and and there's a confidence in that as well I think when you show your personality, there's a confidence behind your brand that says and we know our products good and we're going to talk about ourselves like real people because we're not insecure, like our product is good. And that's what builds trust, right? think it goes back to that sort of like when you think about influencer marketing, one of the things that the guys that we some of the guys we've had on the podcast have talked about when it comes to that, is that, you know, yeah, that consistency, that staying front of mind, that's all quite challenging to do. But if you are there, you know the amount of times that one of them has said, like people start to reach out to me because they like my videos and they want to find out more about what it is that the company actually does, you can apply that same principle to your company profile. It really doesn't have to be this kind of like corporate, faceless, like we just put out company posts or churn out the blog because that's the other mistake people make is just like constantly just, yeah, go to the blog. Go to the blog. People get obsessive. You will get fucking bored of that because they do. Course they do. They want something else to engage with also LinkedIn. Yeah. LinkedIn doesn't encourage you to leave LinkedIn. So, you know, when you try to leave on a blog from LinkedIn, it'll be like, you're trying to leave. Like, are you sure you want to leave? So if if people are already on LinkedIn and spending probably too many hours of the day on it, fucking be on there and say something useful, not just try and send them off to another website. But I really love your point on trust Liam, because buying anything expensive, which is usually the case in B2B com SAS, you know, products are usually quite spendy. You, you innately have to have a level of trust that this company is going to deliver on what they said. But trust is really hard to build unless you're like in front of people talking to them, have a long relationship with them. So actually being a character and kind of showing your values in your social is a really great way to do that. I've like never thought about that before. Like that element of it. But that's a really great point. from day one, marketing from scratch, like, what are some of the things you would do? One of the first things I would do is always set up a social media profile, especially for LinkedIn. That's going to take time to build. Like we know these things don't happen overnight. If you're not there and you're not showing consistency, like the way that you're going to start getting clients are probably through your network if you're if this is day one. But you know, there is going to come a time where the black book isn't going to work or your networks are not going to work anymore. So if you're not doing that upfront investment into things like social and showing trying to build trust with your audience, there's going to come a point where you can't scale and you can't all of a sudden turn that tap on or turn like hit that button and overnight have like all of these people coming to you inbound. That's not how it works. So if you don't do that trust building traffic, building exercises in the background, you know you're just you're basically Yep of them. We've said it so many times, just like walking into a situation where you're not going to have any pipeline Yeah. And there's always sort of talk about even if even if the product isn't ready, like I would love of metrics, the product isn't ready, but we know where we're going, we can share what's happening and then we can talk about the general ethos of what we're trying to do and share lots of information about that. So don't be worried if maybe like you're not quite ready. Like start, start talking about it because again, you're building your trust and expertise in that area as a brand. exactly that isn't it's about saying we're not ready yet, but we've we know we've got a good idea. We know we're on to something. And if you can bring that level of authenticity into your start up at an early stage, you will get some people that will want to follow your journey because they they know that you're credible. They they might already follow your personal account on LinkedIn, for example, and they already trust your expertise and that they're probably a bit excited by what you're embarking on. And I actually think I think of a lot of content creation. I know you guys hate this phrase, like when marketers say, I think that's me. Yeah. Specifically, look. Liam. from an acting background and, and screenwriting as well. And I think there is an element of like the journey that, that you can get into your business pages as well. It's like people, people love to see, like people grow. It's like, it's like if you look at some Instagram influencer that suddenly goes viral and then you follow it, you follow them because you've seen a cool video, you've seen a cool video that you found funny or whatever, and then you like maybe don't check in with an account until another six months time. Then you're like, my God, they've got like 100 followers now. They've got like sponsors. They're like, This is now business Like that really excites me. And I'm sure I'm not the only person that excites. It's like people love to buy into not just what your product is, but also they want to like see somebody winning. They want to see somebody that's like doing well within their field. I think I have a gripe with storytelling because no one does it. Well, they just keep saying the word as if, like, you know, we should be doing more storytelling. And it's like, Well, have you got a single story to tell right now? Because I don't think you do. You like you don't know what the story is. So I think that's why I have such a gripe with it. But Liam's an actual actor and writer, so he can fucking tell a story. So if anyone's going to be storytelling, it should be Liam. is maybe what maybe why you don't like it is because people try and they try and create a narrative that isn't true. And it and it stinks. Like when you see that it stings. Like one thing that I love about Emma, your website advocates you is that you've got like a little a little paragraph on there, which is how you started Advocate. You'd and sometimes you go on these websites the companies and they have like this beautiful story and it's all lovely and it's so like very fairy tale, but you're just like, yeah. One day my colleague leaned over and said, why didn't you start a company called Advocate? You'd I was there. I can. I can. It happened. She dreaded to my name immediately. no. It's also relatable, right? Like, you don't have to have this grand story or this, you know, fairy tale thing and usually side businesses from normal people that aren't from that world or don't already have parents who are entrepreneurs. Like, it's kind of grim, you know, like it's not it's not fairy tales and money writing and and, you know, all of that stuff. So, yeah, I like that that's in there. I haven't I haven't read that, but yeah, it's on there. It's definitely on there. And I think that's true though. You write, it's that whole, you know, people do talk about authenticity and I think people get a bit sick of hearing that like just be authentic self. But I think so many people are still trying to paint. It's like a persona of your authentic self. It's like you're not Beyonce. You don't need to pretend to be Sacha Fares. You know, I'm saying like, you can just just you can just be yourself. And that's I guess there's also an element of in here like and I'm talking about this and I feel like this is from a slightly I'm talking about this from a privileged position of somebody who is not afraid to be themselves and B, is is okay with doing that. And if that tends to people off, that's also fine for me. You know what I'm thinking? You know what I mean? Like, I'm okay. It will always be all right because I've built the business up enough. But like there are so many people who are terrified of that, who are terrified of like, what what it means to to be their authentic self, to bring that into the business to because they think that that's sometimes perceived as weakness. Like I we've had lots of conversations about this on the podcast before about being like told that you're too nice or that you're too honest or that you're a cyborg. us. You know, they're they're part of who we are. That's part of what we bring to the podcasts. What we bring to our business is the way that we work with our clients. I don't want to work in authentically with any of my clients. I think they probably agree if they listen to us about, yeah, shit, we wish she'd dial it down just a little bit. But that's how I work. That's what the business is about. And I think that is probably lacking from quite a lot of other companies. Like if there is that, yeah, if it is this sort of like startup founder led journey, maybe there probably is a bit of fear around like, well, if I myself am I going to turn VCs off? Am I going to not get the money that I want because I'm being myself? I personally disagree, but you know, what are you listening? people off, but I don't think that's a bad thing either because realistically, if you're going to be work, if you going to be partnering with these people for a very long time, you can't pretend to be someone else. You know what I mean? And I'm sure that your personality And if it is, they can probably tell anyway, you know. Well, all we do, and also our ICP and our tubal addressable mark to market is not everyone. And so we don't actually want to attract everybody and we should be quite clear about that. So that's fine. If we're doing marketing correctly, what kind of content do you think we should be creating that that like gives the sense of personality through social, right? Because one of the things everybody's like, do we have to have a podcast? Because that's the kind of feels like quite often the route into getting at some of the heart and soul of people. So yeah, What do you think about the types of content we should do? I mean, this is a mind blowing thing to say, but I think video content is is king isn't that and it's it's a really accessible way for your audience to see who you are. So I'd say video it doesn't necessarily have to be a podcast, but from my experience, podcasts are so beneficial on many, many levels. You guys know, like and if you've got somebody that or people that can do the interviewing within your business, then it's a great opportunity to show your audience that you that you care about your industry and that your your fingers on what's that say and your fingers on the pulse. Yeah. And it's also a great excuse to talk to people that you might not otherwise talk to. It gets rid of the awkwardness of I've really want to talk to that person, but I don't know how to approach them. You have a real purpose to go and approach these people that you might otherwise be intimidated by or might not know how to approach. So I am a big advocate of podcasts and from a content creators point of view, like the clients of mine that have podcasts, it gives me it does like 60% of the work for me because I don't have to create a point of view that comes through in the interviews from the podcasts, and then I can chop them up into many, many different little small pieces of content, knocking them check out on socials. And yeah, I'm a big advocate for podcasts, but it doesn't have to be a podcast, just like start with doing interviews with your founder, maybe, or quickfire questions with your founder or with your team or with your customers. Yeah. Speaking of quick and dirty, what are your thoughts on kind of high budget? Not even high budget, like high Polish, high planning content versus, you know, the the more quick and dirty stuff that you can just record chop the ends up basically and get online. There's no need for high budget stuff like that, that the timeline of or the lifespan of your social content, it's a waste of money like unless you're Stephen Bartlett and you've got like millions of followers already already and you can actually afford it, like don't waste your money on high, high like high quality stuff, like doing this kind of remote podcast is absolutely fine. If you've got people who know what they're talking about that have a bit of personality and it's a good conversation and that's enough. And obviously you should pay someone like me to add to it so that it is actually readable and you've not got loads of gaps in it. Your audience aren't wasting loads of time just listening to golf. But no, it doesn't have you don't have to spend loads of money doing the podcast. That's that's the beauty of where we are now within this digital world. Like you can, you can actually create a lot of content for very little money. It's a beautiful thing. I think There is a there was a time for that high budget content. Isn't that There's a time and a place for it and a certain purpose. We did another video content episode with someone and with Chris, Chris the OG, Chris Walker. And so if you want to find out about where that high production value will get you the most bang for your buck, go back and listen to that episode. But definitely for Sochaux in particular, Quick and dirty is good because like you say, the life span is not there like I get. So with people who are like, it's not on brand, we can't possibly post that clip because it's not on brand or you used a bit of free software or whatever you days to get the piece of video content. But also, you know, it's like, well, actually we recorded this yesterday and I put the socials out today like the same day because I was able to do it quick and dirty. That is actually better than making sure it's completely on brand and that it's in your fonts and that it's got your logo on it. Like at the end of the day, your audience don't give a shit and don't notice that stuff. I don't know if you guys feel the same, but I certainly don't. I certainly would never look at something that looks like HubSpot. The gods of marketing put out a go. It hasn't got That's a slightly wrong orange for HubSpot. Interesting. things are nice to have things and I like, I do like it when something is a little bit branded, but ultimately it shouldn't be the priority when you're when you're creating your content, the value lies in what people are actually talking about and their expertise. Like if those things are just like candyfloss I've seen I've seen a couple of posts on LinkedIn that are not video because I find videos really hard to fuck up because you can just post a video, right? You don't even need to burn Dale. So look good. Well, I've seen a couple of, like, graphics posts where I'm just like, Are you making this with like, what are. So where it's like, really bad. It's bad, but everything else is pretty much fine, you know, like, if it's really, really awful and, like, looks literally like your own. What? Or like, you've. You've quite literally just ripped off a really bad karma template and just changed three words maybe, But everything else is kind of totally possible and fine. Like, there's a very small amount of really bad that you can achieve. And I, I think most of us have the skill to not even venture into that anymore. Now, with all the tools we have. that the piece of content is bringing first and the brand is second. Like, And hopefully if you get the value right, that is your that should be your Yeah. And you can. And branch change and polish and want to do new stuff over time. So like, it's never going to be like, you're not, you know, on brand standards, it's like, well, the brand's moving times. I'm like women to be evolving, not just like, you know, worrying about what rounded ness, the corners of a box, you know what I mean? volume of content that we also need to produce, I think I'm really keen to talk about the production part of this content because I think that's also something that people get wrong. So just because we're calling it quick and dirty content does not mean we mean quick and dirty necessarily. So I want to talk about that with you guys because. Yeah, because I you know, I'm talking about the fact that we've did a podcast recording in the morning and we could get the socials out in the afternoon if we have the time to do that and the skills to do that. So I think those two are really important. Like people need to value the skills that it takes to be able to edit like this. Like Liam, you are in my mind, the master of the hilarious dramatic video. Like you just I have never seen anyone and I know you're like my, my bestie and I'm not blowing smoke up your ass, but I honestly, I don't know anyone else who can do that shit. Like, I just don't. It's so funny what you do for your clients. But I think people need to understand that, like, with that comes it's not even just about the video editing is. It's about the skill set you've got that allows you to be able to find the comedy in those clips because sometimes they're not funny. All that and you kind of make them funny. I thank you for saying that. That's very kind. And I do agree. I'm very good at that. Now, I do think that's probably something that I want to keep focusing on and probably an area of I know we've had this conversation off camera, but it is something that I definitely want to go into more and it is producing. Basically what I do is I produce stuff and you give me you give me the video content and I'll turn it into something that's quick. Engaging has some real like levels of drama and humor. And I think also that's something that I can't replicate yet and probably Touchwood I hope not because it's where I am growing my boxing career, something that I probably can't replicate because that that comes for like the skill of editing. Like that really comes from the ballet. It's not something that comes from anything technical, but it's about recognizing those small human moments that like I can piece together and create. Great story. snap. I'm so on board with you doing you could story tell all day as long as it's you. Yeah. And you were like, you know, like, I can edit, but I can't edit how you make stuff. Like, I can't, I can't chop something up and then make into this whole other narrative with, like, zoom and zoom. Like when I watch Liam stuff, I'm like, my God, I totally get it. Like, and I it you see how it was made by I'm like, There's no way I could fucking replicate that. Like, just can not, not. Why do. I know. I hold my hands up to this. I'm not a technical kind of person like I do my thesis on the movie. Like, I don't use any fancy software that I have to pay for, and I really respect the people that can do like motion graphics and stuff like that and create their own captions and and aren't relying on software to do that. Like that's a really cool skillset to have. And one day I would eventually like steps to that as well, because then I can marry those two kind of instinct with technique. And I think that's, that's a really cool thing to have as well. So going back to how we create content, it's a great base. If you have like a long form piece of content to work off, right? But let's say like a podcast, for example, because then you can go in and find the bits you want and make stuff out of it. Let's say we don't have that. What would how do you go about kind of doing that from the beginning to the finished product? Because I know you do some of that with your clients as well. my so like I is one of my clients as an example. So they I'm sure they won't mind me talking about this. They're great guys, they've got a great company and it's about something I'm passionate about, which is sustainability and renewable energy and they, I go see them every couple of weeks. I take my Samsung phone, which has a great camera on it, take a tripod, I take some little mix with me, and we just spend an afternoon or a day out in the sunshine. They do solar panels, so it's always about when it's sunny day. Otherwise that kind of wouldn't make sense for the product. So yeah, and I, we don't actually do much planning. I maybe do a bit in my head, but I don't send them like a brief or anything. We just kind of wing it on the day I say to them, can we go to a few of your clients houses that you've worked on? So we've got some examples of your product. And before, before I even hit record, not much happens apart from I just get them to stand there, check the frame is okay. They're a little bit nervous. So we'll we'll just have a normal chat I'll stick the mikes on and we'll just kind of go from there. And the beauty of editing is that you don't have to use it. Like if, if it's rubbish, just don't use it. But most of the time you'll some really good content out there. Just spend the time in the edit, choosing the best stuff and pulling the best stuff out of Yeah. And ultimately if you let those people kind of go back to what we talked about earlier about I think that's a good place to start is with the founders because they probably have the strongest point of view and the expertise within the industry where you would hope so anyway, if you just let them speak freely, like maybe I'd say to like the director, how can you talk about grants? Let's just just do a thing on grants in the solar industry because grants is a huge thing. And then I'm like, okay, cool. And then he'll just go off on. And I did that a few weeks ago and he was like talking for 20 minutes and I got like seven clips that I could use for socials. What, what would you say is the proportion of time that you spend pre filming and filming and then what's the proportion of time you spend editing and then crafting it into then social posts and doing the kind of distribution portion the bits that take the longest are if we're talking about in-person filming rather than doing this remote filming thing, then the actual filming is the bit that takes the longest. That takes the second longest is not the edit I'm a quick heads to now. It's actually crafting the copy and the the actual post itself. That's the bit that then take it doesn't take a huge amount of time compared to the filming but that's next it because then I have to shift how my brain is working. I'm going from filming, which is very like in the moment, kind of improvising visual. Yeah. Then I've gone from editing, which is very I to as I go. So it's like getting rid of the pauses, getting rid of the arms, all that kind of stuff, pulling out the good bits. Then it's then I usually take a break from it and just kind of leave alone for a bit. And then I'm like, okay, right, how am I going to work this into a campaign? I've got maybe five videos, so let's take these out over a couple of weeks. And then the long bit is then in the copy in there, the call to action and all that kind of stuff and scheduling What? One quick question that springs to mind, because, you know, I've worked with a couple of people who've been, like, mega anxious about filming, and therefore, they want to be mega prepared, like, to the point where they kind of want to be on scripts, which then kind of goes against that sort of like improvization. Some people are really not comfortable with that sort of stuff. What, what would you do for those sorts of people? Are you kind of do you feel like it's acceptable? I'm not saying it's not acceptable to prepare, course it is. But with someone who wants to be a bit more on script, how would you handle that? well it's a tough one because I, I like you said earlier, like you're very confident and you're confident in who you are and your personality. So you're, you're not afraid of your point of view coming across. I am the same in the sense that I'm an actor. So I'm I'm confident in front of the camera most of the time. I don't need to script. That script is great. So I find it hard to empathize with those people. I don't know what advice I would give to those people because I have had experiences where I've had people that aren't great on camera, and all I can try and do is in the moment, just try and try and keep it light. This isn't life or death. If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. We just won't use it. What I think, in fact, one example that I can give you is one that I have tried is where the person that I was I was doing the video content with was was very nervous. What they were saying was absolutely fine, but visually could tell that they were catching their pants. So what I ended up doing and I told them this in the moment, I said, listen, if if it looks like you're really uncomfortable, then we just won't use the video. We'll use your voice and I'll stick it under a load of other videos, which which are to do with what you're talking about. So that's a really very specific example of how I've overcome that. I don't know if you guys got any experience of working with people that aren't comfortable on Yeah, we should let people prep, right? So we'll, we'll give them stuff to think about at least beforehand so they can get their thoughts together on different subjects. And then a great comforting method is obviously telling them like, we will edit this. If you say something wrong, start over again. Like you don't have to do like a one pass. Perfect. You know, like speech this like we're all good. We can, we can edit and play around and have a couple of takes as well. They usually get more comfortable talking about something. The more you kind of repeat it. So I think I think those things. What about ums? agree. I also do think there is a lot to be said for the person either asking the questions or hosting so. Like, for example, if you know you've got someone nervous, you probably do want someone like us who has quite a lot of experience with hosting stuff and asking questions and, interviewing people to make that person feel at ease. I saw that actually, cause we did this one of my clients at this massive event and we decided to hire a Channel four presenter who was popular. She was amazing and so she was interviewing quite a lot of the people. And honestly, this is not for video content. This was for a live event, but because she was making people feel so at ease, people were just answering the questions really naturally. So it didn't feel like very stilted because there were people backstage who were really crapping their pants, hadn't been out on a stage before, hadn't spoken in front of that many people before. And so I think there is a lot of value in making sure that the person who's asking the questions, who's managing the production aspects of it, is like a really kind of gentle, comforting person. Like, one of the nice things about you, Liam, is that you are like that and you're really non-judgmental, whereas I think sometimes if people have got books, camera crew, there's quite a lot of pressure on someone. Yeah. the single actor that's the shoot. And this three crew, they all know who I am already. I've never met these people in my life and the pressure is insane. Like your height is rising. And yeah, I guess I kind of empathize with those people. Maybe that even if it's a smaller project, how that actually feels. But now I think the points that you guys made, I probably do anyway. But I take it for granted that you naturally do them. Yeah. Cuddly person. Yeah I mean, we've had it though, haven't we, Rita? Because, you know, I very much like, come on, let's just get on with it. Let's just do it. And we have, you know, rock rehab people who've been like, no. And we're like, right. I wasn't expecting that. And maybe not. I will be honest. We hold our hands up, maybe not handled that in the right way at the time. I Well, thank you so much for coming on. If anyone needs Liam's incredible production skills, reach out to him. His details will be done below in the descriptions, etc., etc..