9. Vix Meldrew on the influencer industry in 2020

Geek Out with Matt Navarra is sponsored by Pinterest. Inspire your audience and grow your company on Pinterest with a free business account. Learn more at business.pinterest.com. It's time to geek out. Hello and welcome to Geek Out with Matt Navarra, sponsored by Pinterest. I am Matt Navarra.

And I'm Martin SFP Bryant. Now on this show, we talk to a lot of people who build and run social social platforms. But what about the people building businesses on top of those platforms? Today's guest is Vix Meldrew, who is, in her own words, a blogger, podcaster, and educator passionate about bringing a dose of reality to the influencer industry.

Yes, and she's got a lot to say, I'm sure. So we'll be talking to her a little bit later in the show. But don't forget, you can always get in touch with the show on Twitter where you can find me as @MattNavarra.

And I'm @martinsfp. So Matt, tell us what you've been up to this week.

Oh well, I had this desire to suddenly do a New Year's resolution for the first time in ages this year. So I decided that it was gonna be fitness. And I have done exactly zero fitness ever, really. I've just kind of avoided it for a long time with bits of jogging here and there. So I'm getting— I've got this personal trainer from Panath right near where I live. And I'm just kind of aching, hurting, pain constantly, and knowing in 2 days' time, it's the same thing again and again and again. So that's been fun. And then me and you, we've been working on something, but we can't really talk much about, but that's been quite exciting and keeping us busy around the country. So that's been good. And then Daughter's still desperately trying to get me to be in her TikToks, and it really is not working for me. I just, I just feel like a dad when I'm in those situations.

So she must be at an age where she's not quite embarrassed enough by her dad, uh, but she's, um, uh, old enough to be into TikTok.

Oh, she is embarrassed by me, and if she's not, then I make sure I find, you know, the pinch point where I can make sure she is embarrassed. And that's probably part of the reason that, uh, she kind of thinks it'll be fun to sort of wind me up. But either way, it's just not looking good, so I'm going to steer clear slightly of TikTok other than to kind of sit there lurking and watching some really good stuff. Martin, what about you?

Yeah, well, you mentioned we've been working on a project which has involved some travel, and I've been, as a part of that, enjoying the joy of having an iPad with 4G, which is absolutely—

Really? Is this a big thing for you? I can see. Yeah.

Well, if you're traveling on a train, it often has poor Wi-Fi, and I often see people complaining about Wi-Fi on trains, or it's got no Wi-Fi. And the train I was on on for nearly 4 hours the other night, had no Wi-Fi. But because my iPad, it's light, it's nice to travel with, the little keyboard case is really nice, and the LTE, the 4G connectivity is just really, really good. And sometimes it drops down to 3G, but it's fine. All it means is I've got data pretty much anywhere in the country or wherever I am in the world because it's got roaming data included. So I just love it. And I've been really appreciating it. And if you travel a lot, you should definitely consider getting one.

I think that they should put like internet connection and data up there with water, food, and the basic items you need to survive on. Because if it's not, you know, because I check in anywhere that has Wi-Fi. If it doesn't, then I just kind of bin it off and then don't go into any of them. So anyway, thanks for that. Sounds like another busy week for you then, pretty much. Our guest this week is a blogger, influencer, and an entrepreneur. Welcome, Vix Meldrew.

Hello, thanks for having me.

Tell everyone a little bit about yourself because I'm aware of you and lots of other people are and all the great things you do, but not everyone will be. So what do you get up to with the things in social media?

Oh, way too kind. Um, yeah, I'm a blogger. I don't really like the term influencer, I go for content creator. There we go. And yeah, I used to be a primary school teacher, left that to blog full-time, and from that I've grown my own business which is called Grow and Glow, which is a membership community for other creators to kind of get monthly training, networking opportunities, in-person events, all that good stuff.

Awesome. Well, we're going to talk to you in a bit more detail about all of that stuff and more shortly. But first of all, let's go in and have a look at what's been going on in the social media world with the news. Martin, what has been going on?

So a big talking point over the weekend was the New York Times, who had a story out about the secretive company that might end privacy as we know it, or privacy, depending on how you want to pronounce it. So this is a company called Clearview AI, and they've done something that I think we probably all know at the back of our minds is possible, but We thought nobody's going to do it because it would break lots of data protection rules and at least terms of service. Even if, even if it's legal in some places, it is still break terms of service of various, various social media services. Basically, they scrape the web, they scrape social media for millions of photographs and put them together into a database of loads of people, millions and millions of people. And so then if law enforcement want to find out who that dodgy looking person is walking down the street that they suspect for crime, they can snap a photo of them and then run it against this and it will show all the social media pictures of them and say, this is this person and this is where they live and, and all of that. So it's, uh, basically a tool for looking up anybody and, um, uh, ending privacy. Uh, I find it an interesting idea from a law enforcement perspective, but generally on balance, I'm not comfortable with it at all. Um, if even if you 100% trusted all the law enforcement in the world, which I think would be naive, even if you did, you would still, um, have the problem of if this tool got out and about, uh, to a wider group of people, how it could be massively misused. Matt?

Yeah, I think I'm probably similar to a lot of people, at least I think I am, in terms of these sorts of things, that when I read these stories, you know, I find myself very conflicted because on one hand I can see how useful and powerful these tools are and how they could be used for law enforcement or other activities to, you know, bring people to justice or save lives, things like that. But I of course do have those concerns over how it could be used inappropriately and how it creates new risks or new safety issues. Um, you know, I've known before to have said that I hold this view that I know myself deep down, I'm a law-abiding citizen and I live my life in pretty much a public space online. So I don't feel too concerned that anyone's really that interested in what I'm getting up to. And so this tech can ultimately protect me in some way. But I'm also aware that I might be a bit naive to this and that the invasive ways that these things can be used. But I am interested, intrigued by the advent of AR glasses, which is coming down the line in the next few years and how this could be combined. So you could be walking down the street and see somebody and think, oh, I recognize them, and then the AR glasses could connect to this database and then say, yeah, that person you see in the corner of your eye over there matches this person and this is who they are. Stalker central is what makes me think all the— it's got concerns. But Vix, do you think— would you be scared of this being out in the open, or do you think this is a good thing?

Yeah, and I think from a perspective of being somebody who shares their life online anyway, that is always something that we have to have in the back of our minds. How much are we sharing? How many identifying details are we giving out? You know, I've been there before where I've been, uh, in Starbucks on my phone and had somebody message and be like, oh hey, we must live in the same building because I'm in the same Starbucks as you. And that alone is like a bit like, oh okay, uh, don't want to get murdered. Um, so something like this, like you said, getting into the wrong hands, it brings a whole other aspect of safety and, uh, that kind of awareness of what we're sharing online.

I think, yeah, exactly right. And I think also, you know, we have to consider, or someone at some point, I don't know who that person or persons are, is how do you kind of find that balance? Because there's clearly a benefit to this technology. There could be some really powerful use cases that are sensible for law enforcement to investigate and have some access to. But there is that issue of privacy again. So when are we going to get to a point where we can figure out that balance? I don't know. But I think these discussions we're going to have again and again and again, and the technology is going to move on forwards and be smarter as the years go by. So we'll be revisiting this one for the next few years, I am sure. What else has been going on?

In the Wall Street Journal, they were reporting that WhatsApp is backing away from the idea of advertising in-app. So this was a plan that they were going to start rolling out ads in WhatsApp. So they're not going to do that anymore. They're going to focus in terms of monetization on helping businesses monetize themselves to communicate with customers. And also there's still a chance that there will be ads in the status feature in WhatsApp. Now, I don't understand how that would work, but apparently they're going to do that. Matt, do you have any insights here?

Well, I first came aware of this about a year ago and somebody shared with me some screenshots from a presentation. From an event in the Netherlands where they first show some ideas around how they were looking at rolling out ads. And it's now been a year since then nearly. And we thought we were just imminently about to discover what these ads were going to look like and how it would work. And then this announcement that they were sort of stopping, killing, pausing, whatever, of ads was going to happen. And I do think it is a case of Facebook/WhatsApp pausing ads and their plans for use of ads rather than it's likely to never come back again. But we have to also think that WhatsApp WhatsApp in terms of its journey from being, you know, pre-Facebook ownership days through till now and, and the reasons people use messaging apps, a private space. And that's an area you kind of have a bit more kind of protection and kind of, you feel a bit more, want a bit more sort of privacy around it. This is different to public spaces, I guess, is what I'm getting at. Those factors play into the, you know, the reasons why people are a bit more sort of twitchy about having ads in these kind of products. And it's been done already in Messenger, as we've seen, you know, the ads are in there, but it's WhatsApp, I feel, is a little bit of a different beast. And there's a bit more of a kickback for them putting ads in there. But I do think it will come. And I also just wonder whether there's anything to do with the investigations of Facebook by regulators, governments, things to do with its potential for being a monopoly, whether this is a strategic legal maneuver that's going on behind the scenes for something that they know is coming up and they want to kind of be careful in terms of what they introduce into their products. I don't know. But, Victor, ads in WhatsApp, is that going to annoy you, or do you see it as a natural progression No, I just feel like, like you said, Facebook are trying to cover their tracks when it comes to privacy.

And WhatsApp being such a strong brand on its own for that kind of messaging that was going away from traditional messaging, it's got a real core of people that use it. And if it goes down to that route and messages start popping up that are ads, you know, another app will just come along that will just be a sole native messaging program and people will get sick of it, I think.

Well, I think we— and for me, We're going to see ads at some point and it's just a case of what time of— we're going to get them. Is it going to be 6 months, a year or more? But I think there'll be more to say on this one later on this year when they start playing with ads in status, if that's what they're intending to do. Next story. What are we talking about this time, Martin?

Yes, there have been a few stories over the last few days after the DLD conference in Munich. This is a conference every year, which I've been a few times. It's a really good conference and a lot of the big tech execs go there and they tend to go there before they then head up into the mountains to Switzerland. London to Davos for the World Economic Forum. So it tends to be a stopping-off point for a lot of them. And Evan Spiegel from Snapchat was there, from Snap, and he was quoted— the quotable thing from him was that he thought that TikTok could dethrone Instagram, which is maybe not that controversial a statement if it was anyone saying it. But the interesting thing is it's someone who created Snapchat saying that, and another app in the same world. Were you surprised by this at all, Matt?

No, I I think it's a funny little one, this one, in the sense that, you know, he's nice little pop at Arrival. And I think it's a bit more fun than it is a useful snippet from, from that event in his quote. But I do think it's quite a smart observation that he made, though, in the sense that he was comparing Instagram's status-focused content versus TikTok's talent-focused content. And that TikTok's talent-focused content in the style that people, the things that people do there, what you'll find there compared to Instagram, where it's much more about kind of being the perfected glossy version, which we've heard this discussion, I think, in previous episodes. I do believe that he's right there and that there is something about that. And this buzzword that's going around, and it has been for some time now, about authenticity being key to social more and more, and particularly in 2020, that makes complete sense. I guess the big unknown is still whether TikTok will be able to hold on to that interest of a fickle, younger attention kind of sort and generation, and whether brands and creators will be able to achieve their goals around monetization and advertising, which is starting to come up now in TikTok versus, you know, other platforms that are well established and people can make substantial amounts of money on and brands can advertise in a range of ways. VIXX, what do you think about Snapchat's founders thinking that it can— TikTok can be dethroning Instagram?

It's interesting because I feel like Instagram and TikTok are two different beasts and they have a different target audience. They— the way you create content on there is very different. And so I do like how they're trying to pit them against each other. I think that I think that, um, create— from a creative perspective, a lot of creators are currently not sure where they stand on TikTok, whereas they kind of have honed their craft on Instagram for the past however many years. Um, but I'm a big fan of TikTok, and actually when you get into the app and you look at how to use it and how you can really niche it to what you are an expert in and use it for your either business or from a creative perspective, there's so much opportunity there. And comparing the two, um, trying to run a business on Instagram where you're constantly fighting against organic reach and the algorithm and, you know, pay-to-play and all of these things that you feel like are kind of holding you back. And then going over to a platform like TikTok, where one video can expose you to a whole new audience, new audience that from a business perspective could be those ideal buyers, customers. Um, it's a really exciting time. Um, but I'll just be interested to see in the, in, you know, the next 6 months and the next year how Instagram kind of come back and try to really stake their claim, uh, and really continue to have this kind of stronghold over creator-based, uh, social media channels.

And just on that point, you know, you, you're a content creator yourself, and you, you probably have preference over some platforms over others. So have you yet to experiment with TikTok? And if, if, or have you been around people that have? And have you, what feedback have you had from it?

Yeah, I am on TikTok. I actually made I made like 5 videos yesterday. I just got very addicted to it and got into, got into it. There are a lot of questions over TikTok as well with regards to privacy and, you know, how it's, you know, the kind of background of the company. And so I presume that's what's holding a lot of creators from jumping onto it. But from my perspective, I found jumping on trends, using specific niche hashtags to people over 30 or creators or bloggers actually who are my ideal kind of audience and customers to be really helpful. I gained almost like 100 followers in a day just from posting a video with a hashtag that was about being over 30, um, with everybody coming through being like, I'm over 32, I'm a blogger as well. So reaching the exact right people that I want to reach. And so from my perspective, I'm interested in exploring it further. And I also, in terms of being a content creator influencer, I've never felt like I fitted the typical Instagram influencer mold, whereas on TikTok you can be a much more more relaxed, it's less polished, it's less curated, and that's what I'm about. So yeah, I'm really excited to kind of explore it further.

Well, we're going to dig into that topic a bit more shortly when we dig into some of the questions we've got for you. But interesting week again in the news. Geek Out with Matt Navarra is sponsored by Pinterest, and each week we share tips to help you make the most of the platform.

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So we're joined by Viks Meldrew. Tell everybody a bit more about yourself. Specifically, tell us about how you got into social media. What's your career route in, in a potted history, so to speak.

Yeah, very potted history. It's an interesting one. Um, I used to be a primary school teacher. I founded my first— well, my blog, uh, sort of about 2014, 2015, just as a hobby. It was a bit bored. It was like a 6 weeks holiday. I'd already been a big fan of blogs and bloggers, so I thought, oh, I'll give it a go, let's see how it goes. Um, and then I had a few different life circumstances happen, uh, broke up with a partner, uh, experienced grief. I lost my mum at quite a young age, so started to talk about a lot more of those, uh, in air quotes, real life topics, you know, relationships, grief, things like that. And it kind of took off from there. I was probably jumped on the Instagram bandwagon a bit later, but I think I was in that kind of, uh, stage where money started coming into the industry, brands were getting behind sponsored blog posts, sponsored Instagram posts and just started to build my following from, from there, really just talking about those kind of real-life subjects. And then, um, in 2018, I kind of made the decision to go part-time with teaching so that I could do more of my content creator stuff. And I also started coaching other bloggers and creators on how to grow their platforms, how to network, how to work with PRs, how to pitch, all of that kind of stuff. Um, and And then after doing that for a while, I didn't really want to do the one-to-one coaching anymore. I wanted to make the value that I had, you know, the knowledge, the experience that I had gained and share it on a wider kind of scale. So I built Grow and Glow, which is a membership community. We launched to 100 members in 58 minutes, and we've grown to over 500 members in less than 6 months. And it's just full of creators who, don't see themselves as the typical kind of Instagram, Love Island type influencer. They want to use their platforms to talk about their passions or what they're an expert in, and they want to work with brands more from a sustainable storytelling kind of perspective rather than just, here's a swipe up link, here's a swipe up link, here's a swipe up link. So that's what we're kind of based on. And due to building that, it meant that I could leave teaching and do this kind of job full time. And that's where we are today.

And was there a tipping point where it went from being like an interesting hobby to suddenly thinking, wow, actually I could now start to make some money out of this? And also, was there a particular platform early on in the stages of things with your business, with your career on social, that was your dominant platform?

Yeah, definitely. So when I became single, I niched my blog down to dating, and it had a different perspective in that it wasn't a help me find a husband blog. It was like, I'm single, it's great, here's all the things I can do whilst being single. And I use Twitter a lot to do sort of like live tweeting updates or live tweeting of my Tinder swipes or silly things like that. So Twitter grew really, really quickly, and Twitter used to be a very, very good, uh, traffic driver back to my website. So when I would then take, you know, a short-form piece of content that, you know, thread that I'd done on Twitter and turned it into a blog post, that helped grow the blog. So then I was getting approached by lots of dating brands, lifestyle brands, to sponsor blog posts and sponsor tweets. So that's kind of how it all kicked off to begin with. And then when I went over to Instagram influencing and sponsored posts on Instagram started getting, you know, more money into it, higher budgets, uh, grew a following. Because I was doing something slightly different, I could command more money, and, you know, brands wanted to work with somebody that was a bit different. So that's how it all kind of kicked off. But there was definitely a turning point where, uh, I was at school and I was being— I had to leave school early. Well, I say early, like at 3:30 instead of 7:30 or whenever I used to stay until, um, to go to Channel 5 and be on the news as, um, a kind of dating expert. So that was a moment where I was like, oh, okay, I'm starting to be offered documentaries and news and radio, uh, as a kind of blogging expert, dating expert kind of thing. This could be something that I could do.

Got you, got you. And what's the— quickly, what's, what's the worst thing or the craziest thing that someone's tried to kind of get you to be involved with and collaborate on or sell? You don't have to name the company and shame, but certainly the product or the service that you thought was a bit odd or left field?

Tires.

Tires.

Vicks VapoRub. You shout tires to me. That's exactly what I thought. Oh my goodness me.

I know. That was in like the early days of influencer marketing, you know, where it was kind of brands were being told, oh, use influencers, use influencers and search by how many followers they've got. And it was very new and people didn't really know where to look, who to go to, etc. And I just remember that inbox email landing in my inbox saying, we'd love you to review our newest range of tires for a sponsored blog post, and I just sent them back my latest blog post at the time, which was a— I don't know if I can say it online, but it was on this podcast— but it was a dating blog post that was a little bit tongue-in-cheek risqué, shall we say. Um, and I just sent it back and I said, this is what I write about.

Oh dear.

Good luck. I'm sure I can connect you to many automotive bloggers, uh, but not right for me, thank you.

Yeah, I was interested, uh, when we introduced you, uh, on the show earlier, you, uh, you were very kind of, uh, no, I'm not an influencer. I don't like to call myself an influencer, but I think a lot of the activity you do, a lot of people would recognize as influencer-type, uh, business activity. So why, why do you not like to be associated with the term influencer? And, uh, what's your assessment of the influencer industry at the moment? What's going right? What's going wrong?

So at the beginning when that term was kind of employed, I was like, yeah guys, look, we're influencers, as in we have a platform that we use to speak about whatever subjects we're passionate about, and in doing so it can have either direct influence or a knockoff influence on people that are connecting with us. So yeah, if that's the term we want to be called, great. But over the last couple of years, traditional press, the image, the stereotype, the kind of, yeah, the feeling that everyone gets when they hear the word influencer and those words that are then associated with that word don't really encompass everything that we do. And I feel like there's definitely a distinct type of influencer who are an influencer in the stereotypical term. And then I feel there's a huge community of us who don't fit that mold and don't fit those stereotypes, but do the same work. And I feel like what kind of grew the industry in the first place was that buzzword again, authenticity, relatability, real life, real people connecting with people that you aspire to be like, that inspired you, that entertained you, or that you related to. That's what it was built on. It has evolved into an almost different kind of beast, and if we're going to continue with this industry and, you know, keep building it, it has to almost return to some of those more authentic roots.

Yeah, I was just going to ask from, from really in terms of, um, this stuff we've talked about in previous episodes around likes, you're somebody that creates content and has been labeled an influencer. So you must be one of the, as good as anybody to ask about what your take is at the moment on the, the de-metrification of these vanity metrics on the platforms, like the like button or like counter being removed from, from Facebook posts. You know, what do you think about all of that stuff?

From my perspective, it's really interesting because I work with a huge range of brands and some of them are really forward-thinking. They're really on the pulse. They, they are abreast of every kind of development that's going, and they haven't asked to see how many likes I've had for months. They want to know what DMs I'm getting, how many people are screenshotting what I post, how many people are swiping up on those links, how many people are actually invested in what I say in terms of really truly or authentically interested, and they're saving and they're sharing or they're talking about it. That's what's more interesting to them. And then there are still some brands that are kind of catching up on this brand new industry who, you know, please send me how many likes your last 3 posts got and that kind of stuff. So, from my perspective, I know that likes are an empty measure. I've been around this industry for so long to see so many other creators, you know, buy their following, follow/unfollow, have a like bot, and have all of these inauthentic ways of gaining engagement. And I know from myself personally, when I've done a campaign that's really, really landed, that's performed well for myself and for the brand, it's come through in those messages and those comments and that true deep engagement. It hasn't been one that's got the most likes. So for me, I'm like, it, it's, it doesn't really matter. Whereas there are still a lot of content creators and influencers who are almost panicked by it, worried that it'll affect their business, it'll affect how brands want to work with them. I was just trying to encourage my community and say the right brands, the right people know what true engagement is.

Got you, got you. And I do want to talk to you in a lot more detail about Pinterest, given that they're our lovely sponsors and there's some great stuff that you do there. But before we move on to that, I just also wanted to ask a bit about, uh, brand collaborations tool. Now, for those that don't know about this, Facebook has created a tool called the Creator Studio, which works with Instagram and works for Facebook as well, and kind of somewhat tied into that, and it's gradually being merged into one big super tool for native kind of publishing of content and scheduling and analytics is the brand collabs, brand collaborations tool. Have you used any of these tools and do you think that these are useful additions or they're not powerful enough compared to third-party tools? You know, what's your experience in using these products?

I haven't used them myself yet and I haven't worked with another brand who have used them yet either. I think it's quite a new thing and it's too early to kind of pass judgment on what it's going to kind of look like, really. I want— it makes me wonder I wonder what the future is for third-party influencer marketing platforms, third-party influencer agencies, if it's something that a brand can do in-house and via Facebook and Instagram directly. I also wonder how, you know, how with Swipe Up, you had to have 10,000 followers. Is there going to be another kind of metric that comes into play that says which influencers will appear on this dashboard and which won't? Very interested to see how that will work and what it will mean for these third-party places as well. So yeah, I'm kind of holding judgment until I can get my teeth into it a bit more and have a look more into it. But, and I'm also a big kind of like, as we all are in the industry, like an Instagram kind of conspiracy theorist. And I'm a bit like, ah, is this why, you know, everyone's reach is down and, you know, why people are being encouraged to boost their posts? And is this Instagram and Facebook's way of gaining this huge chunk of money that they're currently not a part of back, um, back under their control. So, oh, can't wait to see how it develops, basically.

Yes.

No, I'm exactly the same. I'm kind of not— I'm not so strongly a conspiracy theorist, but I do want to know. I want to get to the root of what is their business objectives with the tool. Is it to give people additional publishing tools? Is it to keep control over the relationship between content creators, influencers, and brands? Is there something else we're missing? But I think that will play out in the, in the next 6 to 12 months because I can see there's new developments with those tools tools that Facebook is creating. So we'll have a watch this space on that one, I think. So yeah, Pinterest, lovely sponsors. We love them very much, obviously. But we do want to ask you a bit more about the platform and your use of it, because I'm aware that you're quite a big user, a big fan of it. Can you tell us a bit more about what you do on Pinterest and how, how it works for your business, how successful it's been? You know, what's been going on with you and Pinterest?

Yeah, absolutely. The biggest switch, kind of mindset switch that I made, which turned my relationship with Pinterest around, was when I realized that it was a search engine, not a social media tool. So at the beginning I was like, oh, I can't do another platform. I've got Twitter, I've got Facebook, Instagram, blog. I can't do another platform. Uh, but I was invited into Pinterest HQ at the beginning of last year by their influencer marketing manager. And she sat me down and she took, took me through Pinterest 101 and really helped shift that mindset and talked me through how to use it, not only as a creator, but as a business as well. I then went away, implemented everything that she taught me and immediately started to see results. Uh, my traffic to my blog was up thousands of views per day because people were coming through via Pinterest. Uh, I was finding that that then translated into people signing up to my, uh, email list to download the freebies that I was pinning on there. And then from there, that email list turned into members of my membership community. So for me, once I realized that it was a search engine and I started treating it like a search engine,. So writing keyword-heavy descriptions almost with like an SEO kind of mindset, looking at how, you know, the graphics are kind of optimized, best practice for descriptions and hashtags and how your Pinterest graphics should look. When I learned all of those things and put that mindset into play, it just, yeah, it changed a lot for me in terms of traffic and customers.

Do you think that Pinterest is very good for a specific type of, uh, content creator or certain niche or a certain vertical, or can you see it being much broader than that? Because from my point of view, I use all sorts of platforms. I do use Pinterest, I use others, but I do use other platforms slightly more. But that's because what I do is talk about social media and geeky things like that, and I always think, is there a space for that on Pinterest? You know, tell us a bit about that. That would be useful to know, I think.

Yeah, I mean, people use Pinterest for inspiration, for how-tos, for tutorials, and they use it as a platform to go to get something they didn't have before. So I personally can see it helping a wide range of niches. And actually, the event that we hosted in collaboration with Grow and Glow at the end of last year, I had lots of my creators that came and they, their niches are so wide-ranging. We've got equestrian, history, relationship abuse, like tons of different niches of bloggers that are in our community. And they all said the same thing. Well, how can I use Pinterest? How is it going to be useful to me? I don't do recipes. I don't I don't do beauty tutorials or anything. And I said, it's again, it's just a mindset shift. It's if you're making content, is your content valuable? Is it helpful? Is it useful? Does it teach something? Is it something that people need to know about? And if so, how are you framing, how are you framing that piece of content? And therefore you can then apply it across those different ranges. You may have an equestrian blog and all you talk about is your horse and everything you've done with your horse, but you could then reframe that blog post to be top 10 tips for horse owners or my favorite equestrian equipment. This is just an example off the top of my head. Well, that was—

we had that question actually. We were going to ask you about how do you plan for content on Pinterest and how do you weave that in with the other things you're doing in other channels. Is it distinctly a specific thing that's just Pinterest, or does it become intertwined with other content creation stuff that you're doing on other platforms? How does that all work?

So because I now tend to talk mainly about— I've got my personal blog, which is kind of brain dump, and it's where I still talk about, you know, therapy, mental health, relationships. That's kind of my brain dump, personal diary style blog. But then we've got the Grow and Glow blog, which is all about teaching how to grow platforms. So in that case, I think to myself, what problems are my audience or ideal customers having? And often it's, I don't know how to get website traffic, I don't know how to gain Instagram followers, I don't know anything about SEO, I don't know how to use Pinterest, for an example. So I think about the problems that they're are having, and then I create blog content to answer those problems. And then I'd repurpose that content into my podcast, onto Instagram, IGTV, Facebook, the same topic, answering the same question across those platforms. And then I will pin that blog post or that Instagram post or that Facebook post onto Pinterest. I'll make a separate graphic for it, or if I've got a strong image already there for it, that's what I'll pin through to the platform. And then I'll make sure my description is essentially that question, how, how I gained 1,000 new followers from SEO, how to use Pinterest for your blog, and, and change it in that kind of way, put it up to Pinterest. And then when people are searching for those answers, because they are, then my content will come up.

And which, which third-party tools do you use for publishing or content creation to specifically for Pinterest? Because I'm aware of several that I've used in in the past, but there may be some hidden gems that maybe others don't know about.

I think I'm very basic with that. It's Pinterest has their own scheduler where you can schedule pins. So often I'll use that and I have a virtual assistant and she's really proficient at Tailwind. So she's a big fan of Tailwind and if she's pinning stuff for me, she'll do it through there.

Oh, a virtual assistant. Do you know what? That is what I need. That's something I'm going to talk to you about off of the podcast because I want one of those.

Martin.

Yeah.

So what kinds of creators and brands do you see as doing a good job on Pinterest, kind of in the UK and beyond?

Yeah, so two examples that I can give you, one from a creative perspective. There's a girl called, the girl, a woman called The Mother Cooker. She's actually part of Grow and Glow, and I met her through Pinterest. She does seasonal recipes for any fruit or vegetable or food that is in season, and she creates these recipes on her blog, on her Instagram, and then pushes that all through to Pinterest. Her pins can get millions of views daily, monthly, that go straight back to her blog. They're signing up to her email list, and I'm trying to convince her, do an ebook, do a recipe book, that there's people there that are coming to you. They will want it. So that's how a kind of creator would see success is getting them back to their platforms and then from those platforms launching something like a digital product, a course, a service, anything like that. And then a brand that I absolutely adore on Pinterest is Made.com. Made.com. So I, my husband and I just bought a house back in August and I was looking for interior design kind of inspiration and Pinterest is great, you know, to see what the trends are and see how people are decorating their downstairs loos or something. And I was on Pinterest searching for inspiration and I noticed that I was getting served ads from made.com, but they didn't look like ads. They looked like the typical kind of Pinterest content. They were very optimized, the right size, bright colors, punchy imagery, really fine-tuned descriptions. And I thought that was a very clever way for MADE.COM to create content around interior inspiration because that's what people are using Pinterest for, but it's going back to their sales page and their blog themselves. Um, so yeah, big fan of those. Got you.

So what do you make of metrics on Pinterest in terms of, so which ones for you are the ones to keep an eye on? Which ones are you tracking? And tell us a bit about how you do that with your content creation stuff.

Yeah, absolutely. So the number that looks great on Pinterest is the monthly viewers. So the more you pin, the more you've got your boards and you pin really good-looking, relevant, and juicy kind of content, your monthly viewers go up and up and up. But some people can be sitting on profiles with millions of monthly viewers, but it's not translating to anything because the content isn't there to kind of back it up. So what I look at is click-throughs. Um, they also have a metric called tries. So if you are posting a tutorial or a recipe or an instruction or anything like that, and a user can say that they've tried it, that's a really good one to look at. But it is mainly click-throughs. So I can see that through the Pinterest platform because I've claimed my profile as a business profile, so I get all of the analytics. And I also track it through Google Analytics to see which posts are performing best and what, which ones are bringing traffic back to my blog.

Yes, you clearly love what you do and you've made this leap from being a primary school teacher into doing this full-time. Uh, what tips would you give to someone thinking of taking the plunge into working for themselves in the world of social media?

Um, for me, the thing that I teach everyone is really honing your own thing and owning what makes you different. I think in the world of social media, we can get so caught up in trying to to be the next Instagram guru or the next influencer or the next so-and-so. But actually, when you are yourself and you look at what your strengths are, whether it is speaking or writing or being funny or, you know, having an aspirational kind of lifestyle or having a specific kind of niche interest, you know, like I was saying, seasonal vegetables, for example. When you really come into your own and your own personality, character, and interests and passions and strive hard to become an expert in that kind of area, area, that is what's going to set you apart from everybody else trying to enter this big old world.

Well, this is true. And I, cause I get asked quite a lot around, you know, how do you build an audience and how do you get people to be engaged with your content, all those things. And aside from saying, you know, making great content, et cetera, the thing for me is it's about, is about finding your niche and dominating that niche either by being different to doing things differently to what everyone else is doing in that niche or, or just being super opinionated about it or having, having just a different slant, a different take on it or just being consistent and not doing all sorts of things or being too broad. Because a bit like when I say, when people say, how did you make your Facebook group, you know, get enough people in there that it started, you know, running itself to some degrees, it's about kind of rather than having a really broad group description that's about, you know, everything for everybody, it's about kind of zooming in on the kind of specific thing, one thing or one area that, uh, that can draw people to, to come to your group versus others. So I think there's a lot to be said for being niche.

Um, but yeah, Sorry. No, I was gonna say, in terms of my business with Grow and Glow, when I first launched that, I was like, okay, there are 9 million influencers in the world. 9 million people should be part of this membership community. But as I was building it and I was looking at the type of creator that I was 3 years ago, that I am now, that I surround myself with, that I'm inspired by, I didn't want to attract that kind of person that was in it because they just wanted to know how to get freebies and how to get paid to do, you know, an Instagram teeth whitening kind of detox tea type advert. So I niched it really down into micro-influencers who are looking to become sustainable storytellers, effectively saying, if you're here for the quick win and you're here for an overnight success, this isn't the right place. And through that, and similarly with your Facebook group, which I am a part of, people come because of your, your stance on things and the fact that you stick your flag in the sand and you say, this is what we're about. This is what the content is about. If you like it, stick around. It's going to be great. If you don't, cool. That's fine as well.

Got you. Yeah. And, and, and so you're talking there a bit about kind of what it's like to, to work in influencer, the influencer world or content creation, what is, as you prefer to call it. But I don't think there's lots of people out there that truly know what it is to be somebody that is a content creator or an influencer. What is the day-to-day life, the realities of being that person that's seen to have influence and gets, you know, because from the outside, I think there's a lot of people that will say to some, to people like yourself or others, you know, they're getting all these great deals and free products and they're kind of doing all this fun stuff and they get VIP status, all these lovely things. But that's not necessarily the reality. I don't think people understand how it goes from getting an email in your inbox saying, we'd like you to help us promote this product through to actually delivering on what that agreement is. So I wonder if you could just paint a true kind of warts-and-all picture of what it's like to do that.

Yeah, absolutely. And one of the great things is, is every day is different. So on Sundays, yesterday, for example, I was at home, I was creating content for our bundle of training for next month in Grow and Glow, and the doorbell went and I had this huge delivery from a clothing company that I'm working on a partnership with, with new trainers, new clothes. Oh my gosh, so exciting. But 5 minutes later, I was back on my laptop emailing another company who haven't paid me for 67 days to say, hey, I've got a mortgage to pay and we've got a puppy that needs, you know, food. Can you please pay me what I'm owed from however many days days ago. So some days look great from the outside. You're going to events, you're being invited to really special dinners or press events and treated really well. And, uh, it's obviously for me, I've never been like an office person. I'm very anti-authority as a person as well. It's great to be able to work for myself, but with everything there are those downsides as well. And sometimes people don't choose to share those downsides. I'm quite an open book. I'll happily say, you know, this has happened today, or this brand has really let us down, or this has happened and this has happened. So in terms of a day-to-day, it is a lot of emails, chasing, asking, putting yourself out there. I do a lot of relationship building. This is again what I teach in my membership community. It's like, you can't just send an email and say, hey, sponsor me to write an Instagram post. You need to build relationships with people. So a lot of my weekends is that. And then again, I'm slightly different as well in that my main kind of bulk of my job now is Grow and Glow. So I'm constantly sourcing new partners, new experts, and helping to kind of like delight our members so they, they stick around. So in terms of the influencer side of things, yes, there are people there that just, you know, go to cafes every day and take photos every day and are off on holiday every day. There is that type of influencer., who has that as more of their reality, but they will still have the other side of it where you're not getting paid, you're having to chase people, people don't take you seriously, you're being ridiculed in the press, you get the troll comments. So yeah, ups and downs, but that's the same with every job.

I wanted to pick up on that bit because some of the trolls thing and, and people kind of having sort of a more unsavory negative experience of being in this world, I think that probably, again, it gets talked about with the kind of shock storyline headlines you hear sometimes, and I think— a lack of sympathy and empathy for the people in that world because they see them having what seems to be a lovely, wonderful job and freebies and things. But there is a negative side to it. And I don't know if you can talk from your own experience or from people that you've known have had pretty bad experiences, or times when you've kind of thought, this is not great, this is the worst bit of the job, this is not going well. How have you dealt with that? Or how have you seen others deal with those kind of situations?

Um, I'm not always the best person to ask this because I take it really badly. And if I get a bad comment or a bad email or something, I will just go to bed for like 2 hours and be like, why me? I'm not a bad person. Um, but the advice that I give to others is often that, um, you know, it's said all the time, hurt people hurt people. And if somebody— if you're letting someone into your life, you know, I show them what I've had for breakfast, I'm taking my puppy for a walk, that I'm chilling on the sofa and what I'm watching on Netflix. If I'm opening myself up and my life up like that, there are going to be people that are interested in a really positive way, and it's going to make people feel good and feel like they can relate to you and, oh, this is wonderful. But there's going to be people that see it and it's going to spark something inside them, whether it's sometimes jealousy, whether it's, you know, inadequacy, whether it's that you're doing something that they strongly don't agree with and they would never do and they have to just tell you. But you just have to kind of remind yourself that as long as you know within yourself that you're not hurting anyone, you're not being mean, you're doing your thing, you're living your best life, you are being true to who you are, uh, then other people's opinions are just opinions. They see, you know, they may see 1% of your life or they may see 98% of your life, but they never ever get the whole picture. So this is me fully talking to myself because I never take my own advice. But yeah, it can be tough. You just have to kind of stick together. And this is why I'm trying to build this community that I'm trying trying to build so that other people get it as well.

So it's not all taking pictures of lattes in, in kind of hipster cafes and sitting in the sun and getting free clothes. It says more to it than that, which I thought there would be.

I mean, I would be bored, you know, I would be bored if that was my case. And one of the things I teach in Grow and Glow is about legacy. And I say to our members, what is your legacy? When you leave this planet or you leave the influencer world, what are people going to write up about you? Are they going to say that you shared really good affiliate links, or are they going to say that you made them feel better because you shared this aspect of your life, or you shared this message, or something like that? So, but that's what I share, that's what I teach, is really think about that legacy and what you want to be known for. And I really hope it's not artistic lattes in a cafe.

Oh, well, I'm going to squeeze another one last question because I know Martin's itching to get in here. But in terms of the kind of things that are going on in the influencer marketing You know, it's so, so talked about and so discussed now that, you know, being an influencer or the influencer marketing world, but from you being on the inside, what is the one or two things that you'd like to see change in the industry to make it either better, easier, safer, more profitable? You know, what's not going well enough for people that are like yourself?

Two things I think I would like to see more of: transparency and diversity. Transparency in that People often come into this industry, it's predominantly female, they come into it for their own personal reasons for wanting to launch a platform and often can be taken for, taken, taken advantage of. If you keep things secret, like how much so-and-so is getting paid or if that person is getting paid or what those terms are and how you're going to use that person's content and if you deliberately keep things very kind of murky and very secret, secretive, then it doesn't really help anyone. So what I'm really trying to work towards is just opening up those conversations, having these forums where brands can sit down with influencers and say, hey, this is what we need from you. And influencers can say to the brands, okay, well then we need this, and just open up the discourse. Because I feel like it's in the secrecy where things kind of go wrong. So transparency, one. And two, diversity. It's something that I push push for something that, um, I don't feel like we're, we're very much getting there, but we're not there yet. Uh, you know, we need underrepresented voices. Again, because I come from this from a sustainable storytelling perspective, if I go to an event or if I work on a campaign, I don't want to hear about it from the same person times 10. I want to hear about it from people of different backgrounds, different circumstances, different kind of everything, uh, to really push across the kind of authenticity of it. But if it is the same type of person going to the same thing, talking about the same thing every single time. I feel like, I think it's boring, personally. So, I think they're my main things.

And how do you get that, though? How do you achieve that? Do you see a way of achieving some of these things around transparency or achieving more diversity in this space? Because I totally agree with you, but I'm not sure how you make those things become a reality.

So, I wrote a blog post last year about creators and influencers including a diversity or inclusivity rider to their contracts and their agreements. It caused a bit of backlash because I had a lot of kind of influencers coming to me and saying, "Oh, how can you do that? Well, if you do that, then I'll be kicked off the campaign. If I talk up about this, they won't want to work with me again." And to which I said, "Well, tough, you know, we fight together or you're kind of selfish in a way." Essentially, All creators need to do when they get an email that says, would you like to come to this event? Or would you like to work on this campaign? Is write back and say, sounds great, who else is involved? And if they wanna keep it secret, there's obviously an issue. And if they come back and say, oh, it's this person and it's the exact same person times 8, then step up and say, well, I know this amazing creator from this background or this amazing creator who does this or this amazing creator, over this age or under this age or, or whatever, and put, put other people, elevate other people ahead of the, the person times 8. It's, it is, it can be done. I do it, I've seen other creators do it, I know lots of people in my community do it. It can be done, it just needs everyone getting on board.

Wise words, and I, I fully support that indeed.

And yeah, it sound, it sounds a lot like the push to get more Diverse event panels, very similar, uh, strategy there of, uh, of making sure that, uh, the speakers, uh, at events are pushing the organizers to do better. Uh, yeah, it sounds very similar. Um, if we open that question up a little bit then, and, uh, Matt was asking about the, the influencer world there. If we look at the broader social media world, we're at the start of a new year. Uh, what do you want to see from the social media industry this year? So it could be a, uh, a feature in an app you've always wanted. It could be a new approach from one of the social media companies. Uh, what for you could be improved in the social media world in 2020?

I think for me again, it's transparency and this is why I'm a big fan of Pinterest. Pinterest are so open with how they train creators to use their platforms. There are no secrets. There is no, you know, algorithm that you have to learn 50 million different tricks for. They essentially say make good content, optimize it on Pinterest, think of it with an SEO mindset, be consistent. This is how you succeed at Pinterest and if you follow those steps, you will succeed at Pinterest. So that's a big— that's why I love Pinterest, because of the transparency, because of the openness. And I wish other social media platforms operated in the same way. I know that Instagram, you know, they started their creators account, uh, @creators, and every couple of days they post an IGTV or an Instagram post with tips for creators and how to do well as a creator. But there's other stuff going on that then there either not talking about as transparently or they're giving the kind of PR version, whereas I wish they would just say, this is, this is our intentions and this is what we're about.

These companies listen to this podcast, so fingers crossed they're hearing.

Yeah, well, I really want to get Facebook and Instagram to come and do— this is the interesting thing— Pinterest, they did training for Grow and Glow. They said, you know, got a community of 500 creators, we want them to be using the platform in the way that's best for them, let us do a training for for you. So I'm talking to Facebook and Instagram at the moment, hey, come and do a training for our creators and show them how best to use your platform. Let's see.

That would be genius if they started doing it. I'm a bit hesitant as to say that they will likely do it, but we can always hope and pray that they do for some of the creators that are out there that need that extra help and support. But it's been absolutely great, Vix, having you on. It's an unusual, different kind of version of Geek Out, because previously this season, certainly we've had people from platforms and people from the journalist world, reporters of tech. It's really nice to actually hear from the ground, who people are out there doing content creation and dealing with some of the challenges that it has in the world of social media. So Vix, thanks very much for coming in. And could you just tell people a bit about where they can find you online so that we can discover some more of your great content?

Amazing. Thank you. And it's been really good. Love getting into these discussions. Could talk about influencers till the cows come home. But yeah, if you want to find my sort of personal channels, that's @vixmeldrew on everything, vixmeldrew.com, @vixmeldrew on Instagram. And then if you want to find out more about what we're trying to achieve with Grow and Glow, that's @growglow.co on Instagram, or growglow.co is our website. We share social media tips, influencer tips, all of that kind of insight into the industry.

Awesome. So much great stuff to be found there, I'm sure. So Vix, thanks very much for coming in.

No worries. Thank you very much.

It's time now for Quick Hits. Here's Matt with tests and updates from social media companies that will like blow your mind, dude. I decided to put this thesaurus away this week.

Jesus Christ, you need to see a doctor. Seriously, people are listening to this. They're going to think you need to see a doctor, mate. All right. Anyway, carry on. So YouTube's profile cards showing comments. So yes, this is news about YouTube introducing a new profile profile card, which you can have on certain accounts, which will show some of the highlighted comments of that user on a profile card. So that's popular with a lot of people who, I guess, who are fed up with all the troll comments and comments that are not particularly good from certain people, or getting a flavor for what the person's like without having to go deep into the details of their account when you're looking at their profile. Facebook's also got a new Twitter account. They've decided to open another one, @FacebookApp, and pretty much self-explanatory as to what that is. But they had some fun on the first day of launch for it on Twitter, and they were replying to themselves from all of their other branded accounts. Uh, suffice to say, uh, the social media manager population weighed in with their thoughts on, on how cringe some of that was. Uh, moving on, Facebook was also, um, seen testing again because this was done earlier last year, um, testing Messenger being accessible and chats available in the main app. So you can see the recent, most recent 5 chats that you've had without having to flick out into the separate Messenger app. Um, so that's something that was tested a while ago, come back again. So maybe they are still thinking of doing that somewhere along the line. And then we got a couple of TikTok updates 4, TikTok adds some hide all video options. So at the moment, when you want to hide something or want to stop seeing something, you can unfollow and there's some other options. One of the options they've added for you to filter out things is a hide all videos from a specific user. When you're on their profile, hit this to hide user and all the videos from them. And then there's also a hide videos with specific sounds. So you can choose a piece of music or any soundbite that's being frequently used, particularly when there's a kind of a meme that goes wild, then you you can specifically mute any videos using the same sound. And they've also got a new search page, which is more than just a boring kind of search box. You have like a nice block color, um, images which show you different categories that you can pick from for different types of TikToks. Um, so they're playing around with discovery in TikTok there. Uh, WhatsApp animated stickers. So they've— animated stickers have been available on other platforms for some time, I believe. And so WhatsApp is joining that party and they've also introduced dark mode in its beta app, I think only on Android. So you can't get dark mode fully yet, but it will be coming out shortly by the looks of it. And finally, we have something from Twitter. So there was a Twitter reminder feature, which I've been told is not a new, new feature. It's been around for some time, but it's little used, or maybe not been seen by me at least, where you can set in a tweet ability to have a reminder about something, but not from replying or engaging to the tweet or hitting a like on the tweet. That's a separate kind of functionality you can do it in Twitter, but But this is a— you can remind for a specific TV show by hitting the button. So you tap the button, remind me, and then it will send you a reminder when that show comes on or whatever else. And it also is shown at the top of the TV programs, like events page you can sometimes find within Twitter as well. So, uh, be interested to see who gets using that. And that is all of this week's quick hits.

There we go. And that's it for today. Next week, we'll be talking to someone from a little social media platform you might not have heard of yet. It's called Twitter.

So yes, make sure you hit subscribe in your podcast app of choice so you're notified as soon as the next episode is available.

Geek Out with Matt Navarra is a Big Revolution production. You can find out more at bigrevolution.net/podcasts. And if you struggle to keep up with the tech and media news every day, I've got a daily newsletter you might be interested in. Visit bigrevolution.net/newsletter for more information and to sign up. You can find me on Twitter as @martinsfp.

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Goodbye, geeks.