Coffees and Content

How to Build an Authentic Brand That Converts in 2025

• Loren Tomlinson | Holistic Digital Marketing and Social Media Strategies • Season 3 • Episode 1

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Welcome to Season 3 of Coffees & Content.

After two high-impact seasons, we’re back with even bigger insights, expert guests, and strategies to help you stay ahead in digital marketing.

This season, we’re cutting through the noise and focusing on real, results-driven marketing strategies. No fluff, no hype — just actionable insights that work.

In This Episode:

  • Recap from the Social Summit: What’s shaping content strategies in 2025
  • The Power of Personal Branding: Why your brand should be lived, not built
  • UGC vs. EGC: Why Employee-Generated Content is becoming a major marketing move
  • Long-Form Content’s Comeback: How depth and storytelling drive engagement
  • The Algorithm vs. Your Audience: The only metric that actually leads to sales
  • The Truth About Followers: Why audience size doesn’t equal business success

This is just the beginning. Season 3 will be packed with deep dives into personal branding, digital strategy, AI, and content that converts, plus exclusive interviews with leading industry experts.

Stay Connected:

Loved this episode? Leave a review - it would mean the world!!

If this episode gave you a breakthrough moment, share your key takeaway on Instagram and tag @coffeesandcontentpod. Your insights might just shape a future episode.

Welcome to Coffees and Content, the podcast keeping you ahead in all things social media and digital marketing. I'm Loren, digital marketing strategist, international speaker, and the owner of The Social Collective, a multi-six figure marketing agency. Each week, I'm breaking down all of the latest marketing trends, strategies, and of course, those must know updates. I'm gonna be having conversations with some of the industry's top experts. sharing insights you simply won't hear anywhere else. So grab your cup of coffee and let's get into it. This is Copies and Content. Welcome back everybody. It is season three. Welcome back to the Copies and Content podcast everyone. For those of you who are brand new around here, I am Loren. I am a digital marketing strategist, multi six figure agency owner, and of course your go-to expert. for all of the no BS digital marketing insights. And this is the Coffees in Content podcast. I'm so excited. I feel like it's been so long since I have been in front of a camera, in front of a microphone talking, sharing everything. And my friends, we have so much to catch up on. First of all, welcome to YouTube. For those of you who are watching, this is now officially on YouTube. You can go over and check it out at Coffees in Content. over on YouTube. You can also now check out our website, which is so exciting. I have every single episode that has ever been recorded and published over on coffeesandcontentpod.com. I am so excited for you to sink your teeth into everything that's happened in the last two seasons and of course, catch up with me and some of my digital marketing industry friends over season three. I know, exciting, right? Season three is honestly going to be bigger and better than ever. I have so much in store for you. We have more expert guests. We have deeper conversations. We've got strategies that we're going to share with you that actually work in today's digital marketing landscape. Even since the last season, so much has changed in the digital space. So I'm here to give you all of the updates. And today, what we're gonna do is kick off with... I guess a bit of a recap, but some of my biggest takeaways from a conference that I attended recently in Melbourne called the Social Summit. I want to talk you through why and how and what to look out for because the content game is really shifting and I want you guys to stay ahead of the curve. And to help me out, after this episode, you're gonna get to hear from a few of my industry friends. I have been interviewing some amazing guests while I have been across the ditch over in Australia, and I have some experts coming on the podcast to share all things LinkedIn, growing brands, starting your own podcast, creating your own community, and so much more. So this season, I guess what I ask from you all really is this season I want it to feel like a conversation. I wanna feel like you and I are having a chat. I wanna feel like you are in the podcast studio with me and I want you to feel like I'm in your office with you. I really want it to feel like a conversation and so to make that happen, what I want from you is any time you hear something that clicks, there's that light bulb moment or there's a question that you have, I want you to jump on over to Coffee's and Content Pod on Instagram, slide into my little DMs and share your top. Takeaways, share the takeaways from each episode, share the things that you've noticed in all of the episodes that you're enjoying. Tell me what's worked, tell me what hasn't, and of course, ask me your questions because I will be answering every single one of them on the podcast. I wanna make sure that I'm answering everything that you guys wanna know. Don't forget to subscribe as well. I wanna make sure that you can see all of the episodes that are coming up. So check us out on YouTube. You can also follow, of course, on anywhere that you stream your podcasts. And you can find us on our website and our socials too. This episode is proudly brought to you by The Social Collective, which is of course my agency. We are a holistic digital marketing agency focusing on providing all things strategic support and making sure that ads, social media, email marketing content, and of course your PR and media features are all working the best for you. Whether you want me to coach you through it or you want to outsource it to my team and I, chat with us if you're looking for some marketing help, no matter how big, what it is, what you need. Let's have a chat because I'm all about making marketing simple, remember? Welcome to today's episode, which is takeaways from the Social Summit. Alrighty, my friends, we are getting straight into it. We are laying it on thick in today's episode. Like I said, this episode is all focused around what I've taken away from the wonderful Social Summit. I really feel like when it comes to going to conferences, for those of you who know me, they are my absolute jam. I have more lined up for the coming weeks, which is incredibly exciting. Any chance that I can go and speak in a conference or attend a conference, I love being in a room where people get to share what's going on, what they found works, what they found didn't work, and how we're progressing, especially in the social media space. And of course, you all know that I love to summarize what I've learned and share it with you, because why should the knowledge just stop? me, right? So we're going to get into today what I have really taken away from the conference. The social summit in itself is a summit that was held around creators and brands looking at how they can basically be showing up in the best way possible online. So I'm going to summarize for you guys some of the key takeaways. And of course, as always, I'm going to let you know what that means for you. First things first, we had massive conversations both on the stage and off the stage around the concept of personal brands. They are meant to be lived. They are not meant to be built. What I mean by this, and I've seen this actually a lot over the last six months to a year with my coaching clients in particular, they have been very interested to know about this topic, but the concept of personal brands, I think there's a lot of people that kind of sit on, I guess you would say two sides of the fence. You feel like you either need to be all in just on business, or you feel like if you're gonna build a personal brand, you need to go all in personally. had a conversation with somebody recently and I explained to them that I am very much on a journey of building my personal brand alongside building the brand of the podcast and building the brand of the agency, which is the social collective as you all know, but. My personal brand, just because it has the word personal in front of it, doesn't mean that you have to be sharing everything about your personal life. I share very minimal about my life outside of work, but when it comes to work, I share a lot of the behind the scenes. I share what I'm getting up to, what I'm learning, how I'm taking the tips and tricks that even I've learned from my own business mentor, and how I'm implementing that into my business. So I want you to keep that in mind as I talk through, I guess, all of my top takeaways today, but most importantly, the concept of personal brands being lived over being built. So like I said, there's this, I think, that we are, or a season, if you will. I know some people like the word season a little bit better than era. There is this season that is coming to an end that I'm seeing across social media with, in particular, these... perfectly curated feeds, perfectly curated brands, perfectly curated video content. That is still definitely the forte for some people and they absolutely love it. And to those people who are amazing at creating content, you keep doing what you're doing because you're doing an amazing job. However, I'm gonna speak in this instance to the people that don't feel like they have the best performing content. They don't have... the glitziest, the glamorous, the nicest looking content because you don't have to miss out just because you don't have picture perfect content. I don't consider myself to have a picture perfect life and a picture perfect lifestyle. I also don't consider my work to be picture perfect at all times. What I do wanna utilize is social media as a way to get the messaging out there around who I am, what I offer, what my team offers, and how of course we can support you. Enter. TikTok was a really great space for a lot of people to start getting comfortable with the messy. Leaning into the messy side of content, throwing up a tripod in your bedroom or putting your phone up in your kitchen when you're in your hoodie or you're in your track pants, showing them what it looks like to see a little bit of life behind the scenes. And we can see that that trend itself has kind of carried on through across multiple different platforms. Across Instagram, people want to see more real, authentic content. Across Facebook, we wanna be having more connected conversations. In a podcast format, you wanna be hearing my real honest, raw opinions, not some really carefully, highly curated story that I have to share with you about some amazing case study of a client of mine that's like a one in a million situation. And of course, even in your email marketing, people are craving. understanding what happens behind the scenes, understanding why they should be backing you and your brand. So I think that there's a lot of conversation, as we even saw at the summit, that has been happening lately around this concept of your personal brand doesn't need to be absolutely curated. But instead, what we're starting to see is that shift towards more deeper, really, really authentic. We want to see the real people behind the businesses. We want to see the real brands. That's why so many of us, myself included, love podcasts because you can't possibly put on an act for a long period of time, 45 minutes into an episode and you guys are hearing the real me. Like this is the way that I communicate in business. This is the way, for those of you who are watching on video, you'll see there are many, many hand movements. I'm Italian, I'm very proud about it. And of course my hand movements are one of my signature things. I'm not hiding any part of myself. I'm talking and communicating in the way that feels most authentic to me. So I can actually call in those aligned audience members. I can call in those future aligned clients. I can be speaking to the people that I really want to attract into my space. And you can do the same. And I want to remind you as well, before I wrap up this particular point, is that people connect with people. Let that sink in for a second. People connect with people, not just aesthetics. If you think back to when Instagram first began, there was so much chatter and so much, I think, stress and expectation that we had to have these beautifully curated Instagram feeds. They had to look like they were freshly off of Pinterest. You had put so much effort and energy into them and goodness forbid you had a tile that didn't match. you stood out like a sore thumb. But now people don't want that. Like I said, we've seen with TikTok, people want the messy, they want the raw, they want the real. They don't wanna see some really glamorized, highly curated, face-tuned content every five seconds because to a lot of people, especially when you're trying to connect with your ideal customer, if that person is not living this glitz, glam, beautiful lifestyle, they're gonna find your content so hard to connect with. So it's really coming down to building that personal brand that is authentically you and really communicates with the people that you wanna welcome into your space. The other thing I really loved that was a conversation at the summit, which for those of you who have been clients at The Social Collective, whether it's in a outsourced capacity or you've worked with me for coaching or you've come to a workshop of mine, you will know that I am a massive fan of using UGC, user generated content, over always looking at collaborating with influencers. Don't get me wrong, there is most definitely a time and a place to be utilizing influencers and working with influencers. However, There was a big conversation at the summer around the concept of EGC and that is employee generated content. Employee generated content and user generated content are two, in my opinion, fantastic ways to be putting your brand out there, showing a little bit of the real and the raw and getting content out there that resonates with people. What I see, I guess is happening is why UGC and EGC is doing so well is because people are looking for educators. over influences. We no longer want to be influenced to buy something. We want to be educated. I personally want to know before I buy a particular product, is this right for me? Is the person I'm working with going to be right for me? Is the outcome of the product or outcome of the service going to be the best fit for me and where I'm at at this particular point in my life? And I don't really want to be influenced. I don't want to look at someone that has that final finished product. and go, I want exactly that. Because the reality is, is that while the end result might be great, the in-between might not be what I'm looking for. So people these days are turning to social media looking for education instead of just being influenced. And I think when we talk about the long-term strategy of everything, this is such a great way to really create a powerful long-term strategy for your business because we're not just saying to people, look at how amazing your life could be if you had this particular thing. insert product or service here. But what we do want is to understand why it's so beneficial, understand the transformation. I cannot use that word enough. Everyone needs to be talking on social media about the transformation. Gone are the days where people give a hoot about what the deliverables are. Even with our services at TSC, gone are the days where we're telling them, will get X number of posts, you will get this, you will get that. Yes, of course, when you're talking financials and everything, you still want to know what the deliverables are. but the core focus is saying what it's going to do for our end user. And that's exactly where your brand should be as well. Because ultimately this is going to be the way that shapes the content you create. And of course, how you connect and then how those dollars come in. The next conversation that we had at the summit was favorite topic. And I do believe, if I'm not wrong, I spoke about this on the podcast last year, is this concept of long form content and it's rise, insert little like angel noise here. Because this is my favorite topic to talk about and I honestly could talk about it until the cows come home and I will record some episodes at a later stage this season, talking you through some tips and tricks on how you can implement this in your own strategy. But short form content is definitely still there. It isn't dead by any means, but the landscape is a thousand percent shifting. We don't just want to consume a series of reels and then make a decision about a product. We don't just want to look at a series of carousels and then purchase a product. What we do want, linking back into the conversations we've just had already, is we want to be educated. We want to know what's going on. We want to feel like we're connected to the person, into the brand. And so of course, with that, what we're looking for is that strategic, in-depth storytelling. We want to be told a story about where the impact and where the conversions are gonna be happening. For you guys, you wanna know if I take on this tip or this trick from Loren, what is it gonna do for me? I'm not just saying do this, do that, go do that, go implement that, because you can implement them. But as a business owner, if I don't know what I'm looking for when it comes to metrics and I don't know what I'm supposed to be seeing on the other end, I'm gonna find it really hard to decide if it's working or not. Same for your end users. They wanna be knowing if your product or service is delivering on what it needs to, and that happens when you communicate the story to them. You tell them what it looks like, what it feels like, what life on the other side is going to be like after they've worked with you. There really is, I think too, this balance between long form and short form content. It's not just long form content, and it's also not just short form. In my opinion and through what we implement at TSC, I'm a big fan and like I said, I'll turn this into a future episode for you guys, but I create the long form content first. So you're looking at it right now. This podcast, this audio, the transcript of it, the video of it, this all becomes the long form content for me. And from here, we can create blog posts, we can write newsletters, we can create social media content. I can take the video and we can make reels, we can make YouTube shorts, we can put it into TikTok videos. So I've started with something big and I've utilized it to create so much more. That's not to say that that is your entire strategy. There is still more that goes on behind the scenes. It's not just create one big thing and repurpose it across 50 channels because every single channel is different. But what you can do is make sure that you're thinking strategically and utilizing the bigger chunkier pieces of content to get you started and then you roll from there. Another conversation that I think was really powerful that happened at the summit was around the conversation of your audience mattering more than the algorithm. And I literally had this conversation with a client this morning talking about why don't we just stop looking at vanity metrics while we're in this particular season of life and of business. And instead we focus on building and growing the community. Creating a crew and a community of people that you value more than the performance of individual pieces of content, I believe is a game changer. I no longer look at my social media content and go, I so hope that I'm gonna get 52 million likes and 24,000 saves. No, I'm now creating content going, I want this to speak directly to the absolute dream client of mine. I want it to communicate transformation. I want them to know by working with me, working with my team, being in our space is so impactful for them. And that to me outweighs all of the vanity metrics. You know why? Because if I'm a consumer and I'm gonna spend time engaging with someone's content on social, chances are, that's probably where I'm staying. If I'm liking, if I'm saving, if I'm scrolling, I'm usually engaging with your content if I don't plan on going anywhere. On the other hand, if I'm interested in buying from somebody, I'm gonna spend my time and my energy going to their website, going to their link and bio, clicking on their stories and clicking on that link. I'm gonna be going towards the purchase page way more than I'm engaging with their social content in the social collective at our agency. This happened time and time again, where we have had so many people book in for, whether it was the Starter Kits last year, it's coaching with me, they've requested some outsourced marketing management services, and I've seen their names come through in my inbox and thought, have I met you before? Do we know each other? Where have you come from? And then I ask, because asking is key. Don't sit there and wait for someone to come and actively tell you. Don't ask. Go find out, collect the data. And I go and ask them and I say, how did you find out about me? And they say, I found out about you through Instagram. I say, that's funny. And then I go look through my content and I'm like, have you ever interacted with my content? And they say, no, Loren, I've actually just been watching your content for the last two years. I've been thinking about working with you. I've been really wanting to work with you, but I haven't been in a position or it hasn't been the right time or I've had other things on or other commitments, but now is the right time. And so I've decided to reach out. I can honestly guarantee you, hand on heart, I have had that situation happen multiple times since I started the social collective, and so many of our clients have not once ever engaged with our content. And so to me, if I'm creating content that speaks directly to my target audience member, the vanity metrics shouldn't matter at all. So do you see where there's chasing the algorithm and constantly pivoting and evolving and shifting your content, or? Really staying strong in your strategy, which I cannot preach highly enough and instead encouraging your content to speak to your dream client. But that's it. Let that land just for a hot second. I really want to encourage you this year to lean into building your own individual community, your crew of people that are going to be, yes ma'am, I am ready to go. As soon as you offer a new service or a new product, over. which pieces of my content is going to get me viral because I will tell you this business I have been booked and busy since I was under a thousand followers. I know so many business owners with under like 500 followers, under 300 followers. I know booked and busy business owners with 50 followers. Your Instagram following does not equal your success. What equals your success is your ability to communicate to people. just how powerful working with you or being part of your world or purchasing your products is going to be for them. So remember that next time you create a piece of content. And the very, very last takeaway that I wanted to share, honestly, there was so many good conversations. I really had to narrow it down to my top five because there were so many things we discussed. And trust me, in the upcoming episodes, you are going to hear from some amazing experts. all of which have either spoken at the conference or, you guys are really lucky, the host of the conference is going to be speaking on this podcast. So there is so much in store for you guys, I cannot wait. But the last big takeaway that I have taken away from the summit, and I will also say, I think from my perspective, going to the summit was such a wonderful opportunity. It was so reassuring and confirming that every single thing that I have been. preaching to all of you in the last season, even in the first season, to all of my clients that come and work with me at The Social Collective. Every single thing that I preach was exactly what was talked about on the stage by some of Australia and the world's leading marketing experts. So trust me when I say I do my research. So when you listen or you watch this podcast, you are getting nothing but the best, my friend. So as I said, the very last final takeaway from today is A big following, as I've said, does not equal big business. Big following, big business, they're operating in different worlds. They do not correlate, they do not exist together because ultimately the depth of your content trumps numbers any day. There is this huge, huge myth, like I said, that you need to have massive numbers and a massive following to be successful. I know so many people with hundreds and thousands of followers that can't sell products because they don't have an aligned audience, they don't have the right audience, they haven't communicated with the audience properly. But sometimes starting with a smaller and really, really, really engaged community can actually be the key to your success. Because those people are not just going to exist in the marketing space. Those people are going to take the conversations so much further than just social. They're gonna take them into their daily lives. They're gonna take them out for coffee dates with friends. They're gonna take all this information and all this knowledge that you've given them and they are going to be spreading it out to the 3D world and not just talking about it on social media. And that is ultimately what we want, right? So I guess in terms of what this means for you, because I always wanna make sure that my podcast has some handy top tips and handy takeaways for you all, I really want you to think about how you can apply all of these top tips that I have shared with you today. to your own business. I want you to either go back and re-listen to this episode and note down all of the key points, or I want you to just take a minute after you've listened to this episode to download everything that's come in and all the big top key highlights, tips, tricks, all the big takeaways that have really landed for you. And I'd love you to think about how you can apply this to change and slightly pivot. Don't throw away, but just slightly pivot your marketing strategy to be 1 % better. each and every day. The other thing I'd like you to think about is where do you want to be putting your energy as you move forward? What are you doing? Where are you putting your energy? Are you putting your energy into looking at vanity metrics? Are you getting so gosh darn hung up on this post didn't do well and this reel didn't do well? Or are you asking yourself, am I speaking to my community? I also want you to think about what is taking up your time? Are you spending your time creating things that are going to be valuable moving forward? or are you just creating fluff pieces for social media just for the sake of hitting that check mark of, I must do three posts a week. You know, really think about where you're putting your energy and is it strategic? And of course, I want you to think about, is my content strategy working for my business? If it's not, I'm gonna do a little shameless plug here and let you all know that this year, I'm gonna assume by the time this episode goes live, it's not gonna be too long before I promote everything, but. I am working on traveling the country this year with some VIP day workshops. There's going to be some full and some half day workshops. At the moment we've got a couple of half days coming up. There will be one in Auckland, out West Auckland way. And there's also hopefully fingers crossed going to be one done in Christchurch very, very soon. After running my VIP retreat day, honestly, the conversations were amazing. We focused solely on marketing strategy. So we focus on really honing in on the foundations of your business before we go anywhere with your digital marketing. And once we've nailed the foundations, you know exactly who your ideal client is, you know exactly the purpose of your business, the vision, what you offer. If you've got the right things in the right places in your marketing funnel, then we look at socials, ads, and emails and make sure that you've got a really solid foundation there for future business growth. So. If that sounds like something that you're needing, particularly that strategy component, let me know. Drop me a message on coffees and content pod on Instagram, or you can obviously slide into my personal DMs, which is lauren.thesocialcollective over on IG. And you can let me know if you're interested in coming. Let me know where you're based in the country, and I will make sure that I'm doing my dandas to come to a town or a city near you. But I guess I really want to wrap up this episode by letting you know that, of course, I have some amazing guests. We have... Rosie Chong coming on next week's episode. is Australia's number one personal branding expert on LinkedIn. She has a following of almost a hundred thousand people across her social platforms. She is literally the queen when it comes to how to build your own personal brand. And I'm getting her to break down all of her top tips, tricks, secrets, everything, all right here on the Copies and Content podcast. So that is coming out this time at next week. I also want to just share that this season we are going to be bigger and better than ever. Like I said, we have some events coming up, so make sure you're following us on Instagram if you want to see where those are happening. We have some epic sponsorship deals in the works, so I'm gonna be popping up here, there, and everywhere. And I want to know that you guys feel like you can reach out to me with any and all marketing questions that you have. That is literally what inspires this podcast is questions from you guys. I've even got some from my coaching clients today. asking me for a few top tips on things like AI, chat GPT, what you can do to protect your own social media accounts like Verification and TwoFact, all of those things. So if there's something that is a burning social media or digital marketing question on your mind, please drop me a message. Either go over to coffeesandcontentpod.com and you can find out email address, which is hello at coffeesandcontentpod.com or you can drop me a message on the coffeesandcontentpod Instagram page and I will... absolutely be responding and I will of course turn it into a beautiful podcast episode as well. So that is everything that I have to share for the first episode, but I wanted to say to you all welcome back and thank you for welcoming me back. It is so nice to be back in your ears. I am so excited for what's coming this season. You guys have no idea what is ahead of you. There are so many epic guests that I've been chatting to lately. So many more guests that I have lined up for the future. So many amazing tips and tricks. is... Honestly, my brain is blown with how exciting this season is going to be. So stay tuned, make sure you're subscribed everywhere. So wherever you listen to your podcast, the YouTube channel, the Instagram pages, all of the things, and I will see you guys for another cup of coffee next week. Bye.

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Loren Tomlinson

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