What Australia's Top Brands Know About Going Viral

Just back from Sydney, recording this two days out from The Social Summit while it's all still fresh. Audio only this week, and it's the honest download.

We flew over, took the signage, the cameras and the mics, hosted the networking drinks and closed out the day with the final panel. This episode is what I brought home with me.

What we're covering:

• Why the rooms that scare you are the ones worth walking into, and what showing up at that first conference actually turned into
• What three founders with repeat viral moments know that most brands don't
• AI, strategy, and the line between the two
• Paid or organic: which lever to pull, and when pulling the wrong one too early tanks the whole thing
• The market research step nearly everyone skips
• What's coming next on the podcast, including Britt Austin from State of Brand

Hit play, and follow the show so next week's episode lands in your feed.

Come say hi on Instagram @coffeesandcontentpod, tell us who you want to hear from next.

Links:

• Follow on Instagram: @loren.thesocialcollective
• Find Loren on LinkedIn: Loren Tomlinson
• Visit us at: www.thesocialcollective.co.nz

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Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:07

Grab that morning cup of coffee, turn up those headphones, and let's talk marketing. This is the podcast where we get into the strategy, the numbers, and the conversations shaping the industry behind the scenes. Brought to you by the Social Collective, this is Coffees and Content. Hello, happy Sunday, and welcome to a brand new episode of the Coffees and Content Podcast coming to you in audio-only fashion today. For good reason, I promise. Sorry to those of you who like watching these videos on Spotify and YouTube and wherever you turn into the Coffees and Content podcast. But I have just got back from an incredible trip to Sydney. I'm going to break it all down in today's episode. And so naturally, today is a day where I'm sitting on my couch, I'm in my sweats, I don't feel like turning the camera on. So we're just going to have an audible chat today. But welcome to today's episode of the podcast. Let's dive on in. Today's episode is brought to you by the Social Collective, a holistic digital marketing agency run by yours truly, where you support established surface-based businesses across New Zealand and Australia, focusing on social media, paid advertising, email marketing, content creation, and wrapping it up with a really strategic strategy. My goodness, where do I even begin? I'm gonna keep this episode short and simple because there is so much more gold that is going to come over the next few weeks. Next week's episode I'm going to release is with the incredible Brit Austin from a company called State of Brand. I had the pleasure of being able to interview Britt while I was over in Sydney for the Social Summit over these last few days. And oh my goodness, there's just so many nuggets of wisdom. We will also have the panel that I hosted at the Social Summit. I had Leah Georgantis, who runs Girls with Gems and Sneaky Link on the panel. We had Sarah Foray, who runs Contour Cube, and Isabella Linden, who runs Vive Management. And wow, what an insane panel that was. We talked all things virality, building a brand, building credibility in the industry, and how we make things last longer than just the viral moment. But today's episode, I really wanted to use this as an opportunity to recap some things from the summit and share a few of my top takeaways. Because when I go to something like this, I always find it so much fun being able to come back home to New Zealand and bring all of these lessons with me, bring all of the new knowledge that I have, and then be able to pass it on to you through podcast episodes, through social media content, be able to bring it into my consulting sessions and bring it through the agency. So what I've done is I've narrowed it down to my absolute top favorite takeaways from the Social Summit. So for those of you who don't know what the Social Summit is, it is essentially Australia's leading marketing conference for content creators and brands. And I have had the absolute pleasure of being able to attend all four of the conferences that have happened so far. Two took place last year and two have taken place this year. And this time was extra special because the first time I attended, the second time I had the privilege of being able to host a couple of panels. The third time, I also had the opportunity to host a panel. I got to close out the day and host the last panel of the day. And I've had the privilege of being able to do that again this time, which was just epic. The panel that I mentioned, we got to close out the day with it. It was the best way to end the day, wrap up all of the most amazing lessons that everybody had seen and heard and talked about. And then, of course, even better, because the social collective was hosting the networking drinks. And so Morgan, who's our client lead from TSC, and I, we both flew over to Sydney. We took all of our signage with us. We took our cameras, we took our microphones. We really locked in for a couple of days and we maximized every opportunity that we had that came our way throughout the last couple of days. And the networking drinks were so much fun. It was such a great opportunity for us to be able to go over there, really continue to drive the social collective's name into the Australian industry. It's something that I've been doing for the last couple of years. And through that, we've seen so many incredible connections. We've had work opportunities come out of it. I have now been able to develop my personal brand and my speaking career and my presenting opportunities. And I just think that putting yourself out there is such, it's such a scary thing, but it is also really exciting at the same time. I just want to say a massive thank you to my amazing friend Amy Dickinson, who runs the Social Summit. She is one of the co-founders. She has done an amazing job of really curating such an incredible space for creators and brands and agencies to all come in and be involved in such an awesome day. And I'm very grateful to have been part of the summit. And I'm really, really excited to see what next year has in store as well. So before I get into the episode, I thought what I would do is give a really, really quick recap on what we got up to while we were there. And the reason I want to do it is because it provides quite a bit of context as to some of the key takeaways from the conference. Because essentially the conference was almost the last part of the journey, and we had a lot of hurdles to get over before that happened. So heading over to Australia, we had some meetings in Sydney booked for Thursday morning. We had, like I said, a podcast episode organized for Thursday afternoon. I was very fortunate to get an exclusive invite to some networking drinks hosted by Arielle Thomas, who runs a company called Cinema Tom and also runs a podcast called Process the Podcast. If you are a creative and a business owner, I would highly recommend checking out Process the Podcast. It is such a good listen. And so we were invited to these networking drinks, which again is a really daunting opportunity, but also an exciting one. And it ties very much into one of the key takeaways that I want to share, which is essentially around the concept of putting yourself in the rooms that scare you and putting yourself out there. And I had a lot of conversations with people at the summit on Friday who were like, oh my gosh, I've come here alone today and I was so nervous, or my goodness, I didn't know what to expect, or this is way out of my comfort zone and I don't normally get out of the house. Because I think a lot of the time as marketers, we spend so much time on our computers. And as business owners, we do the same. And as content creators, you're on your phones and we spend so much time just sitting and executing the work. And it's often, I feel like it needs a bit of a circuit breaker almost to be able to actually take ourselves out of those situations and put ourselves into rooms where we can continue to grow and expand our knowledge. And that's one of the reasons for me why I started going over to Australia last year for these conferences is because I wanted to learn from the best of the best. I wanted to continue to invest in my learning. I wanted to be in rooms where people were inspiring each other and lifting each other up and sharing inside information in terms of how they've got their businesses to where they've got them. And I find that while a lot of people are transparent on social media, like we've talked about in previous episodes, there's only so much you can share in a very short 30 to 60 second reel. There's only so much you can hear in a 20-minute to maybe an hour-long podcast episode. There's only so much that you can get from somebody's carousel post on Instagram. But one of the really cool things about being physically in the room with people is you get to ask the questions that you want to know. Like seeing people stand up at the end of these panels throughout the day and ask the speakers questions or come and flag people down and ask them more about their businesses or about their journey. I mean, I had so many people that came up to me asking me questions, which was just such a cool experience. And I did the same with other speakers. I picked their brains and I remember having a chat with all of the amazing panelists that were on my panel before we went on stage, and we were comparing notes around how do your meta-ads work and what are you finding is like a little bit tough about marketing and what have you found that's worked really well this year and what's not working so well. And it's really nice to be able to be in that space where you're not just listening to somebody like I'm doing right now, talking into a microphone and putting it out into the podcast world. You actually get to have that two-way conversation and ask the questions that you want to know. And I think it's also an incredible opportunity for you to put yourself and your brand out there. Because I think about when I went to my very first social summit, which was in Melbourne in March of last year, I absolutely no idea what I was expecting. I had dragged one of my girlfriends along. I had said to her, Hey, look, do you want to fly over to Australia with me? I've been invited by this wonderful girl Amy to come and attend her conference. She's given us a couple of tickets. Do you want to come with me? And we kind of took a chance on a conference that had never existed prior to last year. And it was a really daunting experience to fly all the way to Australia and put ourselves out there. But we did it anyways. And through that, I got to meet so many amazing people that then when I came back for the second conference, which was in Sydney last year, I got to continue building out those relationships. And then the same thing happened back in Melbourne earlier this year, is you're in the rooms with the same people that you've seen before, and obviously new people, but you get to see the same familiar faces that are there time and time again. And because I put myself out there at that very first one, I was then able to build naturally. I just ended up building a really fantastic friendship with Amy. For those of you who have been listening to the podcast for a while, you probably would have heard some of our episodes together. And we formed this really fantastic friendship that then opened the door for me to moderate some of the panels, which then opened the door to connect with some of the panelists and the bigger names. Like I've connected with some of the biggest of big brands over in Australia and the amazing people that have either started those companies or that are within the senior management team in those organizations. And that is an opportunity that I never would have had if I didn't put myself in that room that very first time. And I didn't encourage myself to reach out to Amy and invite her to my podcast. And then just purely by chance, we became really good friends. But the main thing is that I put myself out there and I gave myself the opportunity for those doors to be opened. But I also want to remind you that when those doors are opened for you, people can open doors for you left, right, and center in this world. But it is up to you to step through that door. You just have to be aware of which doors are being opened. And then it is up to you to decide do you want to step through it? Because I know plenty of people that I've had conversations with, especially over these last couple of summits, the people that have seen that I've been moderating panels for the last few that have come up to me and said, Oh my goodness, like that would be so cool, but I'm too nervous to do it. Or I was offered an opportunity to do that one time and I said no. And I wish that I'd said yes. And my biggest advice to those people is keep trying and try again. And if you're nervous, put yourself out there. The worst that happens is you feel a little bit silly, but the best that happens is that you end up opening more and more doors for yourself. It's like a snowball effect. So it's a scary thing to do. And this goes for, I think honestly, all parts of business. Everything about business ownership and about marketing and about content creation is scary. And I've had a couple of conversations with some content creators recently who are like, my following is so small and I don't really have many followers that are like looking at my stories, or I don't have much engagement right now. And I've been saying to them, everybody starts somewhere. Like I didn't end up with, I think I've got a little over 7,000 followers on my personal Instagram, but we've got a community across all of our channels and all of our platforms of almost 20,000 people at this point. And I didn't collect these 20,000 people overnight. I didn't just wake up one morning and all of a sudden I had a community of 20,000 people. Like that just doesn't happen. It happens incrementally over time. But I think what we forget to do is look at where you are is not where somebody else is. Where this content creator is that is just starting their brand is not at the same point where I am because I've put up so many more posts. So it should be a great example to you that the more that you continue to put yourself out there, the closer you get to achieving those goals. Another really great tip that I picked up from the conference as well is around the concept that AI won't replace your strategy, but it will absolutely improve your productivity. And now this came from a masterclass that was run by Josh Hendricks. He runs a company called Insights Media. And Josh ran this incredible masterclass. He talked us through how him and his team structure like their claude setup, how he uses AI, how he uses it to scrape the internet, how he uses it to pull resources, how he uses it to do so many things within his agency, a lot of which have very similar parallels to the way that we run the social collective. And one of the things that really stood out to me was the fact that he continued throughout his presentation to drill in the fact that you can use AI as a tool to help you gather data, gather information, improve your productivity, increase the amount of support that you have for all of those like tedious admin type tasks, or the ones that are a little bit more simplistic, or the ones that don't necessarily need human touch. But one of the things that it will never replace is a human's ability to strategize. And the way that he structured this was they put all of their strategic insight and all of their information into their setups in Claude so that when it's doing things like scraping the internet or scraping like a social media profile, for example, it's got their strategy to compare it to, going, okay, well, how do these markers match up? How is this performance going? And it was really awesome for Morgan and I to sit in this masterclass and hear all of this because this is exactly how we run the social collective. We do not outsource any of the strategy. Morgan and I are responsible for the strategy at TSE. We sit down every single month and we go through all of our client strategies. We look at the markers, we look at indications of how things are performing, and we're always looking at how we can improve it. And then we lean on tools like AI to grab that information for us. Like what is the performance? Can you grab information for the reports, like the numbers and the metrics? So we're not actually asking AI to think for us because AI only knows what you give it. It only gives you information based on what you've trained it to understand. It can't all of a sudden just instantly get into your brain. Well, at least not yet. It can't get into your brain and understand exactly how you personally strategize for things. And I think that's another really cool conversation that Morgan and I have been having over these last couple of days in Sydney is people that work with us at the social collective, our service-based businesses that come to us, come to us for our strategy. They come to us for our formulas. We have a formula and a structure of seen, trusted, and wanted. We get brands seen, we make sure they are trusted. And then because they have been seen and they are trusted with their ideal clients, we then get them wanted. And those are the three stages that we move every client through. It is a framework that works so well. We have formulas within this framework to make sure that we're on point. So engagement rates are improving, reach is improving, we're seeing more leads come in, we're seeing more conversions come through. There's so much that goes into the strategy, but it needs a human to think it first, and then AI can help you with the execution. And I think it was really awesome just to be able to go trans tasman and go across the sea and hear that the Australian brands that are doing the exact same thing as what we are doing are implementing it in the exact same way. There is no difference. Everyone is strategy first with your humans and then execution and analysing with AI second. So it's really awesome to see that exactly what we're preaching to our clients is also at the same time being preached with some of Australia's leading marketing agencies. Another thing that is being preached, and this actually came off the panel that I hosted, and like I said, it came from the conversation that started before we even got on stage. We were sitting in the speaker lounge and having a chat through a little bit about the questions, and then we kind of just got onto how's your business going, as every business owner tends to do. And we got onto the conversation of the difference between paid and organic. And then I brought this conversation over to the stage, and one of the conversations that we were having was because the whole panel was focused around building a brand and viral moments. And every one of the women on our panel has had viral moments and then not only just had like a singular siloed viral moment, they've been able to capitalize on that and continue to produce those viral moments and continue to nurture and foster that community so that they keep happening time and time again. But one of the things that we did discuss was the difference between paid ads and organic. And I'm really, really excited for you all to listen to this episode when I get to release it on the podcast, because I think there's so many gems in this discussion. But one of the things that I wanted to bring forth in this episode is how organic growth is still entirely possible. You just have to be really clear on who you're speaking to, why you're speaking to them, what it is that actually makes them want to connect with your brand. Because you can't be out there copying everybody else. You can't be out there grabbing that disgusting butter yellow. I'm sure that everybody probably disagrees with me there, but you can't just be going out there and grabbing that butter yellow, slapping that text on a reel and calling it a day. You can't continue just to chase trends just because they're trending. You have to be able to look at what your brand needs, what your customers relate to, how they align with you and your business. Because once you understand the formula for your own brand, like what makes your customers tick, what makes them want to engage with your products or your services or you as a founder. Once you've really understood what your individual formula needs, it actually becomes really easy to rinse and repeat. And it does take a lot of analyzing and understanding and also a bit of risk taking. I spoke to Sarah Foray, who runs Contour Cube. She's the one of the co-founders of Contour Cube, and I had a fantastic conversation with her on the panel, and then also a conversation off the panel with her and her husband, who's the other co-founder. And a lot of her decisions are rooted in some data, but they are also heavily rooted in her gut feeling of exactly what is right for the brand. And because she's been doing it for such a long time, she's perfected her individual formula. She's not chasing trends just for the sake of it. If she is jumping on a trend, she is looking at, okay, how does this trend align with my brand? And how can I make sure that I increase those viral moments? And then when it comes to the paid ads side of things, it was a really interesting discussion because it's something that I think is really important for a lot of people to understand is that paid and organic do two entirely different things. You can do so much with organic, and all of the founders on the panel very much agreed that you need to be organic first. You need to have a really strong organic presence. You need to use it to build your brand. You need to use it to build your credibility. And then it gets to a point, and Leah mentions this on the panel, it does get to a point where you eventually want to turn on some ads. You eventually want to no longer rely on organic social media. And that parallels exactly what we talk about at the social collective, which is understanding which lever to pull and when. Because if you pull the wrong lever too early, you risk tanking your strategy. If you think about a brand that has no organic social media presence and they want to turn the ads on, which is a conversation that I have to have with people quite frequently because they think that turning on paid ads is the way to instantly grow and to quickly grow their brand. If you haven't tested things out organically to even understand what your customer resonates with, yes, your paid ad strategy is different to your organic strategy, but you also need to have that connection with your customers first and understand who they are, what makes them tick, what makes them understand things. And then you can take it into the paid space. And also on the flip side, if you are only running paid ads and people are then coming to your pages looking for an organic connection, they are looking for that organic content to be educated a bit more about the brand, to find out what you do, to connect with the people behind it or the founder that's in front of the brand, and they find zero or very minimal organic social media presence. It's a lot harder to get them to convert on their ad because they actually work together. They do very different things, but they work together in unison. And so that was a really awesome part of the panel. It's just a really nice reminder from a big business as well that they have the same struggles and they go through the same journeys. As what you will be going through. But also there is a really clear strategy for each of them and a really clear need to be clear on what paid does for your brand and what organic socials do for your brand. And speaking of brand, the final takeaway that I had from the social summit that I want to bring to today's episode is know your brand, do your market research, and have a plan that can follow that viral moment. And again, this is all taken from the panel that I hosted. And a little bit is also pulled from Britt Austin, who I mentioned I've uh got on the podcast as well. Her episode's going to be released very, very soon. Britt hosted a masterclass on the day as well. So her masterclass, in combination with the panel that I moderated at the end of the day, really honed in on the importance of knowing your brand, doing your market research, understanding who your client is. And if you feel like you don't understand that, please make sure that you tune into Britt's episode when I release it. This is one of the most important ways for being able to grow and scale your business, especially in the digital space, because you need to understand who your audience is and who you're speaking to. If you're speaking to everyone, you are literally speaking to no one. And that is why you're hitting your head against a wall, going, why is my content not resonating? And that is also when we start to turn, like I've said in the last couple of episodes, when we start to turn to social media for that inspiration and for looking at what other people are doing and then going, Oh, well, maybe I should do that too. Maybe I should jump on that trend. Maybe I should do that post because that agency has done a really great post, and maybe I should do the same for my business and share the same information. No, you need to think about your brand. Do the market research now. It is never too late to do market research. Start now, interview people, chat with them, find out what makes them tick, find out what makes them buy, find out what makes them engage and connect, and then implement that into your strategy. Because at the end of the day, that is what is going to get your audience connecting with you beyond just that initial viral moment. And that's what we touched on on the panel that I hosted was you can have multiple viral moments. It doesn't just have to be that you're a one-hit wonder, but without a strategy, it is almost borderline impossible. And yes, viral moments for the most part happen by accident initially. But the girls that I had on the panel really talked about how they can actually predict now which videos of theirs will go viral. They understand which ones are going to take off and gain traction because they've done it time and time again. But that is because they've sat in the data, they've connected with their customers. Leah used to do styling sessions in Double Bay to connect with her people. Sarah has gone out and been to multiple expos. She's talked to so many of her customers. And Isabella runs a talent agency and she has spoken with both brands and creators so she can actually pick up on exactly how things are going to land and which ones are going to hit. And all three of these women just shared amazing experiences around how they have really looked inwards at their brands and figured out who they are speaking to, what they are good at, and they've perfected their own formulas. And I think for me, hosting that panel, it was really exciting to see that there are people and business owners out there that are absolutely killing it. And one that comes to mind as well is Britney Saunders, who runs a company in Australia called Fate the Label, F-A-Y-T. And same thing. She can pretty much predict what's going to go viral because she has spent so much time sitting in the back end of her analytics and her data and bringing in focus groups and talking to amazing people about their experiences so that she can really tailor the marketing and tailor the messaging to her ideal customers. It's not making an assumption, it's not making a guess, it's really understanding who you're speaking to because that is what means that you can then have a plan that exists beyond just that initial viral moment. So then if your content does take off, you're not all of a sudden going, oh my goodness, okay, well, that was just a freak accident. Now let me try and do something else. And hopefully that will stick. It's actually a lot easier if you've done the prep work ahead of time. And then when that viral moment does eventually hit, you know how to continue to capitalize on it. So I really hope today's episode has been helpful for you to take away some of those insights from the social summit. I'm gonna aim to share a little bit more on my substack too over the coming weeks. You can also obviously go and follow myself on Instagram. I'm Lauren.the SocialCollective. Make sure that you're following the Coffees and Content podcast as well, because that's where we're sharing all of the latest and greatest updates. And I will be back hopefully next week with another episode with some video. Today was more just a casual sit on my couch and have a chat into my mini mic so that I could share some insights straight from the summit, because there is nothing better than getting insights hot off the press. So two days out from the summit, and you're already getting all of the juiciest insights. So make sure that you tune in to next week's episode because we're going to be hearing from Britt Austin all around building a personal brand and a business brand. And if there's episodes that you want to hear, there's people you want me to interview, there's conversations that you want to be brought to the podcast, please make sure that you sign into our DMs on the Coffees and Content Podcast Instagram page because I would love to hear from you. But that is everything for today's episode. I will see you same time, same place next week. Bye.