Simon Scholes

IT’S A MARATHON NOT A SPRINT Yesterday was #londonmarathon day. I take my hat off to all those who managed to get around the 26.2 mile course. As a former athlete, this isn’t an event I ever considered doing, 1500m in the decathlon was quite enough for me. However, the London Marathon has a lot of similarities to building a social media channel. Yes I know we all want that amazing audience for our social media channels, however, we can’t always get what we want. When it comes to building an audience of value who’ll interact with your content it takes consistency and a whole lot of patience, it takes tome, just like training for a marathon. More and more people are using social media every single day for their brands and businesses. However, in connection to this, a lot of these people are also thinking that a single social media post will be the answer to their prayers and bring them lots and lots of business. Social media is not a place to sell, it is however and excellent place to build brand, to b

When it comes to creating content, it's far to easy to approach it in a scattergun style, which is why planning is so important for any brand and business, and will help you overcome the 5p's (Preparation prevents piss poor performance).

I JUST WANT TO SEE YOU START How much content are you currently creating? I’ve been speaking about the need for perfection quite a lot lately. The reason being is, I’ve been speaking to a huge amount of people and businesses that are 100% hung up on putting out the perfect piece of content. The biggest issue with this is…….they never quite achieve the perfect piece of content and so therefor procrastinate the days away trying to make what they’ve created right in their eyes. What they forget is that if they’re not communicating at all, nobody can hear or see the value you’ve got to give to them. Now, this isn’t an easy thing to overcome, but, you have to get to a point where you’re happy to put out content taken from your weekly blogs. The idea of perfection is also a good reason why I direct people to doing Live video content over and above recording it. If you sit constantly recording on your mobile phone, then the chances are you’ll never actually put any content out as you’ll just keep recording

LANDSCAPE OR PORTRAIT And so the debate continues, should you be shooting your videos in landscape or portrait. The honest answer is…….it depends. For a very long time, content was always best shot in landscape so you didn’t end up with those two horrible black lines either side of your lovely video on platforms like youtube, facebook etc. and this is still the case. When you go live, make sure your phone is in landscape, when you’re capturing video for your brand / business make sure it’s in landscape. However, times are changing and when it comes to paid content it’s time to consider portrait content. Many brands now are using platforms like instagram stories, snapchat and even youtube mobile advertising and using vertical video. A lot of platforms are now starting to make good use of vertical video, and it’s all about understanding what you can achieve with your content on those platforms where you’re like to spend money. To find out more about portrait content, drop me a line, my email is my profi

ARE YOU USING INSTASTORIES? If you’ve ever thought about using Instagram Stories for business, now is the time! Not only are Instagram Stories fun and creative, but they’re great for growing your engagement, building brand awareness, driving traffic to your website, and even making ecommerce sales! We’ve all at some point watched a form of reality tv, be it back when Big brother was actually a social experiment, or the more recent series of Love Island and everything in between. We live in a voyeuristic age, where people love to see behind the scenes, real life stuff. So, this is what I suggest using stories for at first. Give people an insight into your life, almost like a daily vlog, but, it’ll only last for 24 hours in peoples streams, it’s also a chance to really put vertical video to excellent use, but, we’ll discuss landscape v’s portrait tomorrow. Until then, start putting instagram stories to good use in your business, give that behind the scenes look as well as giving value in a way that remov

DON’T GET SHADOW BANNED The term shadowban is used to refer to instances where your posts are not appearing in the hashtag search results. This can directly impact the ability for non-followers to discover your profile and content resulting in lower engagement. In such cases, your posts may still be seen by existing followers, but not to anyone else. How do I avoid being shadowbanned? Avoid overstuffing posts with hashtags. Do not use bots. Do not buy followers (real or fake). Be cool, and use Instagram like a human being. Don't try to game the platform, instead focus on posting high-quality, engaging content. Don’t swear, this is one I’ve recently found causes problems. To chat more about your instagram feed for your brand and business, just drop me a line, I’m always happy to chat (link in my profile) .

IT’S THE WEEKEND AGAIN Let me know in the comments what you’re going to do on your social media this weekend. So, if you’ve been consuming my content for a little while now, you’ll know I think weekends are a huge missed opportunity for many businesses to really connect with their current group of raving fans and potential future audience as well. So, today and tomorrow I want you to think about what content you could be creating this weekend. Does it have to be your usual style of content? Or maybe it could be fun videos, it could be a quiz, it could be a competition, whatever you decide to do, the most important thing is, you’re doing it so people can consume your value all weekend. Let me know in the comments, what’re you going to be doing on your social media channels this weekend to really speak to your potential audience in a different way?

SELLING ISN’T A DIRTY WORD So, as you know with my content, I regularly speak about the importance of being social on social media. We all know the fact that people buy on emotions, so the question is, how much of an emotional connection are you creating between you and your audience. Social media is an excellent opportunity for you to create a connection with your audience, especially those people you may never have a chance to actually meet. It’s also not the most terrible thing in the world now and again to actually sell on your content……this isn’t an OK to go ahead and sell in every single piece of content, and in fact hard selling is right out, but, when you give so much value with your regular social media content, putting in an ask now and again isn’t awful. I.E. You’re an accountant, you’ve given hints and tips as to how to do your own accounts, what you can claim for and can’t etc. etc. and then in tax season, you drop in the ask, if you’re still struggling, we’d be happy to help…..NOT……Hey, it’

WHAT WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR CONTENT TO ACHIEVE? I was at a session this week, and the question how do I get more shares on my content was asked. It prompted me to speak more about the idea of thinking about what you want your content to achieve. So, how often do you think about what you want your content to achieve? It's great to always give value, and speak passionately about what you do. However, what do you want to achieve..... do you want to create a debate, do you want it shared, do you want both of those things? You need to think carefully about what you want from your content and then structure it to receive exactly that. i.e. 250-word blog - comments 500 - 1000 word blog - shares 1000+ (data and information driven) - More website traffic If you want to chat more about things, drop me a line (link in my profile)

APRIL FOOLS DAY So, it’s that date yet again where everyone is telling you to check your zip is done up on your trousers, or saying your shoe laces are untied, or as some brands do, take it totally to the next level and use it in their marketing. So, how much have you thought about how you could use dates like today in your marketing. There have been some incredibly clever, and viral April fools from big brands and businesses over the years, and one of my personal favourites this year is from Travelodge who’re suggesting they are going to offer bed sharing with customers only booking in on their own to try and save money. This is why planning your content has been such an important message for me to people. There are so many amazing dates in the year you can tie your content and marketing back into that will really draw in your raving fans, and if it’s fun enough there’s a huge chance of it being shared and that increases that opportunity of viral content. It doesn’t ensure it, but, hell, what’s stopping

IT’S THE WEEKEND…… Yes it’s Saturday , and we all know what that means, I’m about to spend two days telling you how social media doesn’t work a 5 day week. That’s right, the weekend is a fantastic opportunity for you to keep talking to your amazing audience, and keep giving them value that your competition probably isn’t doing. How do you keep them interested on a weekend, well why not run polls, get them involved in a quiz on your instagram stories, or simply go out and speak to them on their content as well as posting your own stuff. Just don’t forget, the weekend isn’t always a chance to switch off, but more so, a chance to really get 4 or 5 steps ahead of the competition with a few simple social media posts and a bit of being social on social media. If you want to chat to me more about this, just drop me a line (link in my profile) and I’d be happy to have a chat.

WHAT WAS THE LAST VALUE YOU GAVE? Let me know in the comments. We all know that we don’t like being sold to, so why do we still see so many businesses ignoring the rules of engagement and spending their time selling solidly on their social media channels. They don’t respond to comments, and every single photo and piece of copy is selling to their audience, and then they wonder why the don’t get the interaction rates they really wanted. Now, imagine giving nothing but value to your audience. Imagine being an expert in your field, a voice of authority, and giving them that value for free, value that will really help them, value they can use and implement in their business straight away. If you can do the above, you’ll be amazed at how your audience will grow, and how you’ll build a group of incredible raving fans. If you want to discuss your social media more, you can always drop me a line (link in my profile), I look forward to speaking to you

ARE YOU USING TWITTER LISTS? The right Twitter list can help you find, monitor and interact with the right people easily, and allow you to be the James Bond of the business world by spying on different people without them even knowing. That’s right, you can stay up to date with the competition and what they’re doing on twitter, and more importantly right now, what they’re not doing. A few years ago, twitter was all the rage and everyone in business was using it in the hope of sending that one magical (impossible) tweet that would win them a million pound contract. When that didn’t happen, most of these businesses shut up shop on twitter and just post randomly now and again, so this is the perfect opportunity for you to get out there and start communicating. So, why lists? #1: Monitor Competitors Keep your competitors’ Twitter accounts in one handy list so you can easily monitor their tweets. It’s an excellent way to see how they interact on Twitter: scope out their activities, view their updates, check

DO YOU LOVE COMMENTS? So, here’s a question for you, and be honest in the comments………Do you reply to the comments you get on your content? If you’re getting any comments on your content, you should be looking to respond. It seems that a lot of accounts, especially business account, ignore the comments under their own posts. Trust me, I understand it, especially those one word comments that you can’t be sure if it’s spam, a bot or fake. However, it is still important to check your comments and respond to the best of your ability, acknowledging your real followers and commenters. It shows people who are just browsing through your profile that you do pay attention to your community, which gives them an extra reason to follow your account. Besides, a number of comments are a much stronger engagement indicator to the algorithm, so encourage conversations and discussions! Instagram is a social network. Remember, I’ve spoken about this before……that integral word……SOCIAL. So, be social and react to commen

ARE YOU PODCASTING? Podcasts are an excellent way for you to speak directly to your audience of raving fans in a frictionless way. Every other form of content creates a level of friction VIDEO you have to stop everything else to watch and consume it BLOG you have to stop everything else to read it MEMES you have to go onto social media channels and scroll or search to find your fav content PODCASTING on the other hand, on your medium of choice you’ll subscribe to your fav podcasts and your phone, computer etc. will download them automatically for you to consume. You literally have to do nothing but plug in your headphones or bluetooth kit to consume the content. So, when podcasts are currently growing astronomically right now with all age groups. 18-24 18% listen 25-34 28% listen 35-44 21% listen 45-54 16% listen 55-64 11% listen 65+ 6% listen And 550,000 podcasts are listened to, why wouldn’t you want to be part of those listening figures with your content and value? To find out how you can easily b

Welcome to Friday, it's time for another podcast. Today, I'm heading to Hull for a reunion of a radio station I once worked at. It'll be great to see all the old faces, but, it got me thinking about my first ever snoop. This is when the boss listens to your radio shows and effectively tells you what's shit and what's good. His main feedback was for me to talk to not at the audience......so, how do I do that, even to this day?

IT DOESN’T HAVE TO BE PERFECT Pretty much the number one reason (apart from fear of what anyone else thinks) for not putting out your content, is the fear of perfection, which does kind of tie itself back into what others think of your content too. Perfect content is the one elusive goal we all, always want to aim for, however, aiming for perfection every single time we put out a single piece of social media content, especially as a small business trying to build a group of raving fans through the value we give, is damn near impossible. If we always waited until a piece of content we made was perfect, well, let’s be honest, we’d never put anything out for people to consume. It ties back into my main point I’ve made many times IF YOU’RE NOT COMMUNICATING, NOBODY CAN HEAR WHAT YOU’VE GOT TO SAY So how do you get over this level of perfection you’re always striving for. Well, frankly it’s not easy. For me, I just told myself IT’S NONE OF MY BUSINESS WHAT OTHER PEOPLE THINK OF ME For you, it might be so

In this social media podcast, are you using search? The search bar is an excellent opportunity for you to find and speak to your potential raving fans who could eventually become a customer if you spend your time giving value etc. So, are you using it? Check out my social media for FREE brand building tips. www.instagram.com/simon_scholes www.twitter.com/simonscholes77 www.facebook.com/stopjabbaingon www.snapchat.com/stopjabbaingon linkedin.com/in/simonpscholes E: SimonS@PerceptionStudios.co.uk Founder & Creative Director T: 07976 625746 www.PerceptionStudios.co.uk

It's Tuesday and I've spent the last few days seeing something I've spoken about before happening over and over again on different social media accounts. Everyone just assumes that selling or pushing their FREE review is how to run a social media account.....they're forgetting the important word in the subject matter........SOCIAL. So how social are you on social media? Check out my social media for FREE brand building tips. www.instagram.com/simon_scholes www.twitter.com/simonscholes77 www.facebook.com/stopjabbaingon www.snapchat.com/stopjabbaingon linkedin.com/in/simonpscholes E: SimonS@PerceptionStudios.co.uk Founder & Creative Director T: 07976 625746 www.PerceptionStudios.co.uk

Welcome to Monday, the start of a brand new week. So, today I want to cover off something I've spoken about many times, the fact you should plan the week ahead. A fresh new week is a chance for fresh new content across your social media channels. However, as with most brands and businesses, they end up approaching their content in a scattergun approach of....crap, I've not posted for a month I'd better post something. So, let's talk about planning. Check out my social media for FREE brand building tips. www.instagram.com/simon_scholes www.twitter.com/simonscholes77 www.facebook.com/stopjabbaingon www.snapchat.com/stopjabbaingon linkedin.com/in/simonpscholes E: SimonS@PerceptionStudios.co.uk Founder & Creative Director T: 07976 625746 www.PerceptionStudios.co.uk