Lexi on Organic Social: The Monday to Friday Pillar Method

Lexie Murray0:00
So, okay, so I'll give a little bit of a backstory and classic me. For some reason, when I turn my laptop on today, it's just like everything's going a little bit slower. But I think we've picked up. But I guess some backstory, Kirsten kind of started us off, but I started Be Seen when I was only 21, which is— it's been 6 years now and we are an organic social media agency. So a lot of other, you know, amazing like mentors you've spoken to speak about ads and they speak about, you know, PR they speak about like paid ads and things like that. But today I'm going to talk about the things that Instagram, TikTok, and social media platforms will actually allow you to do for free. And I think for me that's always been an exciting thing because whilst, you know, we love to pay for what we can and invest in, you know, paid ads, for me, my passion has always been in organic. So things that can go viral or things that we can control, because I think when we're talking about paid elements, it just costs us a lot of money. And my clients, a lot of the time we're in startups. So, so for some context, most of BeSeen's clients are at very, very early stage. So that most of the time means that we're working with like the sample phase of brands. So I'm talking like haven't even got product yet, they're just kind of building out a plan, and then they come to us for that early stage guidance. And then the other ones are other clients, are huge brands that you might have heard of. Um, we've got like Cobs and Poppins Popcorn, we've got Missguided, which is a big clothing brand, we've got— oh my God, whenever I list these I always forget for some reason. Um, I've just got a lot of, um, I guess we've got like Cocobella, which is a big brand. So a lot of FMCG companies that are more established and have been in the industry for a very long time. So I kind of can go across multiple, but what my thing that I love about Boa and is obviously we're all at that start phase, which is exciting, and it just often means that we're kind of going from the very, very beginning and we kind of want to build something from the start and build often in public, or sometimes we don't want to be the face of the brand. So today I want to talk about being the face of the brand and the benefits of that, but then also options if that's not something you feel comfortable with, because there are also really strong ways of working around not being the face of the company as well and how that might look for you. I guess because it's a small group, if anyone's kind of involved in the talk, just so that I can apply it directly to you so that you can get the most out of it. When I kind of run these type of sessions, I love to know what the businesses you're building are so that we can actually personalise something more so for you rather than just kind of going in there with just like broader advice. So if anyone that would like to kind of be the case study for today, unmute and give me a little bit about you. A little bit about the phase of the business you're at. So are you post-launch, pre-launch? Like, what is the— what place are you at at the moment? Do you have a social media setup? Are we kind of building from nothing? Take it away. Anyone that wants to unmute?

Audience member3:13
Hey, Lexi, it's Taryn. Sorry, I can't show my face now because I'm actually in the car driving.

Lexie Murray3:17
No, you're fine. Don't crash or anything. My God.

Audience member3:20
But I'm happy to be the case study. I have I quit my job last year. I was consulting in a legal space. I moved from South Africa, as you can hear my accent, to Sydney about 4 years ago, and I was consulting. And then I left my job to build a fashion brand, which is very exciting, and it's been a journey. And I'm like really, really happy with where we are. We're about to launch within a week, and I feel like I haven't put enough effort to be the face of the brand. I think just so many moving parts with building a business that I neglected the social media side of it.

Lexie Murray4:01
Yeah, I can't even imagine. I always say that like what Instagram and TikTok sees is the tip of the iceberg. Fashion brand is definitely one of my favourites to touch on. One of my best, best, best friends owns a company called Capsule Wardrobe and she is one of my biggest— like one of what I believe is one of the biggest testimonials to being the face of a brand. So a little bit of backstory with her. She was in corporate. She was actually in property development, and then she always knew she wanted to start a fashion brand. And essentially what she did was build out her public— build in public the entire time until it actually got to launch. And then she did a 6-figure launch night. And what that was, was about— again, tip of the iceberg was the launch, but then all behind it was the launching of the personal brand. I will say, you launching a week away do not stress. There is a lot of other ways you can go about that without actually having built that audience prior. So I mean, without obviously seeing the socials and things like that, which I think part of me thinks today, maybe like if we do, I don't know how much time we have actually, Kirsten, do we have a long time or do we have time to maybe—

Kirsten Scott5:10
So what I would really encourage everyone, if you have questions throughout, pop them in the chat, that will guide us as to how long Lexi can talk for. But Lexi, if we're not seeing any questions, I say take it through to like quarter past 10 and then that leaves 15 minutes.

Lexie Murray5:23
Yeah.

Audience member5:24
Okay. Easy.

Lexie Murray5:25
No, because I love, I love going through like an auditing account. It's one of my favourite things to do and like go through and be like, oh, change this, do that. In fact, I should definitely do a series of that on my personal Instagram, which kind of gets me to the next point. So Taryn, at the moment, obviously with building out a lot of what you've done so far, photo shoots, organic social, is that kind of the phase you're at now considering the fact that if you're planning to launch next week, you're not launching ultimately to crickets?

Audience member5:54
Yes, I would say so. But the thing is, so during the last, like, the last 6 months, I've tried to do the founder storey and, like, behind the scenes. But I mean, there's so many— I'm so bad at social media in terms of, like, being consistent. That's my biggest downfall. Um, so then I neglected and I push it out, and then I'm like, oh, but that happened 2 months ago, so, like, I'm not gonna post that now. Um, and then I just, like, lose track of being consistent. So, um, Now recently just building out the actual brand's page on socials. Yeah, but I kind of want both. And I just, I think my biggest struggle is like getting the name out there from both a personal brand perspective as well as like the brand brand perspective.

Lexie Murray6:38
I feel like you've segued into like my most perfect answer.

Audience member6:41
Okay.

Lexie Murray6:41
So I mean, firstly, Taryn, if everyone was really good at socials, I wouldn't be here and I'd probably be working another job. So don't forget that, that there are people that are experts in this space because it is actually really quite hard to do right. So the biggest businesses you look at, um, who— like, the biggest inspos for me from, from a clothing perspective is probably Henny, um, probably Dish, probably like Capsule, one of my best friend's brands. And behind them, the social team sits as the biggest team outside of accounting, outside of, um, product development, outside of logistics. The social teams in these businesses are now the largest business, um, the largest teams in any direct-to-consumer brand. So whilst that is absolutely not my answer, I just want you to kind of take the pressure off yourself feeling that you have to try and compete with these people. That just bearing in mind, I have a team of 16 women in my company that work for me, and every single one of them has finished a social media degree, and they have lived in the social world for years and years, and they live and breathe it, and that is their expertise, and they work 9 to 5 working social media for a living. So the fact that you are designing a brand, coming up with concepts, manufacturing, distributing, packing orders, coming up with an accounting system, but then you're not as good as social media, like, forgive yourself. Like, truly, like, forgive yourself for that because you don't feel that way though. No, you are.

Audience member8:15
The biggest thing is like, that is how you get the name out there. And I feel like, um, yeah, I just feel like, how else do you get the name out there? I, I can do all the other parts. I can conquer that. And I have a beautiful product and Okay. Yeah. But it's just, I think marketing is so hard.

Lexie Murray8:33
Marketing is so hard. And the thing is, is the businesses that are thriving the most are the ones that do it well. And so for us, Be Seen Socials, like I started Be Seen when I was, when I was 21. It's been 6 years and I was an influencer before that. I actually forget, forgot to mention that. So where I came from was an influencer background where I worked for all of the fashion brands. I did all of the kind of I guess, stock standard influencer style work. And then I saw a huge gap in the market in the social media space of creating content because that to me was one of the hardest things to get right. I think a lot of agencies you can go to and they can actually tell you what to do, tell you what to do, and then you're left to create it. At Be Seen, we obviously have girls that are actually in the content. We have 4 clothing brands that do that, we shoot for and launch. But that's actually, again, not my answer. What I want you to do and what I want everyone here here to do is simplify what we're actually doing. And this tip to me has— it actually has gone like quite— not viral, but it is one of my only answers that I genuinely can have people stick to and understand. Because we all remember learning the days of the week, right? Like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, like when we're in school. And we use that to— we know what we're doing on a Monday, we know what we do on a Friday, and we have this thing that is a routine. So you know what you do on a Wednesday, and in most of the jobs that we work in corporate, there are days of the week that we stick to. I want you to now train your brain to look at social media and your Instagram account like Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday. And once you start flicking your brain to that being how you look at social, it is going to become that much easier for you. So I can design yours right now, Taryn. So we've got Monday through to Friday because 5 posts is really all you need. Any more than that and you— it's a balancing act. Post too much, you lose interest. Post not enough, you don't grow. So there's a few tips. Like, I don't want to give like my, my talks are not going to be just like preaches and motivational speeches. They're going to be actually, this is now what you're going to do after this call. So Monday through to Friday, we're gonna look at pillars. Content pillars are made up of multiple different elements. You've got Monday is going to be Taryn's founder pillar. That to you, Taryn, means that you're literally only needing to film 4 pieces of content for yourself once, once every week, which is only 4 posts a month. And you can do that. Yeah. You can, you can do that once and you can do that once a month and you can film 4 pieces of content. I actually have a content girl. I've been 6 years BC and content is my entire job and I've only hired a girl to do it 2 weeks ago. So I was purely responsible for doing that pillar for myself. And so we've got Monday's gonna be Taryn's founder content and everyone can do this same applicable side. I'm just applying it just to a clothing brand today, but if we wanna design them for another brand, I absolutely can. And then Tuesday. So, Taryn, what you're gonna do is you're gonna figure out what that Monday pillar looks like. You are gonna have meet the founder, my why. You are gonna do a founder highlight, like a journey story. You are gonna talk about the problems you're like, not necessarily problems, but that you're experiencing cuz not to keep yapping away, but I've actually changed my opinion on building in public to raw. I think especially if you are going to be a quite— if you want to enter the market quite poised and quite professional, I think this is a very fine line. Posting too raw can sometimes diminish your— diminish the quality of what you're doing. I say that as someone who's building in public right now. I have a side business that my co-founders would hate that I just called it a side business. It's not a side business, but I'm a co-founder in a tech company and they want to build in public. But I don't remember ever seeing Uber Airbnb, all of these large tech businesses ever launch to raw and real. And clothing brands, especially when you want people to credit you as a, as the strong founder you are, crying on the internet sometimes isn't always the best way to do that. So when we come up with a founder story, we want to look polished, we want to look professional, we want to look like us. And by us, I mean I still want Taryn to show up as the best quality version of her, not always the raw and real.

Audience member13:10
And I just feel like the brand, its positioning is not crying. Innovated.

Kirsten Scott13:15
I think exactly.

Audience member13:17
So I feel like being too raw would cheapen the brand, if that makes sense.

Lexie Murray13:22
I couldn't have said it better myself. Like, truly pick a, pick a raw, borderline raw. Like, so for me, I can't be crying on the internet about clients. I am a client-facing business, so I can't get on the internet and start being like, oh, my actual problem today was that a client said this. Like, they'll just sue me. They'll just sue me literally every time. So I have to find my own balance of that pillar. And so you've got to do the same— elevated, chic, real, honest, but elevated. So that's Monday. Moving into Tuesday. Tuesday is going to now be customer-centric. So you're going to speak about everything to do with the value you're adding to a customer. Is that, um, lookbooks, you know, kind of making the— like the— how have customers are going to style it, giveaways. It's all about the value you're going to give to a customer. It's going to be anything or it's going to be customer highlight. So obviously you're not going to be able to do that pillar exactly for real customers yet. Doesn't mean you can't though. You— I'm sure you have many friends that can sit and style it as customers. So making sure that that is your entire customer pillar and Claude and all of those AI tools are really going to help you with this. Is there a transcript for this? Custom, because take my transcript over this period of the meeting, take my notes for Monday to Friday and put it into Claude or whatever AI tool you're using and say, these are Lexi's tips. I want you to build mine out with my product because obviously we don't have time to touch on everyone's today. Then so that's Monday was founder, Tuesday is customer, Wednesday. Now we're going to move into what we'll do. Is we're going to make it aspirational. This is going to be your aspiration pillar that is going to be building an aspirational element of the brand. So that's going to be make— that's going to be the product styled in a really beautiful way. It's going to be people like— it's going to be using the product in an actual aspirational, almost giving that elevation look. Brands don't do this right sometimes, especially the clients that come to us when they haven't actually looked through this Monday to Friday method yet. And the reason they don't do it right is because they, they feel like they don't have the content yet. Sometimes your aspirational pillar at your early stage is creating a mood board around the vision you want to be. So that is highlighting brands and looks and feels that you love, textures you love. Um, it's Fashion Week, you should be highlighting some of the best dressed people in, in Fashion Week this week, whether it's talking about your brand or not, because you're entering a really busy area, busy industry, and supporting another brand might actually help you in the long run. So here are 3 brands that I look up to that showed at Fashion Week, and these were my 3 top favourite looks. It puts you at that level of that person for free, and it highlights that. I'd be careful with it. There's a fine line. But then when it's outside of Fashion Week, going through, okay, it's like, um, in London I saw these like 3 girls like dressed in this certain look, like that's my aspirational pillar. Thursday, For Be Seen clients, we always make Thursday your, I'm gonna say, promotional pillar because that's actually when the big 4 banks in Australia usually pay is like the Thursday night or the Friday morning. So we tend to always have our promotional pillar as this is what we are selling, this is the piece, these are the pieces on a Thursday. Just, it's always been that for us. It doesn't always need to be that way, but we just like to do it that way. And then Friday is usually when we like to incorporate an influencer pillar. So that's when we have our influencers talking about the brand. We usually have influencers where we use that content. That's where that pillar comes in. Not always possible to do this early.

Audience member17:22
Influencers, obviously, you know, as a small brand and self-funded, you know, I don't have that budget.

Lexie Murray17:30
No, that's—

Audience member17:30
I don't know how that would work with people. Like, I'm happy to gift as like— that's exactly Trade Exchange, but I don't necessarily have the budget to pay, and I don't know what people's take is on that.

Lexie Murray17:41
I personally think that you will find a corner of the world and a corner of the internet that will be there to support you. You just need to find those people, and you need to— like, at the end of the day, if your product is amazing and your product is good quality and you're looking for people at the start of a bigger journey, then all of us in this room, then people will be in your corner for it. And you've just got to try and see what comes out. We have worked on gifted campaigns for brands, really small, like I'm talking about like a vitamin company all the way up until like big, like high quality, like couches. So across that spectrum, you will find that, you will find that corner of the world. And I always say to my clients that are coming in an early phase, 15 to 20% of that first order is for gifting and for people to actually try the product.

Audience member18:38
Yeah.

Lexie Murray18:38
So if you use that roughly as a rule of thumb to get that under, like to get that marketing, then, and 15 to 20% comes under that, then you should be okay to fight to get that content.

Audience member18:50
Yeah. Cool.

Lexie Murray18:51
Yeah. So that's always, so that's like your Monday to Friday. So I always, I truly believe that If you follow that order, the only, the only one that I haven't mentioned to Taryn, which I think at some point needs to be valuable for most of the women in here, would be an educational pillar. And when I say educational pillar, I am not talking about you promoting your product. I had a hydrogen company come to me yesterday from the UK. They're quite big. They're in a lot of the larger retailers there. And he was like, educational's gotta like, oh, this, like, and then the product does this. And like, once you put it in the water, it does this. And I was like, okay. Ed, that's not actually, um, that's not actually the, the educational pillar. The educational pillar is providing value that does not sell your product. So Taryn's— in fact, is there another maybe like one product that's like in— because the fashion space is really great because educational is like unlimited, right? You could do lookbooks with other— with the product, you can do try-on hauls, you can do Fashion Week takes, you can do a lot of them. But say for instance you're a that is in pharmaceutical, in motherhood. We have a lot of clients that are actually in like the mum industry where we're actually doing like 3 tips. And by the way, not a single person at Be Seen has a child, like not even. So like the fact that we can do this expert pillar is insane. So I'm sure a lot of you could touch on it a lot better, but say for instance, it's like 5 tips on how to XYZ with your child, and our product is just one of those tips. So educational pillar is never going to directly be about how you, how you can sell the product. It's how you can incorporate it into something that's educational. Does anyone have like a product in mind?

Audience member20:44
I do the educational. Yeah, sorry, it's in—

Lexie Murray20:46
no, no, no, no, no.

Audience member20:48
Educational on my personal page, like as a founder, or does it have to be on the brand page? Because I don't know if the lines—

Lexie Murray20:54
this in particular is all about brand page. So educational, like we only really work with like we do personal branding advice for and like how to incorporate it into. So one of the clothing brands we've got that we're about to onboard is the, the stylist for Channel 7, and she's got her own clothing brand. And so we're incorporating her personal branding pillar into her clothing brand pillar. And the educational side is going to be talking through pieces and styling her hero pieces. With basics from other, other brands all over the world.

Kirsten Scott21:32
Yeah.

Lexie Murray21:33
And so educational pillar is one of the expert pillars and the only pillar that I genuinely think we as founders can take control over and have fun with because it means that we're actually incorporating multiple brands. One of my favourite discovery call questions that I ask myself, and it's an activity you guys can do after this, it's called the it's what we call the bedside table question. So what we like to do is, say for instance, we've got a bedside table and it's just like a metaphor for kind of what we— I guess kind of like what we like to put on our bedside table. So say for instance, we are about to take a candle company on board and we're about to do the strategy for them. What we ask the client is, what else is on the bedside table when our candle is there? And we talk— we ask her what the other brands are around it. So Taryn's example, okay, you've got a blazer, that's your hero product. I want to ask you, as a woman who's bought from you, what are the other products that are in my closet that align with the fact I've just bought this blazer? You might say a pair of Dior sunglasses, a pair of Louboutin shoes, a pair of Loewe jeans. To me, that is now flicked in my brain that those are the types of educational content pieces that I need to align the brand with. Whereas it's a very different storey if your answer was a Target oversized t-shirt, a pair of Kmart little kitten heels. That to me now makes it entry— like, it makes it affordable, it makes it the everyday woman. It isn't as much of the designer route as I was going down. You rely on where your brand sits.

Audience member23:24
Exactly.

Lexie Murray23:25
And it really drives the social pillar. And so it's always like my favourite question. I don't even get to go on discovery calls anymore. My team take them, but I went on one yesterday and I was— I couldn't wait to ask that question because we got so much out of it. And so I think it's a question that you can ask yourself for sure. While, while we're going through this, I wanted to touch on the like the gifted, the hashtag gifted or the right fit. It in terms of those platforms, because I think that obviously they work well. And there's a woman that's associated with CUB that actually— and BoA that actually like owns that platform. And I think that it's really great. And I'm not— absolutely not like taking away from that at all. I just— I just want to come from like, as if you guys— I'm sitting here with my clients and I want to just give some advice on how you can learn your customer a little bit better if you go straight to the source.

Audience member24:22
Course.

Lexie Murray24:23
One thing that we have learned running our own campaigns outside of platforms is that you will learn your customer and you will build those relationships up so strongly if you run the campaign yourself at the beginning. And by no means do I mean that you shouldn't be using those platforms later on. That is absolutely useful. But when— where I see the most value is, hi, I'm Taryn, in the DM. I just wanted to say, and that by the way, you have to do the work. So I'm— make sure you follow this person and you actually know what you're saying when you write this. But as someone— I'm talking, I'm going to put— I'm going to take my founder hat off and put my influencer hat on because remember, I actually started as an influencer when I was 17, so we're celebrating 10 years. Um, so I have had every DM under the sun from big brands, small brands, startup brands, to brands that have been around for a long time. And the ones that stand out the most are the ones that DM like this. So, hi Lexi, hope you're well. Just wanted to say a huge congratulations on your engagement. Um, it was so beautiful. Um, I just also wanted to like reach out directly and just let you know I've been working on my clothing brand and one of my, one of my customer personas is a fashion founder and you literally just fit that so incredibly well. 'Absolutely no pressure at all, but I just wanted to reach out and see if you were open to a few gifted pieces, no strings attached. I would just love to see you in it if you shoot anything. Again, it would just be such an honor. Let me know, and happy to deliver that to you at any, like, at any point. Like, no pressure. Thanks so much.' If though, if you send that message out to 20 women that you genuinely love and engage with, I can almost guarantee you those responses will come back.

Audience member26:17
Like, amazing.

Lexie Murray26:18
And I— yeah, and I think that goes for all brands because the thing is we get so many DMs every single day that are just so automated that I almost— I almost, yeah, kind of expect, like, expect that, like, that kind of message now. Whereas what I don't expect is like a really personal touch. And then when I receive that package, a lot of the time it's like a personal letter. It's something nice. And, um, Christian just said like all they posted was stories. At the end of the day, it's always going to be a risk. You're gifting these products out kind of with the hope of getting something back, and it is always gonna be how long is a piece of string. The industry is changing and the industry, like there are so many content creators out there that, but there are also, sorry, there are, there are so many brands out there, but there are also so many creators. So part of me thinks that the brands now, it's actually shifting to the brands having the upper hand. So I think we need to use that to our advantage. And I'm just lucky because I'm both of them. I think I get to give— I'm probably one of the only people I personally know that can give two-sided advice to this because I'm actually respo— like, I'm at Fashion Week this week as the influencer, but then I'm going to my full-time job as the marketer and the brand director of brands as well. So I will say that we— it's all about who you're looking for and making sure that you're building out those micro-influencers. I'm telling you right now that a post on Instagram of someone with 4K is so much stronger than someone with 50K on a story. And you got— you're going to build out the brand with those people. These are going to be long-term ambassadors. So if you've got a good product, which I think we all do, and we have a personal touch to it and we are messaging that way. And we literally, instead of saying, hey, where is your post? Like, I saw you just did a story. Absolutely not. I will read that and just be like, oh my God, don't want to work with that brand. You say, hi, lovely. I'm so glad to see that you received the product. Let me know if you have any feedback. Obviously, we're just in early phase. I had such imposter syndrome sending this to you, so I just want to know, like, how the product is. No pressure. It just builds that relationship because we I get gifting all the time and my most standout are the ones that genuinely just care how I think about the product rather than what they're gonna get out of it. And between all of us here, safe space, we know what we're doing. We know that it's like, we know that the product's good. We're not actually asking that, but off the record, again, I don't even know if this is filmed. So if this part is like live, just ignore this. Like don't post this part, but like I genuinely do believe that we can play it, play the game. And like, if this is a game, and gifting and influencer marketing is a game, we have to be like one step ahead. And that's my way of doing that. I also realise I've just been talking like at you straight. So is there any kind of questions on that that anyone has, or kind of comments, or something that they've experienced that they want just my opinion on while I'm here?

Audience member29:33
If I can say something.

Lexie Murray29:34
Yeah, jump on what you said.

Kirsten Scott29:35
You said things very valuable. I think you're 100% right when you say that a storey with an influencer with 4K will have much more impact than an influencer with 600,000 followers. I've lived it.

Lexie Murray29:52
Me, it's slightly different. I have a podcast and I have organised events and I had so many follows and comments from a guest speaker with like 2K compared to one with like 600,000K. Yeah, I will say a really personal storey on that. So when I was younger, I grew— when I was 17, I started as an influencer, when I was— and I was in the pressure of like having like being the most like beautiful girl in the room. It was when your looks were more important than your brain. And what happened was when I turned 21, I started Be Seen. I don't even think I've even told this storey actually, which is kind of nice because it's like a room full of like women that can probably relate to this. But essentially it was very much like, oh, founder story, you had to be like the most beautiful person. And I had 112, 120K followers and every single person that was following me cared about like the look of me and what my fashion looked like and honestly like what my look like and things like that. And then what happened was I completely switched when I started Be Seen, and I started a new account, and I switched my Be Seen 100— like, my personal account that had like 100 followers, blah blah, and I turned it into Be Seen because that was like— that worked. And then I started a new account with less followers of women that only cared about my brain, what I had to say, my actual clothing, my expertise in the marketing industry and I have grown and I've only to like 40K only. But that engagement and that genuine, like I'm on the, like I'm speaking on BoA, I'm Forbes 30, all of these things that had nothing to do with how much, how much my quantity of number followers was. It was all about the quality of those 40,000 people now. And I haven't been happier and I haven't made more of an impact for brands ever than now. So I don't think it ever truly matters about the quantity of people. It— when it comes— well, the quantity of number of followers, it all comes down to the quality of that quantity of numbers. Because yes, 20,000 people that are engaged is much better than 2. But genuinely, I think when you find your network of people— and by the way, you only need 15 people that are your perfect demographic that have 4K people and 2%. I'm not the biggest numbers person, 2% of those people to buy, and you now have about 40 customers. And like, so that's kind of— okay, that's way off. Is that right? No, 400.

Audience member32:38
400.

Lexie Murray32:39
Sorry, I was like, wait, that mathematically doesn't make any sense. Yeah, so I kind of feel like that's where my mind's been. I also— not to sound like a preacher, and I also realise I haven't shown my slides. I had slides, but I'm also thinking this is kind of now more fun. Um, we can even send them to you, but they're— honestly, I've spoken way more than the slides were. But I just wanted to like, um, I've just lost my train of thought because I was just thinking about the fact that I didn't share my screen. Um, no, I just wanted to say as like a kind of like not final thing, but one thing that I think is really important is that there are businesses— and I say this to my clients all the time— no one— very rarely do people walk through the Be Seen doors with a business that reinvents the wheel, that is completely new to market, that has a blue ocean, that has no competitors whatsoever. Like, I feel like it's not actually happened in a very long time. And that doesn't matter. There's this difference that I'm sure we've all heard about, and I don't want to sound like a nerd, but there's like blue ocean strategy, red ocean strategy. I think most people— and I'm speaking to Taryn almost because a lot of, like, no one's said their businesses yet, but essentially from what I'm understanding, most of are entering a red ocean, which means that we have competitors. And what that means is that we have to do things that other people are not willing to do. So we have to do the most. We have to be messaging from the personal accounts. We have to be putting— going and engaging in the account morning, lunchtime, and night. We need to be doing the things that other founders are not prepared to do. And I've, I've been 6 years into building a business and I still don't have a single ego about me. And I don't really take on clients that have an ego about them, that think that they're beyond what they're— okay, I'm not saying it like that. It's not as if they're like, they think that they're better than the industry that they're entering into. It's just that they're too good to do the things that I'm prepared to do, even 10 years in. Like, I'm absolutely prepared to spend my Wednesday morning speaking to founders, like, and talking about my, like, in, like, my own insecurities and my own problems. So, like, if I'm prepared to do that, then you should be prepared to jump on and talk about your founder story, reach out to an influencer and not expect much from them. Um, all of those things that you're like, that seem like they're much harder than the business failing— that's literally how I feel— is like at the end of the day, when, if things, if you have bad days, there are a few, there's probably 3 things, maybe 2 things that I say like business, I will ask a client and I actually, I'll prepare them for next week. Actually, I'll show you that end slide that we do at the end of B-Szene. It's pretty much a little, what do you call it? Like a little checklist. And if a client says, oh, you know, Lex, we're having a really bad week. Week or a bad month financially with sales, I will be like, okay, well, have you done your checklist? And they never do them ever. And they're things that we as founders can control. And most of us are going to be direct-to-consumer, which means that social media is going to amount for about 90% of our marketing budget. And most of that 90% does not need to actually be paying someone else for it.

Audience member36:03
It—

Lexie Murray36:03
that 90% can actually be us just putting in the And so that's engaging every day. So finding influencers, like if you're launching a brand and you follow one person and that's yourself, that's already like you're setting yourself up for failure because unless you are Kylie Jenner and that's your one person you're following, firstly, amazing, so nice to meet you and I'm really glad that we're here today, but I don't think that's likely. That means that you need to be following industry people, customers, all of those things and getting that following up to like 900 people and engaging in your community every single day. So my way of doing that, my biggest trick is to have my 9 competitors or 10 competitors, um, for any brand. And this is probably my most like applicable advice from today is find your 9 competitors that post every single day. They need to be quite big brands, so they need to be like your big players, and then you need to go and engage in the people that engage in their content. And you need to like follow, like their stuff, have— they will, they will be the people that follow back. That's like honestly some really low-level simple things, but those are the type of things that I can see the biggest difference. And then that's why I try and avoid gifting platforms because I love the idea of knowing who these people are. And the second you turn that into an AI tool or like a gifting tool or something like that, you just genuinely lose the control of that. And I'm again, I'm not I'm not saying that these aren't useful. They definitely have their place. But when I'm trying to control my spending for brands and my— and I just want to do what I can do with my two hands, you— we should be busier than ever utilising all the things that I've kind of suggested. Like when you— like it should be like there's not even enough time in the day rather than what should I spend my time doing? Do you know what I mean?

Audience member38:00
Okay. Yeah, that's super helpful.

Lexie Murray38:02
I sound like such a preacher. My voice is like going. Following customers on your business.

Kirsten Scott38:07
100%.

Lexie Murray38:08
We're not— we are not better than our customers yet. Like, we're not that— like, unless of course you're on here and you've been in business for like 6, 7 years and like, you know, your customer— you don't— you've got that— meant that like the customer base is like surpasses who you can actually be capable of engaging with, then that's a different story. Like Be Seen, for instance, like we can't go and engage with like every brand under the sun anymore because, you know, we don't— well, first we don't have capacity and we're a bigger business now. And like, I wouldn't say like a lot of our clothing brands or skincare brands or COBS Popcorn can go and engage with like every customer because they own 90% of the customer. Like Cocobella, we can't go and engage with like everyone that potentially could like coconut water. But when we're— but when Cocobella probably first started, or if they started as a founder, like founder journey, they probably could do that. And you create— start creating these little, um, communities around you that start, that love and build, that go with you as you grow. And I think that that is like the most unmatched way of using social media. It's not all like— it's so funny because not once, except from the start of the conversation, have I actually spoken about what to post because I don't think it's as important as how you post. Do you got what I mean? Yes, that's so helpful.

Kirsten Scott39:27
This has been so wonderful.

Lexie Murray39:29
Oh, I'm glad. I feel like I've literally just come my, like, I haven't really prepared as much as I thought I would, but no, no, no. I have a full-on notes tab going. Oh, nice. I'm glad. Um, well, do you want me to, do you need me to wrap, Kirsten? Or is there any like final questions?

Kirsten Scott39:47
What I would recommend guys, like, this is what I love about Lexi. You can honestly do a deep dive with her about anything. So if there is something you're struggling with, now's your opportunity to kind of like ask Lexi directly. We obviously have session 2 next week. Yeah. We delve into a few of the top But honestly, use this platform now. We've got her brains.

Lexie Murray40:06
I think next week I'm gonna, I'm gonna touch on that stuff a little bit more in terms of like what to use. But I feel like obviously for me, like I can just keep flooding information, which sounds— and it's again, because I work across, like, I can't even tell you, like some of these brands that we— so we've got a law firm, we've got an AI company, we've got tech, and then we have have skincare, we have skincare brands that are in West, that are owned by Wesfarmers. Like, we have like, and then we have everything in between. So I kind of can apply a lot, like this information I've given today can be applied to everything. But when I was 22, I launched the Launch Package with Be Seen because of how passionate I was about very early stage businesses. Because the thing is, is like when you're inquiring on these like large-scale agencies they won't look twice at a business that's not doing $100K, $50K. My clients don't even do that yet for until like month 3 or 4. And that's when we see like all of that, those type of numbers come through. And so when it comes to kind of my advice, I like talk about, I like apply those, that type, these tips to like what I would've needed when I was starting off and what my clients actually walked away from and utilized. Monica's question. Oh wait, um, contacting them, gifting internationally. Yeah, I mean, I think that you— I actually love US influencers a lot more. I think they're a lot more giving. I think they're a lot more, um, they're a lot more compassionate because they don't have this like tall poppy syndrome where they think that they're better than everyone. So I do feel that I love UK influencers a lot more and I love US influencers a lot more, as long as you can obviously ship there and cater for that market. I would even, if you can ship anywhere in the world, I would divvy up your influencers according to, so create a spreadsheet. You've got country, then you've got category, and then you've got size. So it should be a matrix of 9. So you've got 3 categories, 3 areas, and then 3 sizes. Small, medium, macro. Macro should only have realistically your end goal, and you shouldn't be touching them until you're at least doing enough to pay them. And usually that means that you have $100K in the bank ready to pay these macros. I'm, um, but when it comes to international, if you can ship there, like, you absolutely need to do that. Yeah, for sure. Because they— you will find that those relationships, you never know what doors that will open. So my biggest tip is to just obviously, like, find out— like, you don't even need to find out where they're from, but like start engaging in that area of, and go and use a brand that, you know, ship there and are prominent in that country, and then almost like duplicate their influencer strategy by just who's, who they're following and who is engaging with them. And that's probably like the best like way to handle that yourselves. Like no platform, okay, I'm not saying no platform, but I am saying no platform is going to do it as much as your literal like this. I do this. My in— I have interns, influencer interns that come through and they have the work phone and they do it with their two hands. Like, that's how we do it. And we have been around for a long time.

Audience member43:34
In fact, my—

Lexie Murray43:35
I started my career in an influencer programmatic marketing company in LA. So that's how I started my career. But I still just do the two hands still. Do I have a question about posting stories? Would you recommend posting storeys that go alongside? Yes. Yes, but storeys are retention exercise, not a growth exercise. So if I'm, if you have 4 hours in the day, perfect the feed post, put it as a trial reel first, then a week later post it as an actual grid post. Do that over a story. Stories are a retention thing, and if you have less than 1,000 followers, it's not going to make as much of a difference as is put posting 3 variations of a trial reel first. So our clients fixate on storeys for almost like no reason, just because it thinks that— they think that it's going to grow the account.

Audience member44:30
It will—

Lexie Murray44:31
like, stories, there is no storey algorithm feed. It is purely a retention thing for customers to stay engaged. And my biggest thing is if you've got an hour to post, post, do not mess around with the storey before you mess around with making sure that that post is a trial reel first and then go to that. So that's my recommendation. I feel like I'm going against a lot of like the experts today, but this is just truly what I think works.

Kirsten Scott45:03
Sorry, what do you mean when you say a trial reel?

Lexie Murray45:05
So trial reels are the only way that an algorithm will allow you to be picked up on Instagram outside of your following. So there's two things. There's Instagram for people that know you, TikTok for people that don't. So when we talk about— when, well, when I talk about like trial reels, I'm talking about posting a video that— do you have the trial reel feature? You should by now. If you're a business account, you should still— you should now have it. It's very new, but it's, it's the only way that our clients will grow outside of just the natural algorithm. Because remember that Instagram, Meta, and TikTok go head on. So they sit in boardrooms, TikTok and Instagram, talking about how they compete, compete with one another, and we are the customer. So essentially trial reels was introduced so that because when I post on TikTok, I could have a video go viral overnight. TikTok, Instagram does not allow that to happen. So they created this thing called a trial reel, which is where the algorithm, the video will only get pushed out to people that don't follow you.

Kirsten Scott46:10
So Lexi, I have a question on top of that because I'm not very tech savvy. Is it physically a reel that you create? It saves on your Instagram, just on like the reel page, and then Instagram pushes it out to non-followers.

Audience member46:21
Is that— okay.

Lexie Murray46:23
Yeah, I got my, I got my quick mark, my 5-minute mark. So what we'll do, so what we do is we go create a trial reel. It is so, it's so obvious. Like when you actually like see it, you'll be like, how did I not see that big trial reel button? It's actually quite big. So you go down to the bottom, trial reel. Reel, click on it, post the same, post the video before you go on, before you go live on that, see how it goes. It will either do incredibly well or it'll do incredibly shit. I have videos that I've even posted on my own account that don't do well on trial reels. It doesn't matter. Go save it, post it on the actual account. Like, trial reels does not mean you can only do one or the other. You can post the same through the video on your page and on the trial reel and do variations of it. Do a hook at the start, flip it around, post it at the back, and then post it both— post both and see what sticks. And we've been seeing videos like account— accounts like FMCG brands that only hit like 2,000 views hit like 12, 20 and actually gain. It's also, yeah, it's just how I've been like loving seeing accounts grow recently when they don't have a TikTok account.

Kirsten Scott47:36
Sorry.

Lexie Murray47:36
Oh my God, choking.

Audience member47:38
I'll ask. Can you post a trial reel after you've already posted the reels on your main?

Kirsten Scott47:44
100%.

Lexie Murray47:45
Yeah, I would just do it the other way around first if you could. I know, I forgot. No, I forget all the time too. My God, my tickle. Um, no, I forget all the time as well. Um, in fact, I've redone— so I did— I got engaged, I did my engagement video, um, when we first got engaged page. It was cute. It got like, obviously, like my real friends and my family like, oh my God, amazing. I did a trial reel and it got like a reach of like a million. So it's like, you still can. But my biggest tip for a trial reel and how to make it go viral is to not speak to a specific person, make it broad the same way that you would with TikTok. So instead of saying, hi guys, it's Taryn here, blah, blah, blah. I'm the owner, I'm the owner of a fashion label about to launch next week and here is XYZ. So you're talking to the masses rather than to the niche people.

Audience member48:40
Right. Yeah.

Kirsten Scott48:40
Got you.

Audience member48:41
Yeah.

Lexie Murray48:41
And then most of the reels that you're actually seeing now on trial, like on your reels feed are actually trial reels. It's really fun to play around with. We've been doing it quite a lot with clients now, but I will say just like everything and just like the quality of video and the quality of content is still going to be important. And if you're not getting those views, I'm so— I'm like, I'm here for bluntness. Like, it is the quality of your videos. There is no such thing as an algorithm hating you. The algorithm is only as good as the quality of the content. And I can say that after 6 years of running a big content-only agency, we only do content. And I've created a business that has 16 employees only based of organic content creation. So if like, if the quality of the content is not there, it will always be down to the quality of the content, not the algorithm unless you have.

Kirsten Scott49:41
Yeah.

Lexie Murray49:41
And that, that is all from me.

Audience member49:45
That is all. Yep.

Lexie Murray49:46
I'm being wrapped up. So wait, can you find what is going on?

Kirsten Scott49:51
We will obviously go deeper next week and we won't have any tech problems. But if you do have any questions for Lexi, I'm going to send an email after this, just kind of rewrapping what spoke about, feel free to send me any of your questions and we can kind of tailor next week to that in addition to what we're looking to go through. Yeah. And in particular, if there's anything over the next week that you're kind of playing around with in your own business or on socials, please bring those questions with you because like, as you can see, we can go any direction.

Lexie Murray50:20
I could go on forever and do a real deep dive.

Audience member50:24
Yeah. Thanks so much.

Lexie Murray50:26
And yeah, I'll speak to you same time next week. Week, is it? Yes.

Kirsten Scott50:31
Before we do, guys, I would love to get just a quick little photo. So if you wouldn't mind giving me a little wave. Thank you. And we'll see you all next week.