How to Create Digital Content with BEBOLD
By Poppy Flatau
AWITA held an interactive session with Mathilde Stone, the founder of BeBold, a ‘brand building studio’ that exclusively partners with female led businesses. During her informative talk, Mathilde shared her expertise on social media and how online platforms can be utilised to promote a company.
To make this vast subject more approachable, Mathilde condensed her talk into sections. This write up aims to highlight key points from each segment, making it easier to implement her invaluable advice into a personal brand.
Mathilde’s first topic of conversation was on Social Media Data which addressed the statistics the scale of users on certain platforms and the potential for further growth. By looking at these numbers, navigating social media budgets becomes less daunting, and more productive decisions are made across platforms. For example, Mathilde mentioned the current significance of instagram, with two billion active users, making it the favoured platform for advertising and building businesses. However, when observing the decline of platforms like Facebook, it is likely that instagram may eventually follow suit. Another, yet objective observation is that instagram’s algorithm favours brands that have been on the site for longer, making it increasingly more of a challenge to build a new business. Despite its more niche content and limiting video format, TikTok - referred to by Mathilde as “tomorrow’s platform” - is still worth investing even a small amount of your budget and time into as data shows the benefits of building a foundation on newer platforms.
With that being said, Mathilde emphasised the importance of Knowing your Customer when deciding on which platform to prioritise. The demographic that your brand is currently, and subsequently willing to attract, needs to be acknowledged to prevent any wasted budget and to decipher what content should be posted. Mathilde used the example of a middle aged woman - in this case it is more likely that they predominantly use Instagram and LinkedIn, and less likely TikTok. Once this is deciphered, it is important to acknowledge the goals of the brand, channeling a “strong tone of voice” whilst also honouring the “native content to the platform.” Having consistency in both appearance and subject matter of what is posted makes a brand less likely to “lose themselves” on instagram, as Mathilde pertinently expressed “you are not going to find who you are on Instagram, you actually lose who you are on Instagram.”
Whilst emphasising the importance of engaging across many platforms, it is also important not to get flagged. For example, when posting on TikTok with the intention of posting the same content on instagram, it is important to remove the watermark before doing so to prevent the opponent site from subsequently deleting it. Furthermore, there is also a problem faced when using “bots” (robots) to gain followers as when found by instagram, the account can be banned. Mathilde confronted the difficulty of gaining a genuine following on Instagram, as “nobody grows organically” on the site anymore. The way to combat this, whilst also avoiding the use of bots it to engage your audience in various ways. Using a budget to “boost” posts is effective, as well as manually interacting with the followers of accounts with similar goals and desirable audiences to your own. On a more technical note, hashtags are also important, particularly on LinkedIn, where tagging users is important.
After taking this information into consideration, Mathilde’s subject of converting becomes precedence. This is the act of converting a browsing visitor to paying customer, which is facilitated by promising social media, successful ad campaigns and ultimately a product that has been promised. For insight into website statistics, Mathilde recommends Google Analytics and to implement tracking pixels onto visuals to monitor ad campaigns. By scaling and monitoring these statistics, it is easier to manage the brand budget and decipher advantages and disadvantages. When comparing click through rates (CTR) with bounce back rates, it is easier to gauge the strength of conversion, as well as the success of your business’s online platform and ad campaigns. Mathilde urges to take these factors into account and to structure the brand’s budget accordingly depending on what is successfully scaling your business the most.
Mathilde ended her talk with overarching points for successful brand building. She constantly reinforced the importance of a “strength of voice” which benefits both the growth and longevity of followers.