Melanie
The Monday Morning Marketing podcast is brought to you by Esther of IPA Group, bringing premier online promotion to your business.
Esther
And Melanie of STOMP Social Media Training, who empowers business owners to manage social media and marketing for themselves. And welcome back to another episode of the Monday Morning Marketing Podcast. Today we're joined by Loretta Ni Ghabhain Founder and Director of Lorg Media, a creative agency in Galway, Ireland. And today we're talking about content creation for campaigns. That's a lot of C's there. Welcome, Loretta.
Loretta
Thank you so much, Esther. And hello, Melanie.
Melanie
Hiya, Loretta.
Esther
We're so glad to have you with us. You've been on our list of people to get since Melanie did an event with Amanda Webb a long time ago now. 18 months ago.
Melanie
Yeah, when we did the book start. Yeah.
Esther
Yeah.
Melanie
And then I saw her again at Social Media Marketing World in 2023.
Loretta
That was great. And both of those events were very different, but with great people in the room. And yeah, I've really enjoyed San Diego and social media marketing world for the last few years. I've got my fill of it for a while, but that's just me personally, because I've been there three times, but I think it's a place that I will frequent to again.
Esther
Very good, So loretta, content creation, that's a huge part of marketing. Break it down for us.
Loretta
Okay, content creation here, especially in our creative agency, is at the heart of everything we do. Whether it's a big campaign that we're coming up with a concept, or if it is just potentially like a smaller business that want us to create some content around what they're trying to sell or what they're trying to promote, or potentially sometimes it's just they're trying to get awareness around a particular aspect of their business. My background is in film and TV, so I've worked both on and off-screen producer, director, presenter. I feel like I understand and maybe was there before where everyone started saying, Content is king, content is queen. Whether it's King, Queen or it's still there and it's going nowhere. It's just that there's more and more of it coming. Then when we look at all the different platforms, I suppose the way in large media that we look at things is nothing drives me crazier than somebody spending 3,000 on a video and just leaving it, sit there on YouTube.
Melanie
Yeah, that is the most depressing thing about content, isn't it? I see people sweat bullets over creating podcasts and blogs, and then they share it once. And I'm like, Why.
Esther
Why.
Melanie
Why would you do that? So is there a recommended amount of times that you have for maybe blogs or for podcasts or for videos or for content in general, Loretta?
Loretta
I think I look at it more instead of giving it a definite number of times that you need to see it on a particular platform, whether that's TikTok, X, LinkedIn, Instagram, a blog post. I think I come at it from creating that piece of content and then going, Okay, if that's going to TikTok, what does it need to look like? If that's going to Facebook, what does it lead to look like? There's stuff like dimensions. Just say, for argument's sake, we go and create a video that's a minute-thirty long. That's another thing, duration. People come to us all the time. They're like, How long should it be? I'm like, How interesting is your story? So if your story is really interesting, people will stay with it. But make sure to put something really super interesting at the beginning because we're like goldfish now. Two seconds is what you have to pull people in. So just back to maybe the content creation, we would look at potentially, a client might come to us and say, Okay, we want it for our YouTube channel. We're like, Okay, so that's going to be a 16:9 version. Now we also want to put it to real, so we make sure that we're going to cut that 9:16, and potentially we might cut it 4:5 for the grid, depending if the reel is going to the grid or how we're working that out. Then we look to LinkedIn, we look to Facebook, and we create our piece of content dimension wise for all those spaces. But sometimes we'll also offer up a different edit, especially with TikTok at the moment. We're just off a campaign for culture night. We're promoting Irish culture on one night of the year. Once a year, the Arts Council here have one night for all, a free night for all. But when we were creating content, I suppose what we want to be is omnipresent. And all of our clients have more than one channel. Some of them are on four, some of them are on eight, some of them are on 10. And it's trying to figure out how can you make that one piece of content relevant to all of these channels, but you need to make that decision before you go out and create content. So our agency, when we started creating content, was all shot on mobile. And we did some courses with an ex-colleague of mine called Glenn Mulcahy that set up a thing called Mojo, mobile journalism. And it's about like, that thing we do all now at the moment is like shooting on the phone. We make sure in Lorg, we always have the latest, like the 15 pro. Some clients when we rock up with their phone, they're like, I thought you were bringing a camera. And we're like, I promise you when you see this. And we've had people come back. We were working as content creators on the ground at Fleadh Cheoil here in this year, Ireland's biggest Irish traditional music festival, where 600,000 people come together. This year was in Mullingar for the second time running. We were the content creators for the TV station on the ground. Our call to action was to get more people watching a live broadcast on one of our state broadcasters. But our job was to create really enticing content around the flack you all around this festival that wasn't always specific to the artists that would appear on that show later that night. So we did a two-thonged approach where we're creating somebody playing a spade and having a bit of fun on the street to dancers to people then that were going to be on the show and a little bit behind the scenes. But I suppose the algorithms, they'll all tell us as well and your audience is going to tell you what they like. And then by day three, we were really in a pattern where we knew, okay, that's what they're loving. Let's give them more of that. So we're very, very super cognisant before we point and shoot, where is this ending up? Where is the primary place? And we created for that primary place, whether it's TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, but then we always cut it off a million ways and use it across everything. I know you're a big blogger, Melanie, so it's about embedding that piece of content into your blog as well. Super, super important. Writing all the keywords around it when you're uploading to YouTube, making sure it's SEO'd to the max, your title, back links in your description. But yeah, that's how we go about it.
Esther
Well, all of that sounds really easy. Okay, so first of all, plan it out. Have it all down to a T as to obviously if your main focus is YouTube. Is it easier to go from big to small rather than if your main content was, say, portrait and then trying to make it landscape? Like if somebody says, Oh, my main audience is on TikTok, but I'm also wanting to put it up on my YouTube, would you record for TikTok and then fill in the blanks at the sides for YouTube? Or would that work or would you just go, well, if it's eventually ending up on YouTube, then we'll just record in that format and then cut for TikTok.
Loretta
That's a really good question. I think to go back to it, it is easier to shoot wide and then bring it in smaller. But I suppose when we're going out to film and we know it's going to be an omnipresent piece, we'll try and keep our focus to the centre so that our primary person that we're interviewing or the primary focus of what we're looking at is in the centre of the screen rather than off camera, right camera, left. But to go back to your question, if your primary place is TikTok, just go shoot at 9:16. If that's where you're really after your audience, and now we know you can also repurpose that and put it on Instagram reels. And yes, to do something funky at both sides. A lot of the time it's like to get your audience engaged on TikTok and YouTube, depending on the business, is just a place where a lot of people put it up just as a legacy piece if they don't have a YouTube strategy. So again, super brilliant question. I would say for that one, go to TikTok, shoot at 9:16. We've done campaigns where we haven't done any 16:9, where it's just been mobile and portrait, because that's the audience and that's where they're going to be. Why would you bother doing 16:9? Now it creates lots of arguments in our office. We work with directors of photography, we work with people that went to film school. Some of our team, including myself, have and the rule of thirds just goes right out the window and you're just thinking about-.
Esther
It's like take everything that you learned and throw it away.
Loretta
Throw it away. That hook at the very first few seconds that you're really trying to engage people with. And then another thing is duration. So you need to look, your analytics tell you as well. I think it's really important for business owners, SMEs, or larger. It doesn't matter what size your company is to go back into the analytics and see, How long are people staying with my video content? How long are people watching, viewing and then going, Okay, they're actually only loving 11 seconds, so go out and shoot maybe 15 seconds rather than putting yourself to the bother of shooting a 90-second thing. But get your call action in there very early on.
Melanie
Well, first of all, stop encouraging her because she already dominates most of the podcasts. And there you are saying amazing question. Wow, I mean, please.
Esther
If I'm the best, what can we say?
Melanie
Yeah, whatever. Anyway, so Loretta, what you've described there could potentially be an enormous amount of work, a huge amount of work. And you have an agency. And would you recommend to some of the listeners, because a lot of them will be smaller businesses. And this is very difficult to replicate as a smaller agency. Would there be any tools that you would recommend people use? Is there any packages that people could buy or would it be all outsourcing? But how can you help the smaller business who's listening today?
Loretta
It's Monday morning and maybe I went on a little bit there and made it a bit more difficult. It's not difficult. We all have a mobile phone. Yes, we bring in directors of photography when we're shooting adverts and stuff like that now. But still for some of our biggest clients, it's on our phone that we shoot footage. It's not on anything else. That then ends up on TV. Sometimes it ends up on social media. What I would say is definitely get to grips with your phone, whether your Android or your iPhone, that battle continues. There's really simple things like you can put on the grids on your phone when you're shooting to show that rule of thirds. That's really important. Like where is your focus going or on what? There's a whole load of different apps that we use depending on what we're shooting on. But it's very much keeping a really small kit, a simple kit: a live mic, a phone. If your budget allows, I'd go a Sennheiser mic, because they're absolutely amazing.
Melanie
What was it called? Sorry.
Loretta
Sennheiser, or Signheiser. I think in the States they call it Signheiser. In Europe they call it Sennheiser.
Melanie
We'll have to get a spelling of that for the show notes.
Loretta
Yes, S-E-N-N-H-E-I-S-E-R, I think. We invested in one of those mics maybe about five years ago. It cost us 950 at the time, but it was a live mic and also a stick mic. It's something we use continuously on every single tune to date. If you can't-. It cheaper, I would recommend road mics. You see so many people now with those boxes. They're for a really good set of wireless roads, probably €250, depending on what market you're buying them in. But I'd invest... I think, and you guys know both yourself, Melanie and Esther, sound is so important. And then on the flip side of that, they say between 82 to 90 % of people watch videos online and silent. So captions are super, super important. We work a lot in different languages, predominantly English and the Irish language. But we would subtitle everything. A really interesting conversation with somebody yesterday was interviewing me from Portugal. We were having this discussion about subtitles and they're like, We grew up with subtitles. Subtitles are really cool we have. Why do English speaking countries, whether it's the UK, Ireland, the US, believe that subtitles or have this weird feeling about subtitles. But I think that's all changing with the likes of Al-Jazeera and all broadcasters now bringing in subtitles and realising that people are on trains. They're commuting.
Melanie
People don't appreciate it. It's not that new. Blimming, teletext. We used to have teletext doing subtitles. It's been around years.
Loretta
It has, but we're loving... Yeah, I think we're getting to grips with it a bit more and it's not the bad thing. People will be like, Oh, you're not going to wreck it with subtitles. I said, I'm not going to wreck it. I want people to understand the content. I'm sure lots of people on today, this Monday morning are listening to us on their trains, on potentially in their cars, on a bus. The rest of the bus don't want to hear it. So sometimes you don't have your headphones in and you just want to get a piece of content. So it's so important to write captions. I would say set yourself up with your mobile phone, with as good as you can for your budget in terms of audio, so your road mics. And then think about lighting as well. And again, there's lots of different lighting that you can get. An average tripod as well is a good investment, in my opinion.
Esther
Okay, so we've covered video content, but not everyone wants to do video.
Melanie
Why would you say that, Esther?
Esther
That's me. So what other forms of content can people put out there? You mentioned blogs, you mentioned SEO-ing them, you mentioned things like that. What about normal podcasting? And what about normal posts that aren't video posts? So say your your post to X or your post to Facebook or LinkedIn. What about those? You also mentioned before we started recording that you work with local print and newspapers and different forms of media that way. Is there a magic bullet in that too? Is there something that do you write for one and then share it to the others? Or is it fully generated new for each platform? Now, I mean, if you're paying for Twitter, you've got all these extra characters now, but do people really want to read more than 240 characters? So lots of questions in one.
Loretta
So again, I think within the concept development, so say you want to get a message out there. As a business owner, as an SME, you've something to sell, you want to make people aware of something. So it all starts in the same place. So your mother board really is that the concept development or the two lines of copy that says, This is what I want to do, or This is what I want to achieve. I often come around it like going, Okay, what do you want to do and what a success for you? Then we look at usually putting two lines together to describe that thing, whatever that thing is, and then we tweak it for each different platform. So for a blog post... Like blog posts are so important for SEO and search engine optimisation and for your Motherboard, your website. Again, if we're publishing something on YouTube, we're thinking of a thumbnail, we're thinking of the description, we're thinking of the title, and then we're also tagging it just to make sure our SEO is brilliant and that there's back links in there going over to somewhere else that we also own or the client we're working with owns. In terms of radio, again, the radio copy, it's going to be a derivative of the post that we've put to Instagram. So just say as well, as well as coming back to you saying, okay, you're doing lots of video on it. Absolutely. And even when we're posting to Instagram, if the algorithm tells us that a moving dot-mob or an MP4 is going to perform better than a JPEG, we just put some little thing, even if it's via Canva or Aftereffects, we just put a little sprinkle of fairy dust on it or something to make it move. Because we know algorithms love video, and that's one cheat way to actually make the algorithm believe that it's a video when it's really a stuff.
Melanie
So far, all we've discussed is content that we've created, which obviously is massively valuable. But there is also UGC as well, so user-generated content. So how does Lorg Media utilise that to the best capability of marketing, promoting the business that you're working with? And how would we use it for our own businesses?
Loretta
So UGC, I think it's a brilliant thing to have as part of your marketing 360, user-generated content, because if somebody else is talking about your brand, your product, it's so much more valuable sometimes than you saying, Oh, we're brilliant here at Lorg media. We do this and we're award-winning. But if somebody actually you should go to Lorg media because X, Y, Z. So what do we do for UGC? Oftentimes when we are recording video or just say we'll part the video testimonials, we would often, if we are out shooting on our phones, and I'd want to bring people back to the power of that mobile phone in your hand, it doesn't need to be a big, massive red camera or a black magic or anything of the sort. There's BMW ads being shot on mobile as we speak.
Melanie
Really?
Loretta
It's just yes.
Melanie
Wow.
Loretta
The power is in our hands, that's one amazing thing. And people don't find it that intrusive. But to go back to the idea of UGC. We'd often create competitions and as part of that competition that somebody would have to do something on their own profile or share a piece of content. That's quite a big ask in a competition, whereas your tagging and your commenting is a lot less of an ask, but sometimes they're a lot more valuable to people that go and do that. User-generated content, we would often do for people that have products, do drops. Rather than asking them paying influencers, we would give them some product and very clearly on a piece of paper say, with something that's handwritten as part of that item that they receive in the post that they know what to do with it and how to speak about your brand. Then people pop up and they... Yeah, sorry, Melanie.
Melanie
It's sorry. Yeah, where I wanted to go with that now was when you've got this content created, so you've got this user-generated content. Is it really something you can use for every medium? So a lot of user-generated content tends to be either written or video. I'd say most of it's actually video. That probably does do better than anything else that you receive because it's other people's content and hopefully it's favourable. So how can you repurpose that piece of content anywhere else? It's not so easy to email market that or put that in a blog. How can we convert that into something successful?
Loretta
So what we often do, say we work with some boarding schools and we're trying to get parents to send their children to this boarding school, or we might work with another client on hair vitamins, we will use that the testimonials from the parents who send their children to the boarding school or we'll use the testimonials from the people that have used the product. And then we will create content around that product. We might ask them for their image. They're not happy to give their image. We use their name. And we would use those testimonials on all platforms.
Melanie
So it would be assisted user-generated content.
Loretta
Yes, we absolutely would ask people to share and maybe share over to our stories, and that would keep our stories lit in certain campaigns and situations. But we get that piece of content and then we make it into the brand's owned, but it still has the voice of the person that has generated the content.
Melanie
Right, got you.
Esther
Okay, so this is a lot of information for people to take on on a Monday morning. Where would you recommend that they start? What is the first thing that they should sit down and look at before maybe even deciding if they're going to write their content, also, should they write their content for what they're recording? Or should that be more off the cusp and less rehearsed? But where would they start?
Loretta
I think they need to start with a persona or with asking themselves the question, who am I speaking to? So either, Who's buying my product? Or, Okay, this is the person buying my product. Do I want more of them? Or, Do I want some other demographic that I'm not actually tapping into at all? And I would be creating that content to make that person happy. So rather than if being, Oh, my God, I love that piece and Lorg Media looks so great in that piece, I'm like, Who cares about Lorg Media? It's about the audience we try to reach. So say for us, we work with a lot of government bodies as well as private sector, but if I'm trying to reach out to a particular sector, I'm like, Okay, what's useful to them? How do we solve their problem? And it always comes back to, What's the problem we're solving? And then you want to make yourself really, really useful. And in terms of those questions, Esther, it's absolutely. I think failing to plan is planning to fail. Getting your questions down is really important. But as an interviewee and interviewers, as you're interviewing me today, it's so important to pivot depending on the answer. And at the back of your mind, if you can at all, keep keeping that persona or that audience in mind. Okay, who is this going to serve? Or, Whom I'm wanting to attract to my brand by publishing this piece of content.
Melanie
Okay, now that does follow. And talking of following, that was a terrible segue, but there I go. She mentioned... Esther mentioned that sometimes it can be a bit more rehearsed or less rehearsed. Do you think the more less rehearsed, the more authentic it is, the less professional looking it is? Does that actually still do better, or are people expecting more professional videos and content coming forward?
Loretta
It very much depends on the platform. On TikTok right now, organic, messy, break every rule that you've ever learnt when watching film and go do all of that, which drives me personally crazy, but as in I know it performs and works. Going to do that on TikTok. On LinkedIn, you can do it, but I do think you need to look at your audience. Who's there? It's in the main professionals looking to engage with other professionals and usually they want something... They just want something a little bit more polished. Again, it comes back to who are you speaking to and on what platform? It's all mad, crazy, busy, messy on TikTok and it's fast turnaround. If we're running an ad set on TikTok, we need 15 pieces of content for one ad set. That might just be six seconds, 15 seconds. All of these, we put them into a big pot and then we monitor them and see, okay, it's not even A/B testing anymore. It's A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K. It's like all of these in together into the melting pot and you're seeing, Okay, which one is performing best? Okay, let's double down on that. So again, it depends on the platform, but people are still looking for entertainment really, more than anything. They want to be entertained. It's so noisy. Our world is so, so noisy right now. I know when I started on Twitter many years ago, I could get in touch with anyone on the island of Ireland. It was so easy to go, Oh, thank you so much. Can you put me in touch with this person? Now it's just like you're trying to break through that noise. How do you break through that noise? You're looking for attention. You're looking to entertain with your particular piece of content that you feel is going to resonate with your audience and with the persona that you're after.
Melanie
Okay, now I've got one last question. I don't know if Esther has another one after me, but my last question is, so many people are talking about the usuals, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, so on and so forth, linkedin, X. But no one has mentioned YouTube as yet, and it doesn't get brought up in conversation very often. I've been trying the last couple of months to do YouTube shorts on a regular basis, and I've seen quite a significant difference, and I've attracted a whole new audience as well, which is weird. Is this a missed opportunity? Or, again, do you have to just make sure you're targeting the right audience when you're using YouTube or YouTube shorts?
Loretta
Again, YouTube for us and the majority of our clients is in a space that we are maybe performing best in. It's maybe more of a holding space for promotion, for embedding links. We work on YouTube a lot with, for example, if we shoot something and then we want that piece of content to end up in a blog, we would pop it to YouTube, get the embed code and then use it that way. But YouTube wouldn't be personally my forte. But I do know how to make sure that anything that goes to YouTube that it's as perfect as it can be in terms of SEO. But I think with YouTube, really what's performing really well there at the moment are YouTubers, are people that are happy to get in front of camera and create content and create shorts. Whereas in the other spaces, brands are still doing well. If that makes sense.
Melanie
Yeah, yeah.
Esther
Yeah, yeah. That's very interesting. I do have a question. So you talked a lot about helping businesses be seen in different areas, but a lot of the things that you've mentioned are maybe very regional. So the Gaeltacht would be a very regional thing, boarding schools. I mean, it's in one area, but I'm sure people from around the world would send their kids. So how do you break into that other markets? So you're here in Ireland. What about, if you were mentioning the hair care products, do you promote those to the UK, Europe, America? How do things like that? How do you break through those barriers in terms of content, in terms of audience?
Loretta
At the moment, predominantly the work we do is on the island of Ireland. I think if you have a product, systems that are working really well for us are Shopify for the product and marrying Shopify up with Klaviyo for your email marketing. So your email marketing can go anywhere in the world, but Klaviyo and Shopify work just so brilliantly together. In terms of trying to get into other markets, it just depends on your budget as well. But when we are trying to promote in other countries and we have advertised across the world, it's come down to more like our advertising side and deciding, okay, how much of my marketing budget am I going to put into advertising? Whether that's on Meta, Instagram, Facebook, or on X, which we don't go near at the moment, or whether it's over on TikTok, which we absolutely are having great fun on. We are seeing a return of investment over on TikTok. X for us and for many marketeers on the island of Ireland at a recent conference I've spoken at, we're all parking it at the moment.
Esther
Interesting.
Loretta
But yeah, to break into other countries or other territories, there's regulations and laws depending on products. I know a recent product here that we were helping out on, they had to rebrand and call it something else when they brought it to the States because it didn't really work. I think you have to think about the culture of... Again, it goes back to your audience and who you're speaking to. The way you speak to Irish people and the way you speak if you want to market people in the US is completely different. They're two different audiences. I was born in San Francisco. I'm a US citizen.
Melanie
I didn't know that.
Esther
Wow.
Loretta
But to Irish parents, but they lived there for 17 years, so I feel like people forget that sometimes. They forget that when you're marketing to a new territory, you need to speak like they speak. You need to see how other products similar to yours are resonating in the area and what's making them successful and what tone are they using, what language are they using. And it comes back to copy all the time. So even if you're writing a blog or if you're speaking on a YouTube channel, or if you're creating a 30-second radio ad, it comes back to how you're speaking to that person because you want them to act and do something after you speak, after you publish, after you broadcast.
Esther
Brilliant. Well, this has been very enlightening and very delightening at the same time. Is that a word?
Melanie
I would get abroad, but okay.
Esther
I just now feel like the list of things that we have to do has just got longer and longer and longer and longer. So how do people get in touch with you, Loretta?
Melanie
So that you can do it instead.
Loretta
I would like to enable, though, all the entrepreneurs that are listing or the small businesses that are listening, not to think that you need to always engage an agency. You don't. When we started out, we did so much of the work ourselves and we still do, and I think it comes back to the power of the content that you can create on your mobile phone or from things like Easel or Canva and look at those apps that will enable you to... Instead of going into the likes of Canva and breaking all the rules, go by the rules for a while and then see how it performs and then break them if you like. Again, there's so many apps and maybe after this I'll pass on some apps and CapCut and different apps that people can use to help them create that content. Tiktok and Instagram are making it so easy for us. They're giving us templates now that we can just flake in a load of video into and throw on a load of captions. I suppose going back to the point of, Melanie asked, does it all need to be looking perfect and professional? Absolutely not. We're seeing when we're looking at analytics, it's the stuff that's real and raw that's resonating. But saying that, it resonates as well because we've done a lot of planning before we go and shoot it, or before we go and write it.
Esther
Yeah, well, that's wonderful, but you didn't answer the question, how do people get in touch with you?
Loretta
We're very lucky at the moment that we're super busy, but people can get in touch with us at Lorg Media. Our website is at lorgmedia.com. They can also find us at Lorg Media on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, all the main channels where they're under the same name, which is really important for everybody working on a business, have your brand look the same on every single channel that you're on if you possibly can. That's L-O-R-G media and we look forward to helping people. I want to really enable entrepreneurs and small businesses out there to know they don't need to always use an agency. They can do it themselves. It's just taking that first step. And if you're an entrepreneur and if you own a business, you've already taken the first step. It's about not being afraid to make a mistake and being vulnerable.
Esther
And on that note, we'll end the podcast. Thank you very much, Loretta, for joining us. I don't think we could have ended it on a better note. We'll be back next week for more Monday Morning Marketing. Until then, bye-bye.
Melanie
Bye, have a great week.
Loretta
Thank you so much and happy Monday.
Melanie
Wow, that was a lot. We should have told people to get a pen and paper at the beginning, really, shouldn't we?
Esther
They can go back and listen to it again.
Loretta
Well, hopefully it wasn't too much.
