Speaker 1: Bird's eye potato Wa falls there, waversatile?
Speaker 2: Why were you late to this podcast.
Speaker 1: Because I was standing in a farmyard talking to a
Speaker 1: man about the closure of local abattoirs. Wow, this is
Speaker 1: important stuff.
Speaker 2: We live different lives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, why are you late normally.
Speaker 2: Today? To get this podcast out? I had to put
Speaker 2: my put my dinner in the form of a rap
Speaker 2: so I could eat it while I walked the dog.
Speaker 2: Life is too busy for single tasks.
Speaker 1: Do you just have a list of like shorthand of
Speaker 1: a food that weighs You can just make food easier
Speaker 1: to consume.
Speaker 2: It was going to be a chicken salad, but I
Speaker 2: just couldn't do a chicken salad like that, so I dumped.
Speaker 2: You know, I considered what was okay to put into
Speaker 2: a rap. I drew the line at pomegranate seeds. I
Speaker 2: felt like that works on a salad, doesn't work in
Speaker 2: a wrap.
Speaker 1: So if you're listening to this and thinking that your
Speaker 1: mate told you to listen to this because it could
Speaker 1: help you with your small rural business, then yeah, this
Speaker 1: is the right place. It's just we haven't got anywhere
Speaker 1: near the topic yet.
Speaker 2: Maybe we never will.
Speaker 1: No, we never will. This is the Mullet. This is
Speaker 1: the business and marketing oriented offshoot of Britain's Finest Rural podcast,
Speaker 1: because of course this is where we went first for
Speaker 1: our little diversion. This is episode five. There are four
Speaker 1: more that have already been recorded, so you can go
Speaker 1: back in the catalog and listen to those if you wish,
Speaker 1: or if you just wonder if they're all as bad
Speaker 1: as this one. They are all recorded in big blocks,
Speaker 1: so if you want to send in your questions for
Speaker 1: future episodes then you can send them in or the
Speaker 1: links are in the show description, but they might not
Speaker 1: get read out for a few weeks. So we're going
Speaker 1: to start with this first one, which I think Callum
Speaker 1: can read out because he wasn't ready and it's fun
Speaker 1: to watch him.
Speaker 2: Pas I can read. Where are the questions?
Speaker 1: They were sent to you in an email?
Speaker 2: I know I've got them. I've done some I've done
Speaker 2: some work.
Speaker 1: Oh go on, go on, do the questions.
Speaker 2: General feedback for the Mullet is we've actually provided some
Speaker 2: benefit to people's lives, which is is nice to know.
Speaker 1: None of those people are on this call.
Speaker 2: Time bandits, so the stop chuckling is like reading in
Speaker 2: class isn't it. I'm finding the business info very interesting
Speaker 2: and has given me a few ideas to work on.
Speaker 2: I started to go through my part. Oh oh, have
Speaker 2: ruined it already. I started to go through the podcast again,
Speaker 2: and Richard mentioned dilemmas. My dilemma is that the gods
Speaker 2: have Instagram and probably Facebook will not share my content
Speaker 2: as a knife maker. My content obviously contains photos of knives.
Speaker 2: Am I best to delete everything and start again, or
Speaker 2: keep going with one profile and start another from scratch
Speaker 2: and do it completely differently. I like the idea of
Speaker 2: social proofing. Look at other options, or all of them.
Speaker 2: I don't believe that people are searching for what I do,
Speaker 2: so I think I need to be seen. Alan Johnson
Speaker 2: and his social media is danum Blades, which is d
Speaker 2: A n U M Blades.
Speaker 1: A very good knife baker as well. He's he had
Speaker 1: a stare at the game fair and I was fondling
Speaker 1: some of his wares.
Speaker 2: What about his knives?
Speaker 1: Oh they were good too, Yeah, so.
Speaker 2: I saw them too. He was in the ferreting things
Speaker 2: with the pugs and drummers. Let's so the knives good
Speaker 2: to specify that they are largely hunting knives. I'm just
Speaker 2: having a look. Does some good lever work as well? Amazing.
Speaker 1: So are you aware then of this Instagram issue around guns,
Speaker 1: knives things like that. And it's not just Instagram, it's meta,
Speaker 1: it's Facebook as well, that they really don't like you
Speaker 1: having knives and guns in pictures on their platform.
Speaker 2: So I've come across backstory. I've worked with a lot
Speaker 2: of people doing a lot of different social media content.
Speaker 2: I've come across a variety of things that have been
Speaker 2: really troublesome for marketing. Transformation photos is one of these
Speaker 2: things that you can't put any money or spend behind
Speaker 2: because it often relates to selling people diet pills and snakes. Okay,
Speaker 2: so that's one that's almost been impossible. I haven't noticed
Speaker 2: I put guns in there. I have noticed many content
Speaker 2: creators since words like suicide and death and guns.
Speaker 1: And people because those you saying those words, we're not
Speaker 1: going to cut them out, but you saying those words
Speaker 1: will have been picked up by Spotify. I can guarantee.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so people say unlive themselves in place of that,
Speaker 2: which I assume the algorithm only just picks up. But yeah,
Speaker 2: it's I am familiar with the censoring and I have
Speaker 2: experienced some of it before and I did a little
Speaker 2: did a little research and the the AI algorithm that
Speaker 2: Meta uses, so that's both Facebook and Instagram, has zero
Speaker 2: idea of the nuance of whether this is a deer
Speaker 2: stalker's knife or crafted and you know, a thing of art,
Speaker 2: or it's a weapon. So it really doesn't have any
Speaker 2: idea even with captions. And there's a bunch of hashtags
Speaker 2: around this topic that are completely banned and cannot be
Speaker 2: used like blacklisted.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and for add creative with the sort of you know,
Speaker 1: the sort of thing that you produce, and that me
Speaker 1: as an occasional influenza for sort of large bearded men.
Speaker 1: That is my my audience. The when you're working with brands,
Speaker 1: sometimes they have very specific instructions about none of this
Speaker 1: to be included in shots, you know or don't had
Speaker 1: to shoot something not that long ago, which was for
Speaker 1: a rifle carrier, so it's like a rucksack frame that
Speaker 1: sort of the rifle goes on and to demonstrate how
Speaker 1: it comes out, the model or the artists was using
Speaker 1: a stick to show how Yeah, I think you wanted
Speaker 1: to use a French baguette, but it kept breaking apart
Speaker 1: every time we tried to do something with it, so
Speaker 1: we had to use a stick from somewhere in the woods.
Speaker 2: So specific to the gun, the gun is yeah to
Speaker 2: it limits the algorithm.
Speaker 1: Since AI has come into the algorithm for image detection,
Speaker 1: it's got worse because knives are a pretty distinct shape,
Speaker 1: but guns it's quite good at picking out guns now
Speaker 1: or components of guns. So I've seen that a TikTok
Speaker 1: is more strict with it than Meta, than Instagram or Facebook,
Speaker 1: but generally it's a good thing to assume across all
Speaker 1: social media platforms. Knives, guns, difficult topics like that are
Speaker 1: going to be harder to get through than others. And
Speaker 1: you might be listening to this thinking, but I've seen
Speaker 1: loads of gun stuff on YouTube. I see loads of
Speaker 1: gun stuff there are If you get to a certain
Speaker 1: size and you're bringing enough people in YouTube, particularly for them,
Speaker 1: and bringing a big enough audience to them, you will
Speaker 1: get a direct contact at YouTube who will manually approve
Speaker 1: your content that gets flagged by the algorithm. That's how
Speaker 1: those big American gun YouTubers do it, and that's how
Speaker 1: they get through. But I know that it's not just
Speaker 1: a UK problem for the knife thing because there's a
Speaker 1: guy called Josh Smith who has Montana knives. So if
Speaker 1: you're into your outdoor knife blade stuff, you know that's
Speaker 1: the tools you like buying, you will have come across
Speaker 1: their stuff. They're a very, very successful brand. He has
Speaker 1: a huge problem with either his post being taken down
Speaker 1: or being put you know, it gets that blurred sensitive
Speaker 1: image thing goes on it, or he just can't get
Speaker 1: it on there. So we're talking about the subject. How
Speaker 1: do we solve this for Alan? How do we answer
Speaker 1: his question which is should he keep going with a
Speaker 1: profile he's got or or should he start again from
Speaker 1: scratch or should he do both and sort of ab
Speaker 1: test it.
Speaker 2: My my thing would be to do a hybrid strategy
Speaker 2: to do both the same at the same time. What's
Speaker 2: your thoughts on it.
Speaker 1: I think having backup accounts is never a terrible idea.
Speaker 1: You see that a lot with people who do controversial
Speaker 1: things or things that the algorithm doesn't like. They say,
Speaker 1: you know, this is my backup accounts, so you can
Speaker 1: follow that so that if they lose the main account,
Speaker 1: they don't have to build it up again from scratch.
Speaker 1: But by creating a second account. You're not going to
Speaker 1: move away from the problem because a problem is built
Speaker 1: into the platform. You know, if you just put another
Speaker 1: knife image, it's going to get eventually get flagged in
Speaker 1: the same way. So I would say to try and
Speaker 1: balance out the fee. So it's not just photos of knives,
Speaker 1: it's photos of the process, photos of of somehow of
Speaker 1: them being used, or showing them maybe in the sheath
Speaker 1: on a belt, it might be less likely to get flagged.
Speaker 1: Maybe experiment with the content rather than the account, you know,
Speaker 1: to ab test does it get through if it's like this,
Speaker 1: does this get more engagement or is it only when
Speaker 1: the knife is out on a table or a background
Speaker 1: or something like that. Is that when the problem kicks in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm just having a closer look. But yeah, I agree.
Speaker 2: It's quite funny that some content absolutely bombs and then
Speaker 2: some of it gets through. It seems to be like
Speaker 2: a carousel of images does quite well for him, but
Speaker 2: then others not so much. I can't find the Instagram
Speaker 2: because I really wanted to look at the Instagram.
Speaker 1: Is something to consider as well. While Callum looks for
Speaker 1: his Instagram. I think Instagram's not having a great moment
Speaker 1: whilst we're recording. I think, because I'm trying to get
Speaker 1: onto it as well, I think they might be server issues.
Speaker 1: Something to consider is that if you're a business, if
Speaker 1: you've particularly if you're listed as a business account on Instagram,
Speaker 1: Instagram does not see you as an asset. Instagram sees
Speaker 1: you as a potential customer or neutral. That's it. So
Speaker 1: they want you to buy ads from them. They want
Speaker 1: you to do boosted posts, run ads, do ads in stories,
Speaker 1: those kind of things. There if you can try and
Speaker 1: boost a couple of the posts, if you experiment with
Speaker 1: putting different kinds of content on and then see if
Speaker 1: you're allowed to boost those posts, that might that might
Speaker 1: show you what is acceptable to Instagram. You don't have
Speaker 1: to boost it for huge amounts, and maybe ten quid,
Speaker 1: throw ten quid behind an ad and target UK people
Speaker 1: who like phishing and just see if that gets a return.
Speaker 1: Because also you get this with ads anyway, anytime you
Speaker 1: spend money on ads, you want to target certain demographics,
Speaker 1: see if you get more response from that than another one.
Speaker 1: But maybe see if you get sort of tacit approval
Speaker 1: from the meta platform by trying to boost it, by
Speaker 1: trying to give them what they want, which is money.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that gives you a little bit of confirmation. I
Speaker 2: can't seem to find that in search. Interesting yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 2: who and if has arrived from danam Blade and it
Speaker 2: is not appearing in search, which is really quite interesting sign. Yes,
Speaker 2: I am searching this from Essex and I am searching
Speaker 2: danum Blades and I cannot find it. So that would
Speaker 2: I found it now somebody mentioned dan and Blades. The
Speaker 2: Cigar Smoking Hunter has mentioned dan and Blade, and then
Speaker 2: I can click on it and go it, so that
Speaker 2: would appear. That would appear as if Dan and Blade
Speaker 2: is shadow band.
Speaker 1: Yes, So whether shadow banning exists, I mean Instagram always
Speaker 1: deny it, but it definitely one hundred percent exists. And
Speaker 1: almost everyone I know who has either a shooting related
Speaker 1: account or a knife related account or something involving butchery
Speaker 1: and things like that, they all seem to have sort
Speaker 1: of plateaued in their growth the moment they started posting
Speaker 1: that kind of content. That is something you have to
Speaker 1: be aware of. If that is the kind of content
Speaker 1: you're going into for yourself or for your business, is
Speaker 1: that you are almost voluntarily stepping out of the algorithm.
Speaker 1: Pushing you to people. You're volunteering yourself out of organic growth,
Speaker 1: So you have to be canny in how you do this.
Speaker 1: You have to look at things like, OK, can I
Speaker 1: get tagged in things? Can I appear on other things?
Speaker 1: Can I build an audience that doesn't rely on being
Speaker 1: recommended on social media because that is not available to you,
Speaker 1: Which means you've got to reach out to other people.
Speaker 1: You've got to try and get onto things like podcasts
Speaker 1: and get onto other people's do collaborations with other.
Speaker 2: People, build that rapport and that authority for sure.
Speaker 1: Leverage what other people have.
Speaker 2: So some of my I did write some notes down
Speaker 2: for this, and I did a little bit of research.
Speaker 2: So don't delete posts from your Instagram, but archive posts.
Speaker 2: So go in and archive, do not delete them because
Speaker 2: that is not seen as good to the gods that
Speaker 2: are Instagram. Look, do a caption, caption audit and look
Speaker 2: for things. Hashtag knife is not allowed. Hashtag blade is
Speaker 2: also not allowed. Combat not allowed. And weirdly I've run
Speaker 2: into this before. E d C, which is an everyday carry,
Speaker 2: is a a band hashtag which annoyed Electric Daisy, Carnivoid,
Speaker 2: Las vegas no end because that was a that was
Speaker 2: the hashtag for a long time.
Speaker 1: They got back stuff as well, like self reliance and
Speaker 1: survival and things like that are all banned as well.
Speaker 1: You won't get your post taken down. It just means
Speaker 1: the moment that's there and that's tied to the post,
Speaker 1: that's it.
Speaker 2: So go through, do a audit of those, and then
Speaker 2: archive those posts. If they've got some semi good, semi
Speaker 2: reasonable engagement, simply repost them with new captions that you're
Speaker 2: going to focus on your craft. The pro says, material
Speaker 2: origins and just sort of the story of the brand. Really,
Speaker 2: just focus on that kind of thing. Don't necessarily say
Speaker 2: knives every day. Carrying on all those bits.
Speaker 1: Hashtags seem to be making less of a difference on
Speaker 1: social media as well now than they're used to, particularly
Speaker 1: on reels and videos that.
Speaker 2: Because the AI picks it up. Yeah, so it knows
Speaker 2: the words you're saying.
Speaker 1: He's got it, which is something else to be considerate of.
Speaker 1: Be careful of literally of the words that you say
Speaker 1: in your video. Yeah, that's because they are. You can't say, well,
Speaker 1: I didn't write it down, so it won't be picked up.
Speaker 1: You know that when you upload it. It's being scanned, transcribed,
Speaker 1: and then what you say is being used to push
Speaker 1: things forward, and it's to expand to what Calum said,
Speaker 1: there's this weird list of things that you cannot say
Speaker 1: if you want growth, Like if you you can't say Nats,
Speaker 1: you have to say mid century German or something like that.
Speaker 2: They identify as mid century German.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's more seriousness. That is, there's all these layers
Speaker 1: to it. It's not just what you do, and at
Speaker 1: some point you have to accept there's a limitation on
Speaker 1: how much you'll grow on that account. So follow the rules,
Speaker 1: follow the rules that CON's given you there, follow the
Speaker 1: or the use to be aware of all these things
Speaker 1: that the algorithm is looking at, but also maybe try
Speaker 1: and sidestep it and use that social media account as
Speaker 1: not the place to grow and not the audience you're
Speaker 1: trying to build. It's more of a portfolio.
Speaker 2: Having met Alan, I think he's probably quite a funny chap.
Speaker 2: So I would put the silliest name possible for a
Speaker 2: knife and use that in place, and just talk normally
Speaker 2: about such things, and just make sure you're using a
Speaker 2: silly name, yeah, like a not fork danger spoon, Yeah,
Speaker 2: I have crafted, hand crafted this danger spoon.
Speaker 1: A long time ago. I used to sell outdoor gear online.
Speaker 1: We had a business doing that. We had original outdoor gear.
Speaker 1: We hit a problem with the eBay shop at some
Speaker 1: point because they stopped selling. They stopped selling knives on eBay.
Speaker 1: You couldn't sell any knife at all. And there was
Speaker 1: this famous meme and sort of screenshot doing the rounds
Speaker 1: of somebody was selling a potato, a genuine Second World
Speaker 1: War German potato, and all the history of the potato
Speaker 1: and the unit the potato had served with and you
Speaker 1: bought the potato, and it's about two grand. And with
Speaker 1: a potato, you've got a free potato peela. A potato
Speaker 1: peela was the bayonet that was actually we were trying
Speaker 1: to sell, but all the focus was on this potato
Speaker 1: they were selling. Yeah, I'd say get creative. I'd say
Speaker 1: stick with the accounts you've got. But maybe it is
Speaker 1: a sad acceptance of you're not going to grow in
Speaker 1: the same way, but at least you can try and
Speaker 1: talk around the subject. Maybe maybe get political I talking
Speaker 1: about Trump.
Speaker 2: That will help focus on focus on the crafting and
Speaker 2: show all the bits of the lever work. And the
Speaker 2: blade can be a kind of cursory glance the storytelling.
Speaker 2: Download someone like cap cut have a look at study
Speaker 2: some viral hooks. You can use our friend Chatty caffe
Speaker 2: chat GPT to look at what viral hooks work. So
Speaker 2: that will be something like starting with this is the
Speaker 2: coolest thing I have ever made. This danger Spoon. Took
Speaker 2: me forty eight eight hours just to craft this one day,
Speaker 2: just spoon, and then you know, you can show the
Speaker 2: process of like I drew this out, so you're like
Speaker 2: drawing the knife, your how it's being made, the honing
Speaker 2: of it, and make sure that the a particular item
Speaker 2: doesn't fill with the frame. If it feels a frame,
Speaker 2: then it's going to do that. Interestingly, I just had
Speaker 2: to look at some of the pictures and there's one
Speaker 2: picture that's on a background that's quite confusing with lots
Speaker 2: of letters and texts and a bit of wood and
Speaker 2: a bit of leather and the knife isn't very prominent.
Speaker 2: That does really well. So I think that probably did
Speaker 2: well because it didn't know that it was a knife.
Speaker 1: It's going to be difficult to progress with this. That's
Speaker 1: my final takeaway is just don't expect huge organic success
Speaker 1: in this unless Alan starts wearing really tight but you know,
Speaker 1: the influenza leggings and starts doing squats in front of
Speaker 1: the camera. That seems to be good for organic growth, and.
Speaker 2: Can we have that in our Patreon.
Speaker 1: I'm going to do squats in front of the camera
Speaker 1: just for that. I might wear a dress or something.
Speaker 1: And that does seem to be the only way to
Speaker 1: grow now, So if you if you can find some
Speaker 1: way of incorporating that into it, sort of like an
Speaker 1: only blades.
Speaker 2: Thing on Danger spoons.
Speaker 1: Actually we've got only blades. It'd just be a little
Speaker 1: adds from Hereford coming out. Six people got that joke, right.
Speaker 1: I think we should close this one off because we
Speaker 1: haven't actually given that much good advice. But we've sort
Speaker 1: of talked about the subject, but we haven't got a
Speaker 1: golden bullet.
Speaker 2: I would say focus on storytelling and don't show knives
Speaker 2: and try and do everything to avoid it.
Speaker 1: Well, it's not it not give up, don't grow, it's
Speaker 1: don't choose that platform for growth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's also YouTube and TikTok. YouTube is terrible for discoverability,
Speaker 2: but bloody good for SEO.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and focus on you on your website, focus on
Speaker 1: your SEO, focus on your focus on your ecosystem as
Speaker 1: well of touch points, and you target those people who
Speaker 1: are going to buy your thing. You're not hoping for
Speaker 1: huge success across the entire population. You're after the zero
Speaker 1: point five percent who actually want to buy your think.
Speaker 2: Do you know this sort of thing like send an
Speaker 2: email to someone at shooting times and see if you
Speaker 2: can get it in a six six of the best
Speaker 2: knives that exist roundup or or something like that. You
Speaker 2: only need to Recently, a friend of mine did a
Speaker 2: piece about craftsman and he sold lots and lots of
Speaker 2: products off the back of it in the field. So
Speaker 2: actually something like that. If you're making really nice high
Speaker 2: end print media, I rarely would say this print media
Speaker 2: could be the way to go. Just find your niche
Speaker 2: and double down on it.
Speaker 1: There we are some very confusing advice. Thank you, Allen,
Speaker 1: thank you for your sending you your email. We will
Speaker 1: be back with another question and answer, hopefully maybe bye
Speaker 1: bye then bye bye driver