Why being 'social' on social media is the best thing you can be doing

We sit down with Ellen Bathgate of Content Collab to unpack a practical framework for property management marketing: five content categories, 90-day planning, and choosing a primary platform. We dig into authenticity, AI transparency, batching evergreen posts, and how consistency beats volume across Instagram, LinkedIn, and Facebook.

• who Content Collab helps and how the services work
• how to outsource content yet keep your own voice
• why being social matters more than perfect scheduling
• four common content roadblocks and simple fixes
• five categories for easier ideation and planning
• batching evergreen reviews and newsletters
• carousels versus video performance by platform
• the pratfall effect and building trust with raw video
• AI avatars, disclosure, and the trust recession
• choosing a primary platform and repurposing
• moving audiences to owned assets like email and apps
• practical weekly cadence and testing frameworks

Follow Ellen on Instagram to catch upcoming webinars and templates for property managers

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Chapters

• 0:00 Meet Ellen And Content Collab
• 2:31 Services: Full Service And Templates
• 4:41 Keeping Your Voice While Outsourcing
• 8:06 Be Social, Not Just Scheduled
• 11:01 Common Content Struggles Mapped
• 13:11 Five Categories And 90-Day Planning
• 16:51 Inspiration Sources And Idea Buckets
• 20:08 Batching Evergreen Content For Consistency
• 23:08 What Works Now: Carousels Vs Video
• 26:18 Done Beats Perfect And Algorithm Reality
• 29:28 AI Avatars, Disclosure, And Trust
• 33:38 The Pratfall Effect And Raw Video
• 36:18 Authenticity Spotlight: A Creator To Watch
• 38:48 Pick A Primary Platform Strategy
• 42:08 Own Your Audience: Email And Apps

Transcript

SPEAKER_00: 0:34

All right, today we have got a very familiar guest joining us, and that is Ellen Bathgate from Content Collab. Welcome, Ellen.

SPEAKER_01: 0:43

Thank you for having me. I'm so glad to be here.

SPEAKER_00: 0:46

It's so nice being on the other side sometimes, isn't it? It is, yeah. And interesting enough, when I um had, you know, was doing some socials, I think you'd reached out and had actually reminded me that we haven't done a podcast together on the art of property management. How weird's that? I know, I know. I thought, oh, maybe we haven't. And I was nearly actually I was nearly a little bit embarrassed that you hadn't. And I don't know why, but maybe it's because like we sort of do other things together and there's already stuff around, maybe that's why. But I'm very fortunate to have you joining us today because I have got some personal questions for you. And then we've got some general questions, obviously, around marketing and content, because you are the lady for that. So I'm going to get straight into it. And actually, do you know what I normally say this at the end, but I'm going to bring this at the front at the start so people can understand if they haven't seen how you helped the real estate or the property management community. Can you just give us a rundown of the services that Content CoLab offers? Um, just so people can paint the picture. So let's do that first.

SPEAKER_02: 1:55

That's a great idea. So after many years of having people ask me if I could help them actually do their social media and their email marketing and their blog writing and all of that for them. That's what we do. So we have a team that will write your social media posts and create your graphic design and edit your videos and publish them on all of your social media platforms and put a blog on your website each month and a marketing email to go out to your database each month. We'll do it all for you so that you need to only spend about 20 minutes a month reviewing your content, approving it, and then you don't have to think about it. We also have a template membership as well. So if you're not quite ready to invest in having our whole team do everything for you, you can use our template membership and we'll give you a calendar each month that has little social media captions and post ideas and chat GPT prompts and things like that, and a newsletter that you can send out to your landlords as well, if you're wanting to do those sorts of things yourself.

SPEAKER_00: 2:55

So I have the template membership and I've had it for a while. And I find that for me, as someone who loves creating content, I find that that's perfect because it's number one, it's affordable. Number two, it helps fill in those gaps when I'm feeling uninspired. And I actually get a lot of value from the blogs or you know, people might get a lot of value just from the newsletter, even just parts of that template membership, fantastic. If you but you've you've got it all in there for them. But I do find that, yeah, it is good for those that do want to do their content, do enjoy doing it, but just need to fill in those gaps when they're feeling uninspired. So that's how I use it, and hopefully that helps position it for people that might be in the same boat as well. The with the just out of curiosity, with the full service, does that still allow people to put a personal touch into their socials if they need to?

SPEAKER_02: 3:56

Yeah, absolutely. The cool thing is we always meet with our clients when we first onboard them. We have this done in 90 philosophy. So we need you for about 90 minutes, and then that will allow us to create content for your next 90 days. So what we do is we pull all of the good ideas out of you so that we can take that and turn that into social media content. But also, one of the three reasons our clients love working with us is because they might ask us to do three posts a week, and then that allows them to throw in a few little extra things throughout the week, which means that social media can be fun. Again, you're not feeling that pressure of, oh, I need to do my three posts a week or my five posts a week. You just get to do the stuff that you feel inspired to do. You know exactly what days our content is going to appear on your social media, and you can just throw in the extra stuff, you can appear in your stories if you want to, you get a cute dog in a photo and you can share it yourself. So it means that you get to do all of the fun stuff, but you know that all of your educational content, your credibility building content, all of your social proof, all of that is just happening every week, and you don't have to think about it.

SPEAKER_00: 5:05

And if and if you're not having a fun week, you don't have to worry about doing anything because there's still something showing. Exactly. The public will not even know. So the what I love about that option for people is that it would I would hope that I think there's two people in the world. There are the people that are like, I don't like any social media, Ellen, can you just do it all for me? I don't want anything to do with it. Help, but I and which is fine. But the second option, which I think people that have that mentality should remember, is that social media is to be social. And so if you are going to outsource your content and all of that, take advantage of the time that you're saving to be social, comment on things, send people messages, like things. Would you agree with that?

SPEAKER_02: 5:57

Yeah, absolutely. And so when we're onboarding a new client, one of the things we always say is we're not going to be you in that way. So when someone leaves a comment, we're gonna let you respond to that so that it's you, so that you can really respond to that. When you're scrolling your socials, you should be being social. But yeah, our job is to take away all of the, I'm gonna say the boring parts, the researchy part, the education, the credibility building, all of that content that can often feel really heavy, and just let you do the fun stuff. Get allow you to connect with the people that you want to connect with on socials and leave comments and respond to people's stories and all of the fun stuff, but know that you've got all of your other content just appearing and building in the background, but you get to do the fun part.

SPEAKER_00: 6:47

You know what's funny is that because I love creating content, yeah, but that being social is the bit that I need help with. So I need to find someone who can actually be my social person and do it in reverse. Yes. No, I mean, there was a time where I had my kids when we used to take a while to drive to school or a 45-minute trip to school, and there was a time where I would pay them five dollars just to go through and like all the posts like that come up on my feed. And that lasted while they were younger. It was all fun and games, but then when they hit teenage years, they're like, no, Mum, not doing that anymore. But they're and five dollars isn't enough anymore, Mum. That that's right. They were negotiating more and it wasn't worth any more to me. So, but but that's sort of like I guess something that I did try. So in my notes, I've written down there's there's there's four, I've written down four different areas in social media that people can sometimes struggle with. So there's people that struggle with the ideas, there is people that have the ideas but just struggle with the implementation and the doing. Then there is people that don't necessarily like that have the ideas and the implementation, which is which is me. I put myself in that category. But where I lack is the strategy because I'm just posting for the sake of posting. I post what I like, I don't have a strategy, I don't have an end result, I don't think about hashtags, I don't think about the strategy behind it. So for me, ideas and implement implementation is fine, strategy I suck at. But then there might be people out there that are happy to have the time to implement, but they just don't have the ideas, like they don't know what to post. So, where do you get your inspiration from when you are looking at trends and stuff? Or uh is it something that just comes natural to you?

SPEAKER_02: 8:45

Oh no, I it does not come naturally to me. What comes naturally to me is I like seeing formulas and not in a math sense, but I just like to see yeah, what's the formula for either coming up with ideas or creating a strategy? And so I'm not necessarily looking for this wave of creativity to come over me. I'm really good at just figuring out what formula we can apply to these things. So for that reason, what we tend to do is we work with five categories of social media posts. So some people might call them topics or content pillars, we call them categories. We look at how can we make sure that we're touching all of these categories, either every week, every fortnight, every month, depending on how frequently you're wanting to create content. And then we can even look at using AI as like a co-pilot in lots of ways. Someone who'll help sort of pitch and catch with you around those ideas and how to kind of roll out a weekly, fortnightly, monthly, quarterly, annual strategy, depending on how big you want to go. With social media, things change a little bit more quickly. So you're probably wanting maybe a 90-day plan that you're going to roll out, and so much more than that. You've probably got ideas for what you're doing beyond 90 days, and you've got ideas of what you're going to be doing in your business, and perhaps what you'll be promoting in your business beyond 90 days. But for a social media plan, we tend to stick to about a 90-day plan.

SPEAKER_00: 10:44

Um do you want me to flesh that out, anyone? Yeah, the well, I don't want you to flesh it out too much. Do you know why? Because you have got great webinars for your members that they can join in to get all the juicy stuff. So I you're very generous, but I I reckon hold we'll hold some stuff back a few things all then because they can reach out to you and get more information. And I know I don't normally because I'm not sure when this podcast recording will be going out, I don't know if it's going to be in time. But what I would say is make sure that you go follow Ellen on social media. I my favorite platform to follow Ellen on is Instagram. And then you can keep up to date with all the webinars and stuff like that. The I mean, yeah, it's it's interesting. So you're more of a logical sort of thinker when it comes to it. Because I when I think about when people ask me the question, where do I get inspiration for content? I would probably say that sometimes I'm going through like Pinterest, sometimes I'm going through TikTok. I tend to like looking at those two platforms purely because there's less Australian property managers on there and more international. So there was something that I liked that, you know, I wouldn't feel like I'm copying, you know, one of my competitors or someone that I know. So, and I mean, it's not copying, it's just sort of using that bit of inspiration, but I tend to go, yeah, to those two. And then I also find listening to podcasts that not real estate-related podcasts, that just marketing and social media podcasts is really helpful.

SPEAKER_02: 12:28

Yeah, I agree. And I do a similar thing to you in that I will get ideas and inspiration along the way, but I tend to throw them all into a bucket. And then when I'm ready to do content planning for myself or for a client, then I will go to that bucket and kind of pull it all out and figure out what which category does it fit into. Where do we need to spread that out over a month or a 90-day period? So I tend to just see an idea and throw it in because I like to just sit down and do a full plan. And certainly for our clients, we work a month in advance. So we are planning an entire month in one go. For me, I tend to plan about two weeks in advance of my own content. But yeah, I'm a big fan of get the idea, throw it in a bucket, and I'll come back and look at that bucket later.

SPEAKER_00: 13:17

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I did write down how far in advance can you do, and you answered that with 90 days. And I get that. I have been on a bit of a personal journey on trying to organize just to be in advance with a lot of things. So for my newsletters that go out to my database, I have planned them till the 11th of March so far. And it's just because when I've got like ideas I and that I want to sort of write about, then I as a instead of me putting it on my to-do list, I'm like, I'll just put it into my the next available day. And I they they're all evergreen, so it the newsletters are fine, it it doesn't matter. But I was sort of curious at how far in advance I could do it, because that to me sounds really awesome knowing that I've can have that break for that long. In terms of content, one thing that I don't know if this is helpful for people, but and I know that you would always sort of probably talk about batching content, but a really simple one to do is like when we do Google review, or when we have Google reviews and we have the different templates, I will sometimes get my support to just book them in for every Tuesday. So we might have 20 Google reviews that have come through. For them to batch them 20 templates for the next 20 weeks, beautiful is really easy for things like that, isn't it?

SPEAKER_02: 14:52

Anything evergreen like that, you can batch as far as you like.

SPEAKER_00: 14:58

Correct. I we had a co-work day yesterday and we're doing some content with one of the ladies that was there. And another tip that I had for her, because she's a bit slower with content and creating it. And I said to her, okay, what I want you to do is create one post a week for the next four weeks. So the next four posts you're gonna do, you're gonna do just one for each week. Because I know that she gets distracted and will pick up a phone call and have to go do an appraisal or something. I said to her, if you do that, at least we know that you've got one a week in. I said, and then go back to week one and go add your second one into each week. And to do it like that for someone who does struggle was helpful because it meant that if she got distracted with something she enjoys more, at least she knows she's got that, as opposed to only having four posts, which you think might last her eight days.

SPEAKER_02: 15:52

Exactly. Exactly. And I I'm a firm believer that consistency is more important than volume, and that's partly because it sort of teaches the algorithm and it teaches your audience that you are showing up regularly, but also I think it's good for yourself as well. Like it just shows that even if it is only one post per week, it shows I have shown up every single week for the last four weeks, and there's value in doing it as a personal achievement, as well as you know, pleasing the algorithm.

SPEAKER_00: 16:25

Yeah, yeah. I know LinkedIn is my favorite platform at the moment, and I know that I do say to people that if you you don't need to post like ridiculous on LinkedIn anymore, as long as it's consistent, and as long as someone who maybe wants to connect with you can look at your page and go, oh yep, she looks like she, you know, there's something there for the last couple of weeks, as opposed to someone who hasn't posted for six months. So it that goes for all platforms, I think. What type of content is working at the moment?

SPEAKER_02: 17:26

Oh, this is really interesting. And it's interesting because it depends. So it depends on the platform. You'll probably notice that different stuff performs differently, whether you're on LinkedIn versus Facebook versus Instagram versus TikTok. So you probably will notice a difference. What we're noticing is that video is not performing as well on LinkedIn for most of our clients, not all of our clients, but most of them, as it is performing on Instagram. But interestingly, I've noticed that for me, my Instagram account, carousels are way outperforming reels for me. So I am prioritizing creating carousels for Instagram. I don't always make them as carousels for Facebook or LinkedIn necessarily. But what I've realized is it really does depend on your account and your audience. So you need to test because I know that there's so much information out there right now saying you need to be on video and you need to be on video, and yet I can get more eyes on a carousel than I can on a real on my own account right now. So you have to test to see what your audience prefers.

SPEAKER_00: 18:48

And it's just a classic example that yeah, it you it's not working the same way for everyone. It's gonna be dependent on your followers, your algorithm, and the whole lot. And I think that's what makes it so hard these days is because someone might say, you know, potentially, like let's use this discussion. You might say, well, Instagram carousels is working really well for me. So then I go, okay, now I've got to do Instagram carousels, and I go and spend all the time. They're actually my least favorite one to do, actually. So, but then I go, okay, well, I'll give that a go. And then, yeah, and then it doesn't work, and then you go, oh, why do I bother? You know, people have that mentality, don't they? Yes.

SPEAKER_02: 19:32

Yeah, and it can feel really kind of a bit defeating when, especially when you've put a lot of time, effort, and care into a social media post, and you think this is going to perform so well, and then it just doesn't. And the posts that you put almost no effort into got fantastic reach and fantastic engagement, and you do feel a little bit like, well, why do I bother with all of this effort? And it is just the nature of almost everything we do in life. Some things are just harder and don't get the results, and some things are just easier and do get the results, and some things are really hard, but you eventually get a result.

SPEAKER_00: 20:14

Yeah. It's a classic example of. I mean, I'm not a perfectionist, but and sure we we don't want spelling errors errors or grammar errors, but that little thing that you're probably focusing on is probably not going to be noticed by other people. So it's easy to say though, and we say it constantly, don't we? You know, um, doing is um what's the you know, um the perfection quote? I've flossed it.

SPEAKER_02: 20:40

Like the progress before perfection or done is better than perfect.

SPEAKER_00: 20:44

That's right. I mean, you could say that a million times, and there's always gonna be the people that are overthinking it. Like this lady yesterday, it was funny. I feel mean actually, because I was I said to her, I'm putting the timer on. I said, Why haven't you done your second post? She goes, because I'm overthinking. And I was like, I'm putting the timer on. Five minutes, do it, like the alarm's gonna go off. And um, and I wasn't being being mean, but it was just like I was trying to get her to understand that you don't need to be spending more than five minutes doing it. So yeah, it is interesting. And I think that's probably why I am really bad at the strategy, because I don't care for it because I probably find it inconsistent. So for me, I'm not focused on that. However, I do understand if people are paying for a service, that strategy is what they're paying for, that's important to them to track as well. And that's probably where the value of having someone like yourself help do it is going to definitely be beneficial.

SPEAKER_02: 21:45

So yeah, and and I always sort of think I'd I'd still rather you are active and consistent on social media without a real strategy than it's just crickets on your Instagram feed. Like you're still better off having some stuff going up, even if there's not a huge amount of strategy and purpose behind it. Because so often it's the posts that don't feel like they're strategic anyway, that tends to connect with your followers the most and tends to get you the most engagement and the conversations and the DMs anyway. And even if that is a strategic move, like we've chosen to put some sort of a fun little post in, and we know that if we pair this sort of a photo with this sort of a caption, we know that we'll we'll get some comments out of it. And yes, that's strategic. But if it wasn't strategic and you just did a fun little post and it just got a lot of engagement, well, isn't that the point anyway? So whether you've got strategy or not, just being there is what matters.

SPEAKER_00: 22:52

So true, so true. So last night I was on an app that I came across and I want to ask you about it. Well, not actually ask you about the app, but I want to ask you about AI videos and stock images. Now, I downloaded an app called Aura because I want to just have a play with it. Now, I put in some photos of myself, the perfect my professional photos, and I got it to do like another photo shoot for me. Now, I just have to say I looked really, really good in it, and my hair was a little bit longer. I now am going to use it as an inspiration pinup of being what I would look like if I was a bit skinnier and had longer hair extensions in because they were great. But I don't use AI photos. I don't know if I condone it or would recommend it. However, I don't want to be naive to the fact that this is probably coming in. And some of the AI that you can use, I mean, I could create a video out of that content and post it. I like, yeah, I don't want to be like one of those people that says, no, I'm not doing that, when it could be the future. And I'd love to hear your thoughts around the use of AI videos and photos for content.

SPEAKER_02: 24:22

Yeah, so I have an opinion on this.

SPEAKER_00: 24:24

Right.

SPEAKER_02: 24:25

And it all comes down to the fact that I think we're in a trust recession. I think that when we are scrolling any social media app, any photo or video that appears in our feed, we are starting to filter through that lens of is that AI? Especially when you see funny animal videos. I saw a video of a bunch of little rabbits jumping on a trampoline a couple of weeks ago, and that was AI. And but it kind of looked like it wasn't, like it could have been real. And I feel like because we have this thing going on in the back of our mind around is that real? Like, did that really happen, or is that AI? We have this real trust recession. And so I think that AI video has a place. However, if you want your face and your voice to be trusted, I think you are playing with fire if you turn yourself into an AI avatar. I think that if you're looking at bringing an AI avatar into your social media, I think you need to treat it the way you would treat a chatbot on your website. I have a chatbot on our website. Her name is Rebecca, and she knows almost everything there is to know about how the business works. So if you're a client and you want to check a deadline, she can talk to you about that. And she is separate to me and to my team. And I think that if you want to continue to be trusted, you have to be careful about turning yourself into an AI avatar. So get yourself an AI avatar who is your little sidekick, who also makes appearance on your social media. Give him or her a name and a personality and a style and allow them to appear on social media either instead of you or as well as you, potentially even alongside you. But I think you have to think it through very carefully because a time may come where you've been appearing as an AI avatar with a perfectly scripted video, and people realize that it wasn't you, and it will make them question everything you put out there. So I think we have to hasten slowly on turning ourselves into one.

SPEAKER_00: 26:56

Yeah, no, I absolutely love that because it I wrote down much on my notes that where I also sort of see AI being used in with after hour phone calls and things like that. And I was speaking actually to the Grout guy because they have one for their after hours. But what I loved about it is that they say, you know, thanks for calling Alex. Alex is an AI bot, but I'm here to help you. And they actually disclose that he's AI. And I think that that's really great. And that's sort of exactly what you're saying with the socials is yeah, have as its own personality, it can show up, but as long as you're not making people think that it's you when it's not.

SPEAKER_02: 27:37

Yeah. And we're the same. We have an AI receptionist also, who the moment she answers the phone, tells you that she's an AI agent. Um and I think disclosure is particularly important right now.

SPEAKER_00: 27:51

Yeah, yeah, absolutely. The the other thing that I always bring up whenever I get an opportunity is the Prattful effect, which you may or may not have heard me talk about before, but it's the psychology behind sort of the trust and the human being trusted. And it is, it talks about experts in their field. So when we're in real estate and we're talking about real estate on our social media, that an expert is considered more trustworthy when they have imperfections, when they are presenting or talking on video because it shows that they're human. And so the fact that, you know, my videos are very raw. They're, you know, I say I'm a lot, I maybe have a mistake. I did one the other day and I started coughing, and then I actually even went, oh, I really don't want to re-record this, so I'm just going to keep on going because I still ain't got my time. But that being an expert in the field is seen as more relatable and yeah, and trustworthy. So I always use that psychology to make myself feel better and to encourage other people not to try and be perfect, even using professional videos which have their place, but um using professional videos for marker updates and things like that, they they're perfect videos, but they're also boring because they're predictable. And you get, I think you get more out of doing a casual decent quality. Like I'm you still use a microphone, you still use this as a camera, but raw, much more trust seen in that, and they're the videos that I notice and I relate to more.

SPEAKER_02: 29:33

So I I tend to agree, and and I think the the more polished and more professional any content becomes the more novel the real stuff becomes. So you tend to capture people more when you share that real stuff and it's imperfect.

SPEAKER_00: 29:52

Yeah. I so let me know crossing out my questions that I've got for you, and I want to mention a and actually, do you know what? I want to I want to tell everyone about this guy, and you might not know him because you are not in Perth, but this guy, he is a young Italian guy and he's in real estate, and he has a stud coming up with so much content. And if you don't follow him, you've got to. Hold on, let me just bring it up so I can say it right for everyone because I just love his content. He is so real, and I have heard that he is just such a beautiful person as well. So it's Justin Merendino, and he his handle is Justin Merrill sorry, Justin underscore Merendino underscore Ray White. And he he has yeah, he's just showing up on people's feeds at the moment, and he's just he's just gorgeous, and you'll know what I mean when you see his content, but it's just so effortless. He just does what he does, and my god. It's impressive, so impressive. And I think that that's a great example or profile for people to sort of see how being yourself, and yes, he's got quirks, and yes, he's got a very thick Italian accent. And you know, people say he dresses like an or acts like an 80-year-old man. He is so true to himself and so beautiful. That is how you get followers. So he's got 26,000 followers, I think, on Instagram, and just from him being him. And that's what I want everyone to get. Like, don't try and be somebody else because you don't need to. There's yeah, what accounts of you have you heard of him before?

SPEAKER_01: 31:44

No, I don't know him, but I'm gonna go find him and follow him.

SPEAKER_00: 31:48

Go follow him after this. So my I've got two more questions for you. One is are we still doing the right thing by focusing on all our social media, you know, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, LinkedIn. You know, are things changing? Should we start just focusing on one? Should we still just keep on doing the four main what what are your thoughts on that? Like because when I think about it, if I'm sure that you post everywhere, but I actually only remember you from Instagram, and maybe that's just where my mind is. Like for me, you're my Instagram person. But I know that you're everywhere else, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 32:29

Yeah, I I think that for in most cases, unless you have a pretty strong marketing team, and it's probably a marketing team that you have in-house, not outsourced to a team like us, but like an in-house marketing team, you probably want to consider one of your platforms to be the primary platform. And Instagram is mine. I create with Instagram in mind, and then I edit slightly and customize for other platforms. But when I'm creating content, I am thinking about my followers on Instagram as the priority. A lot of the same people follow me on Facebook and are connected with me on LinkedIn and so on. But I really for my account and for our clients, we look at where are your followers most active, and we create with that platform as the priority. And then we might slightly customize for the other platform.

SPEAKER_00: 33:29

And are you finding are you finding that that's generally probably going to be between Instagram and LinkedIn?

SPEAKER_02: 33:36

Little bit of Facebook still. Yeah. So yeah, we still have a couple of clients where Facebook is where their audience is most active. I assume it's just depending on who their audience is. So that would be a little bit to do with age and I guess some other factors. But I mean, each platform does tend to attract you and I are the Instagram age. So we do tend to focus on one platform being the primary and then we push to others. But yes, Instagram and LinkedIn are probably our clients most popular. But we have a couple of clients that Facebook is where they get the most engagement.

SPEAKER_00: 34:15

And that's probably because they haven't really been active on LinkedIn.

SPEAKER_02: 34:18

Possibly not.

SPEAKER_00: 34:19

So haven't sort of developed that. And my last question for you today is where do you think we are going with the future of social media? Because I, this is from a PM collective point of view. I really starting to rethink the future of Facebook and the future of platforms, and trying to see whether I need to be putting more of my content directly on my app. And I, you know, I hear stories about how, you know, one day you might have to pay for Facebook. And if you have to pay for Facebook, are people going to still be on it? Like what are your thoughts on where the future's going to be?

SPEAKER_02: 35:03

I don't I don't stress a lot about the individual consumers having to pay for Facebook. I don't see that. I don't see that as a high risk because it's such an effective advertising platform. And unfortunately, if you don't have to pay for the product, that means you are the product. And if you are not paying for Facebook, it's because advertisers are paying to target you. So but having said that, I've paid for a meta-paid subscription because I want the customer support. So I am paying like the blue tick verification thing. I am paying for that. And I'm really glad I am because I fire off questions to them when I'm stuck on something. So I am willing to pay for it, but I don't think everyone would be. For me, I think you don't want to build your house on a foundation you don't own. And so social media is always going to be a platform that you don't own. So you do need to think about your social media as a tool for growing whatever it is you do own. And that might be your app, Ash. Uh, it might be your email database. Uh, it might be some sort of a platform somewhere else where you can directly contact people. So I don't think it's I think it will change, and I don't know exactly how. I'm not too concerned about consumers paying for it. I think advertising costs will probably continue to rise. But I think you must always be thinking about how can I get people off the platform into something that I own. And it might be your app, it might be your email database, but you always want to be thinking about that. Because at any time, any of our accounts could just get shut down. So you don't want to have everything riding on that. Yeah.

SPEAKER_00: 37:04

Yeah. I mean, I don't even know what like other possible apps could even come into place. I mean, surely we've ticked all the boxes of options.

SPEAKER_02: 37:18

I I can't imagine what's coming, but I know that something will be. And I think, you know, if we think back to like you and I might remember days of chatting on ICQ or MSN, is that what it was called? Like like little chat tools or chat rooms that existed where you did not need age verification, and goodness knows who could have been in those chat rooms. And my parents were so naive, and just think about the lack of supervision in those environments.

SPEAKER_00: 37:52

Lack of parental controls.

SPEAKER_02: 37:53

That's exactly it. That's exactly it. And back then I could never have imagined a platform for photos like Instagram or a platform purely for short form video like TikTok. So something else will be coming, no doubt. But I don't know what exactly it's going to be.

SPEAKER_00: 38:12

I mean, it's in a way, it's sort of exciting because it's a little bit like they say, don't they say that with the Apple iPhones is that they bring something in the the you know, the upgrade that you didn't even know you needed. But then when I've got it, I'm like, oh my gosh, how did I live without that? And that's that's cool. I mean, that's exciting. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 38:33

Yeah, that's right. It's a little bit like the was it the Henry Ford saying, if I'd asked people what they wanted, they would have said a faster horse. That they they couldn't even imagine getting a car. Um but it's like, yeah, sometimes we don't create the thing that people are asking for. Sometimes we do create the thing that is like this vision beyond what most people could have even thought of.

SPEAKER_00: 39:04

Yeah, yeah. My my kids are the big talk of our house at the moment is the the banning of, and I'm not really hearing a lot about the banning of the social media, so I don't actually know what's happening with it. They talk about it, but one of them's 16 now, so she'll be fine. The boys are less worried by it because they're like, well, Mom, I'll just use Messenger. Like they don't they don't care, like the girls care. You know, the girls are more like, where am I gonna put my cute photos? But the I'm not seeing a lot of it, but I guess, you know, I can I get why they're doing it, but I also feel like we're in a world where we sort of want to encourage the use because they're the children are the ones that are creating these amazing far out experiences. So we what are we trying to ban them from using all of it? So like I but I I get both arguments, but I do too.

SPEAKER_02: 40:05

I'm not a parent myself, but I do I look at my niece who is 12 years old, and I think to ask her to wait until she's 16 to be able to use this. What are what are we depriving her of? And does she only get to learn how to use it safely once she turns 16? I don't know. I I wonder if we've taken it too far. And like you, it's the kids who are going to have cool ideas. Yes, there should be safety mechanisms in place, but there are some brilliant 12, 13, 14, 15-year-olds. Are we going to miss out on whatever they can create because of this?

SPEAKER_00: 40:53

Yeah, yeah, exactly. I think I would rather see safer use. I would rather not remove it, but I'd rather safer use. So things like prevent, you know, preventing certain words being used, maybe, you know, maybe where parents can can prevent certain words being done. I think that, you know, parents should be able to have the control of it and make a choice based on their children as well. Um, because my kids are probably fine from a mental point of view. I respect that there's some children that don't that aren't, but I would when this has come up in conversation, and it's probably going you know, way off topic, but yeah, some people have said to me, well, Ash, that's probably not fair to say because some parents don't know their children's mental state as well, and it's hidden. And I I I respect that. So I I yeah, don't know what the answer is, but I I agree. I think I worry about what we're depriving kids of by completely not allowing them to use things safely with even in schools with that chat GPT, they're not allowed to use chat GPT. Well, why wouldn't you encourage them to use it, but with rules and how to use it properly?

unknown: 42:10

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02: 42:11

I I agree because does that mean that that they're not going to be able to use Chat GPT until they're 16 years old? Yeah. Like to me, that feels like something that we should be learning, perhaps in school.

SPEAKER_00: 42:27

Yeah, correct. And we don't. So that's like a whole another other topic, actually. I should bring uh the 16-year-old on for that topic because she has a lot to say about the school system. I actually just got a message from note of discipline from from my 14-year-old. And the note of discipline said, George has been disciplined today for calling his teacher bro. So I'll have to deal with that later on.

SPEAKER_01: 42:56

So just quietly, it doesn't sound too bad. I feel like that would be a compliment if a teenager called me bro.

SPEAKER_00: 43:04

Yeah, yeah. No, and I think that sums up what some of the school systems are like. Like, come on, guys, pick the battles. Like, is that really one that you want to be bothered with today? Anywho. Um, now I appreciate your time, Ellen. Thank you so much for sharing your thoughts, your opinions, your ideas on social media. I think there's a lot of value there for people to get. However, there is even more value with um what Ellen has to offer through Content Collabs. So with the template membership or the full service membership. Um and I definitely would encourage people to be more inclined to use that so that allows them to be more social on their socials. I think that that would be an amazing combination of really bringing those leads and getting that strategy right. And Ellen also does some really great webinars as well. So do just follow her on Instagram because that's where you see the webinars being advertised and marketed. And they're they're always affordable, always good value. And um, yeah, thank you for offering your service to our industry. Oh, thank you so much, Ash.