with Lloyd Knowlton
Welcome to Boostly Podcast Season 8 Episode 26. This is a recap of my interview with Lloyd Knowlton and we talked about why now is the best time to start a podcast.
Here's the audio for this episode:
Here's the video for this episode:
Timestamp
02:30 About Lloyd Knowlton
03:50 How Lloyd started in digital marketing
05:50 How Knowlton worked with former cllients
07:00 The idea of starting a podcast
10:20 The pressure to create good content
12:30 About Live videos
14:50 Simple steps to do a podcast
16:20 Benefits of starting a podcast
20:00 Quickfire questions
Whilst you’re here
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Audio – Boostly Podcast
Transcript from the Episode
Lloyd Knowlton is a creative social media marketing agency called Knowlton. They use video and creative campaigns online on social media to promote people's services and products.
Lloyd doesn't like radio DJs but he tends to weirdly go into the radio DJ voice during the podcast.
How Lloyd started in digital marketing
Six years ago, Lloyd's brother Dan who had a marketing degree decided he wanted to give it a go on his own. Lloyd was in a job kind of marketing department of an English school for international students and near near Margate where he lives. And it got to a point where he was in a job that he didn't like very much and Dan was starting his thing. And it looks much more exciting than what he was doing. He was helping out here and there behind the scenes. But they kind of realized even though they're brothers they've got completely different skill sets.
So they started talking about how they could potentially work together and they realized basically, all of the weaknesses they had, the other brother kind of complements that. Lloyd had some skills in video and photography and that really went hand in With the social media strategy, social media campaigns that Dan was starting to work on in the business..
They have gone from working with some sort of really small local clients as KPS digital marketing. They have rebranded probably close to a year ago now to Melton and their kind of branding is much more colorful and fun more. Lloyd thinks it suits their business a lot better because they're a bit weird, a bit different to your classic kind of corporate marketers and that kind of thing.
How Knowlton worked with former cllients
There are two sides of Knowlton business to communicate to everyone. There's the kind of training with businesses that they do so to teach businesses how to improve on getting their word out on social media, getting the word out creatively, their products, their services, and how to do that kind of thing using video and everything online. And then there's a side of the business where Knowlton produces video campaigns for those big brands social media campaign. Clients come to Knowlton and they come up with some great ideas, video stuff, work through that strategy, get them more customers, sell products, services, whatever they're doing.
The idea of starting a podcast
The idea of starting a podcast came from Lloyd. He is very much creative in his business. He is the weirdo basically. Dan comes up with a lot of more traditional business ideas, sensible ideas. Lloyd is usually the one throwing weird ideas about that. It doesn't sound great at first, but they usually work out.
Lloyd likes podcasts. Most people like to listen, He likes to watch podcasts that have escapism. He doesn't normally watch standard TV. He thought they could do something around a podcast, with their kind of style of being more entertaining rather than just educational. Lloyd thinks it suits the kind of format quite well.
Knowlton wants to try and make sure that they enjoy what they're doing because they're gonna be doing it for a long time. They're lucky enough that they work with each other as brothers and they're building out a team of lovely people.
They realized it could be once a week, they could have a great time for an hour and that would be a nice highlight. It happened and they are really enjoying it. The other side of it was their skill set. They create videos for their clients. They've got all the kit to do it to a high standard, much easier than a lot of people so that made it an easy decision. But the third thing is, business-wise, if they wanted to get the kind of awareness in the traditional marketing funnel they talked about quite a lot. You got the top which is awareness of just getting you yourself your business out there in the world spreading the word a bit.
Lloyd thinks especially with stuff going on now in the world, a global pandemic, where a lot of people can't really put out stuff that's that kind of further down the marketing funnel content of actually selling you know, like click this button and buy this now book it now pis the perfect time to get that awareness out of them.
For Knowlton, the podcast is that just getting more attention on us and our brand and people getting to know who they are. In a few months, weeks, months, years, whenever it's really when it gets back to normal, there'll be more people that know about them and could potentially come up to them and say, they've got this idea and they would like to work with Knowlton.
The pressure to create good content
Knowlton doesn't have a plan for their episodes. They are just trying to get attention from the right people who could become their customers in the next six months, year, two years, five years, whatever that is, but they don't have a plan for lots of episodes in the future. But what they do is they really do plan and structure every episode before so so probably three or four days before they're recording, they'll have a session to plan the things that they want to talk about. The idea is basically they will plan it and structure it so that so easy and relaxed, because they know what they're doing that it looks like it's completely unstructured and not planned at all. That's kind of what we're aiming for.
About Live videos
Some people watch people that seem very natural on camera doing these live videos and they think, Oh, I wish I could be like that. The reality is most of those people you're watching that seem like they're doing it off the cuff. They've planned what they're saying. And that's why it seems so relaxed. You don't have to do crazy planning, but especially for live video, just having your head how are you going to start the video and introduce it? Because that's the first thing people are going to see. And you don't want to just be kind of like, no, oh, well, you know, they're just going to switch off straightaway.
So have your intro planned three to five bullet points of what you want to talk about or show in your video? And then having your head how are you going to end the video? That's as simple as it needs to be. But it's a structure there that your brain kind of goes through. There's the reasoning behind that rather than just going off talking about anything and people getting bored really.
Simple steps to do a podcast
Lloyd says that although he is into video stuff, he had absolutely no idea how podcasts worked. Probably two to three months ago. Not a clue. Firstly, YouTube is your friend. So he basically just typed into YouTube, like how to start a podcast. And obviously now there's just so many people telling you for free how to do it. And it's so useful. The reality is, so you need to record some audio. And if you do that on your own, it's really simple because you just need something you can speak into. And most of our phones can actually do that now. So that makes it really easy. Once you've recorded whatever audio that is, there's a host so you kind of you find hosts online again, Google it and there are loads of hosts you can up upload with and you just upload that file to it. And then there's a few kinds of steps to make sure it can get seen on the when the various different places but it's all step by step stuff that you can go through with with with the hosts that you choose.
And then after that, it's just about promoting it and talking to the right people sharing it with the world and getting people to listen to it. But honestly, YouTube is your friend. Lloyd is happy to say they've got a podcast they're really proud of.
Benefits of starting a podcast
Knowlton has five episodes in now and Lloyd thinks this was very much a long term play for them. It was for awareness. So not kind of converting customers. They were really aiming for the awareness at the top of the funnel five episodes in. The fact that they're just putting this stuff out there, it's taken an hour of their time to record it. And then the phone's ringing with someone wanting to work with them. And they've only done five episodes.
That shows them at the moment with podcasts. It's where there's so much attention and its attention that you can get fairly simply if you do the right things because people are getting more and more into podcasts are getting more and more popular. What Lloyd loves about podcasts is people find a podcast that they like.
Quickfire questions
If you could be isolated on lockdown with one celebrity who would it be?
Anything on your watchlist for a while now?
What is the one thing that you've missed the most since being on lockdown?
His little nephew Brody. Beer gardens
What has been your favorite purchase under 100 pounds in the past six months?
Standing desk converter
Favorite podcast or YouTube channel?
Cooped Up with Robbie Knox and Happy Hour Podcast
Advice to boost direct bookings
Start building up attention in the right places. So what are people and what and where are people searching for things where you could answer it in a blog or a podcast or a video? You know, if you're if you've got some kind of hospitality, business and you're near one of the best scuba diving spots, you know, what can you create a blog about the best scuba diving spots and what a surprise one of them is going to be to the hotel that you own or the scuba diving business that you own? So you're kind of you would need to do this over a period of time. But eventually one or two of those videos, podcasts or blogs are going to start showing up in search rankings when people are actually looking for places like your business to book directly.
Know more about Lloyd at their website.
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