Building a social presence through collaboration - Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Building a social presence through collaboration - Nathalie Selvon-Bruce | E5 transcript

Kieran McNeill

Good morning, good afternoon and good night to all of our night listeners. Welcome to the Scaramanga podcast Talk too much, the podcast where we talk and ask questions to industry experts about their relevant sector. For today's podcast, we have a very special guest. Social media, self promoting expert and the managing director of Buttercup Bus Vintage Campers. Nathalie, Good morning Nathalie.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Hello there. Hi there. Thank you for having me on your podcast. This is exciting.

Kieran McNeill

So just there, I did briefly just mention Buttercup Bus, but would you like to provide some background to listeners on yourself, what Buttercup Bus is and other ventures you're currently working on?

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Yeah, absolutely. So we've been trading now for about 13 years and Buttercup Bus is a classic VW camper and beetle events company based in the magnificent Croydon. We have got, last time I counted I think we are up to 10 vehicles that I manage now plus a few for a few other clients and with those vehicles, we do fun things like Photo Booth setup inside of camper vans and ice creams. We're making some flavours for the king's coronation at the moment. So that's fun. Yeah, that's amazing and then obviously, we do a lot of work in the festival scene and on holiday hire, so yeah, lots and lots of things.

Kieran McNeill

Yeah, I imagine when it comes these times... I don't know how busy you were last year during The Queen's Jubilee.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Yeah, absolutely. So we were really busy then. What was interesting is last year, the ice cream was a new concept, that was Year One for us. So it was a great way to sort of cut our teeth on it, find our feet. This year, it's like, Uh huh. King's coronation. I know exactly what we're doing. So, It's gonna be fun.

Kieran McNeill

Can't wait. So yeah, so personally,I first came across Nathalie and Buttercup Bus from the Delegate Wranglers Facebook group, which for anyone who hasn't joined that group, it's a group for all professional conference organisers and events industry suppliers. The group has over 20,000 members worldwide and I was personally wondering, how beneficial has joining a group and engaging with its community like the Delegate Wranglers been for your business and businesses?

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

So Delegate Wranglers is my go to Facebook group for anything events related. Sure, there are niche ones. So there's wedding ones if you're doing work in the event sector, but if you're looking for a holistic events, professional group, Delegate Wranglers is the best, there's so much professional knowledge in there that people are always willing to share for free. You can get a lot of inspiration and it's perfect to network with other suppliers or people to collaborate with so a huge fan of Delegate Wranglers.

Kieran McNeill

How long have you been a member there? If you roughly know.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

You know, I've lost track now, maybe, four years, something like that.

Kieran McNeill

So, just before pandemic?

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Yeah, pre it was definitely pre, you know what, I lose track with the pandemic! It's like, there's a bit of a vortex in the middle. But yeah, maybe a couple of years before the whole pandemic kicked off.

Kieran McNeill

Yeah, I felt like that whole pandemic period was a blip. It disappeared.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

It disappeared. Not only that, but it was one heck of a challenging time for anyone in the event sector. I know many sectors struggled, but our industry was basically made illegal!

Kieran McNeill

Yeah, I was gonna ask because as an event supplier, how badly did it affect your business? I mean, you couldn't operate, could you?

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

We couldn't, so as many companies out there handled it, we had to become masters of diversifying. So for example, we promoted more the holiday hire element of the business and when it was still possible to go on holidays, the great British staycation became the only holiday option really, for people in the UK and so, you know, there was a lot of charm with hiring a classic camper and going out there to enjoy the open road.

Kieran McNeill

How did you find business after things started to be lifted? Did it pick up suddenly? Did it kind of go a bit slow?

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

So that was another challenge for small businesses in the event sector. Last year was our busiest year ever on record, because a lot of the pre booked events were deferred into that year along with additional bookings coming in where people were waiting for the pandemic to finish. So I think we delivered about 300 events last year and of course, there were other challenges such as suppliers, maybe not having stuff in stock, sourcing parts from overseas for the vehicles, rebuilding your team where your poor staff may have had to find alternative work during the pandemic. So we're here, we're still here to tell the tale and I'm still smiling, so it wasn't too bad.

Kieran McNeill

I think that's one of the crucial points you mentioned about rebuilding because obviously some actual event holders, they might not be too confident about how many people they're going to get attending, especially after a pandemic. So, wherever the budgets that really go around and spend on various events, suppliers and such. Obviously, your business has come through on the good end.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

And I'm eternally grateful for that.

Kieran McNeill

And I wanted to ask, how important was social media during that lockdown period and even after it.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

So I think it was not only important for the survival of the business, but it was important for me as well because it made me feel that I was still doing something proactive and keeping the brand alive and keeping it there in people's minds. Certainly, I talked about pivoting as a way to succeed through the pandemic. If you're pivoting and you're launching new business ideas, you need to reach your audience to advertise it and let them know about it so social media was incredibly important.

What's more, I think there is a huge element of getting empathy and connection with your clients out during that time. For example, if you were a bride or a groom and your wedding had been cancelled, because of the pandemic, when you just send an email and you say, well, we can't work on your wedding because we're not allowed to operate. That can sound very blunt and harsh, but being able to communicate and put a personality across on social media, and talk with people and explain what's happening, that's a very powerful tool.

Kieran McNeill

It also makes them want to come back to you more if you've given them quite a personalised response.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Yeah. Yeah.

Kieran McNeill

Because I imagine if you give them a blunt, no, they might not come back to you when they are about to get a setup, and then they may go to a competitor or something.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Yeah, absolutely. I think, certainly, when we were, I mean, we're still a small business. But from way back, when we had just one vehicle, it was very easy to maybe sell a brand based on the personality or the business owner that's behind that business. As you grow bigger, it's harder, but it's still important to know that there's that individual there that you can reach out to and I do all the social media myself. I'd love to have an army of people doing it for me, but it is an element of the business that I enjoy doing and I think it's nice that when people reach out to me on social media, they know it's me, Mrs Buttercup, that's behind there talking to them.

Kieran McNeill

Yeah, I think that's a really good point. For those who do not know, I'm a social media manager at Scaramanga Agency. I think for those very smaller local businesses, that personal touch is pretty much the brand and when you get someone on who's taking it over, they need to learn the voice need to learn the personality, it's not really the personal touch anymore, they're gonna have to try and fake being you in that sense.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Absolutely and obviously, every different brand has a different voice, if you like. So you'd have the more corporate end of the spectrum. Whereas we are very much you know, ice cream and glitter, you're really not going to use the word dovetail, or what are those other corporate words too often are you? It's a different, more fluffy kind of language.

Kieran McNeill

Do you find once people have used your service, you get quite a few new businesses from, word of mouth and referrals?

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Absolutely, I think, the example I gave with the ice cream being a great example. I'm always getting itchy feet, I want to move on and try something new and expand and last year's big expansion was I took some welding lessons and built my own ice cream cart and launched the ice cream service, we got all the food, hygiene levels, certificates, etc. It took a year to run that to learn how to operate it in a slick fashion and to do it well and to get our message and branding out more. This year. I'm getting inundated with inquiries rather than me having to push it out, the work seems to be coming to me, which is amazing.

Kieran McNeill

So going back to that social media strategy and how it's helped you, did you find any specific strategies that didn't work while you were trying to adapt social media during COVID? And post COVID?

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Um, do you know what, I'm ashamed to admit this because I did find a strategy that doesn't work, but I'm going to share it anyway. I think it's really easy to get hoodwinked by the idea of having loads of followers against your social media account and often those are not specific or targeted to your client base and this is very shameful. Somebody approached me and said, "Oh, pay us a fiver or whatever and we will share your story and put you on our grid with our 1.2 million followers" So I did it as an experiment and it did absolutely zero help for the business at all. It was purely a vanity thing and I've learned my lesson, and will never do that again. I've learned that the real way to do it is to connect with people, build collaborative groups and create engaging content that actually interests people and it's packed with personality.

Kieran McNeill

Yeah, I can see that 100% happening. I mean, with some of our clients, one of the big strateg- and you can probably sympathize with this as well, but one of the best ways to grow on Facebook is by joining groups and engaging as groups and becoming known in those groups, but there's no point if you're a UK, local business, there's no point in joining a global group where you got people from America, India, etc. They're not going to come over and buy your product more than likely.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

They should do.

Kieran McNeill

They should! But they're not going to probably. But, I can see that people can be quite swayed by those big numbers.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Yeah, it's easy.

Kieran McNeill

Also, at the moment, I feel like the follower count doesn't mean much nowadays.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

No, well, I guess it depends. If you're one that's maybe looking for, adverts and you're going to go and represent other brands as an influencer, then maybe pure numbers is what counts, but we're all about selling services to people that are interested in what we do and so it's all about a targeted demographic.

Kieran McNeill

Was there any strategy that maybe after COVID had happened you wish that you did during COVID? Like, you'd look back and you're like, Oh, I wish I did that during COVID.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

So I think that when it comes to social media, I love to live in the moment. So suddenly, oh, it's it was it was pancake day yesterday, wasn't it? Oh, I probably should have prepared something for Pancake Day and I don't know, like a campervan, serving pancakes or something and then I would have had some really good targeted content relevant to that day. I think one of the things I've learned and could still get better at is forward planning for the year ahead.

Something that I'm a huge fan of is styled shoots where you collaborate with other people that complement your services and coming up for a professional shoot that showcases all of us, we create a pod together to help share and boost each other's content and if we did styled shoots focused around topics over the next 12 months, for example, a king's coronation shoot now ready to drop for when that happens, or then that would be really helpful. I am planning a Christmas shoot that's going to be coming up very soon. I'm getting better.

Kieran McNeill

So a Christmas shoot coming up soon?

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Got a Christmas shoot coming up soon, we'll obviously hold that content and then drip feed that. I've got a little surprise that we're looking to launch for December this year. So I know that I can't wait till December to market it. It needs to be marketed probably from October. This year. I'm going to be organized. So watch this space.

Kieran McNeill

So do you kind of keep an eye out for those are kind of like awareness days that might be relevant on social media to kind of maybe hop on or engage with and post content?

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Yeah, I do try and eventually, if you constantly take part in shoots, you may be a year behind. But eventually, you build up a bank of images and sure enough, on my Dropbox folder, I've got Easter orientated, one summer orientated ones that all categories, along with the collaboration group and all their social media handles, every time I use that content. I'll always tag them all in and it creates, you know, more of a buzz, and it's helping everybody, which is the very nature of doing the shoots.

One I quite like, I've had a bit of success with this for a couple of years now is International Women's Day and as a female led business, and a woman working in essentially a motor trade industry, I suppose you could say, down down the alley with all the mechanics and everything and so we organized a styled shoot down at the workshop with some, you know, vehicle engine management, a few photos, that actually resulted in an article that hit social media and it was really helpful. So sometimes you just got to put a spin on it and think ahead.

Kieran McNeill

Yeah, there's definitely an awareness day for anything at the moment. I feel like if you want to look up, social media awareness days, you're going to find something for every single day, multiple days. I think it's more picking out the niche ones, but also ones that are irrelevant, but maybe a bit fun. I mean, for example, there's a rubber ducky day. There's a Talk Like a Pirate Day. So there are a lot of silly ones, but I think I think those silly ones also do have a place.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Yeah

Kieran McNeill

It might lighten up because there's a lot of negativity in the world nowadays.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

There is, do you know what, you've got to have a bit of fun. Just yesterday, I posted a story on our Buttercup Bus Instagram story. I was talking about how we're trying to come up with some flavours for the king's coronation. So we're looking at red, white and blue ice cream. I googled to have a look for some inspiration and found someone that created ice cream that looks just like Aquafresh toothpaste, you know with a red white?

Kieran McNeill

Oh, yes, yeah.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

I posted that up there for a bit of a giggle. You've got to have a bit of fun.

Kieran McNeill

Is that something that you've done where you actually asked your followers or community to come up with an idea for the brand or to vote on an idea?

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

So I didn't put the ice cream flavours because I needed to move fairly quickly on that one. But what I have done is, I mentioned that we've got sort of up to 10 vehicles that we're managing at the moment and there have been occasions where I've had a new vehicle coming into our fleet, it's always a really exciting moment. It's like having a new child join your family and we've had some naming competitions and there's a bit of a structure around the naming competition, because the company's Buttercup Bus, so I've had a bit of a B thing going on. So most of our vehicles begin with the letter B. So we did a competition and people came up with all these names. There's lots of engagement on our social media. And I managed to get some great names for the vehicles too.

Kieran McNeill

So if anyone's looking to try to name a vehicle keep an eye out for the next time you get a new addition to your fleet.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Yeah, absolutely. And it's got to begin with B.

Kieran McNeill

Got to begin with B. So I also was wondering, so obviously, you're very active on social media. I mean, I've seen you on Instagram and Facebook. But is there any specific social media platforms that you think stand out for being very suitable for Buttercup Bus?

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Because we're offering a product and a service, it's very visual, it's iconic, there's a lot of nostalgia involved with the classic campers, anything that involves pictures works massively in our favour. We call it sort of scroll stopping images, people just naturally, well, it's kind of Marmite. But if you're into that kind of thing, some of the pictures that we have are really going to stop you scrolling and having a look and wanting to find out more and because of that, I would find that Instagram is the most useful platform for us. I link Instagram to Facebook, I've found a decline, a significant decline on engagement on our Facebook channels over recent years, which is interesting and it's definitely picked up on Instagram, I still use Facebook, and I find it very useful to reach out to groups for myself, but our main content is pushed out on Instagram. It also links to Twitter. So everything goes out on Twitter as well.

I'm trying to get better at TikTok, I don't know I've just my allegiances with doing reels with Instagram. But I need to push more out on TikTok and LinkedIn is probably somewhere where I fall a little bit short. I don't have any problems with putting stuff on LinkedIn, I've just found that sometimes some of the tools that allow everything to link up in one tap, don't work as slick as I would like. And also a lot of my clients are B2C rather than B2B.

Kieran McNeill

Is Twitter a platform that you use?

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Yeah, I do use that, again, it's just done by that get too techie. It's like one of those relay systems. So you've got something out on Instagram, and it will automatically push it out to Twitter to keep it simple.

Kieran McNeill

Yeah, I think TikTok is the new big one for anyone in the event and event supplier consumer sector to really consider but at least I know there is a bit of support for converting Instagram real content into TikToks. So it shouldn't be too hard, I think.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Yeah, I just need to get into that psyche. But it's pretty good fun. I'm definitely more of a watcher on that I get sucked in for hours.

Kieran McNeill

Same, yeah, I had to remove it from my phone for a bit because I was spending, you know, it's like midnight, and two hours later 2 am and I'm still there just swiping through these 5, 10 second video contents and also on the down low. I feel like it's reduced my attention span a tiny bit.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Oh, absolutely. I wake up in the morning like dry eyes going, "oh my God, why did I watch those ridiculous videos", although sometimes I do get some interesting information that comes through that's industry related and I get kudos from my kids that don't think I'm too out of touch.

Kieran McNeill

It's also interesting. You mentioned the whole Facebook stats. I mean, just I mean, personally, I run a bunch of Facebook pages around gaming, and some have 50,000 followers, some have 40,000 followers, etc. And over the last few years, I really noticed a very, very sharp decline. But I've what I've noticed what Facebook now does is I post it, and then it says to reach the remaining of your audience boost this post and that's how they're trying to get you. So it feels like they're not showing it to all my actual followers and trying to lock some behind a paywall, which is it feels a bit bad when you've earned those followers in the first place.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Yeah, it's definitely a huge push for it to be commercialised. No doubt that's going to become increasingly the case with Instagram and so you're always chasing the next platform Tiktok to try and reach your followers. I also wonder if interestingly, so I know gaming appeals to lots of different people, but I'm also trying to sort of link it to age bracket. So for example, we deal with all sorts of different services, but if I bring it back to just thinking about the wedding industry for a moment, typically you're going to get a certain age demographic that is out there looking to get married and so those people are perhaps less the age group that would be, which is an older group, that will be using Facebook and tend to be more focused on Instagram and probably even more so increasingly over to TikTok. So I have to chase, I have to chase the platforms that my people are using really.

Kieran McNeill

What would you say that age demographic is for wedding planning nowadays?

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Do you know, it's really tricky. I think, just because of the cost of living crisis and how difficult it is to get on the housing market these days. I truly believe that people are waiting a little bit later until they get married now. So perhaps we're talking sort of the 30s demographic, but that's just very much a gut feel. So don't quote me on that.

Kieran McNeill

One thing that you mentioned when we spoke briefly before, and also during this was about building an industry network and having a trusted sharing pod, involving content integration and tagging? Now I know you mentioned the paid for promotion that you did. But that wouldn't be one of the things that was in your sharing pod.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

So yeah, where I've had a lot of success, and have built some wonderful friends that, you know, especially if you work at home, you don't really get to sit in the office and chat with other people. So, for me, doing something called a styled shoot is like a huge social event as well and you get to put it under the bracket of "work" and you create some incredible content, image content, as well, as well as business and friendship networks.

If I use the ice cream, as an example, that was a new product, so I didn't have any pretty images, me standing in my mom and dad's backyard garden serving ice cream was nice, but it wasn't the quality of images that I needed to really promote the brand. So I reached out to a network of people in the events industry that I've worked with in the past for other services and we found a venue and we got a style and a mood board together and a colour palette, and then reached out and found loads of local suppliers. So we're supporting local people. We had models, a wonderful actress, there was a couple of professional photographers there, stylists, balloons and we actually got it done in Croydon, hometown, over at the Croydon Aerodrome and got some gorgeous 1950s inspired images, showcasing that ice cream and we even went to town.

My amazing ice cream supplier does custom ice cream that we get freshly made and we match the colour palette of the ice cream to the colour palette of the styled shoot. So all tied in as a visual treat and those photos have carried me a long way. They go in my brochures, they go on all our social media, they're on the website and of course, when we use them, we tag everybody that was involved. If they see my setup, and they saw the balloons on there, well, I don't do balloons, but I would then point them to the supplier from that shoot and say, well, this is the balloon person you want to use. So it all helps each other.

Kieran McNeill

So it gives you content to share and then when the tagging begins, you know, it gives them a bit of promotion, it gives you a bit of promotion. Everyone's happy.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely and we had a lovely day out eating ice cream!

Kieran McNeill

Of course, and as you said it falls under work. Work expense. Do you have any examples of how beneficial working with complementary partners has been? As well as just that example?

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Yeah, so if I were to give a little bit more of a sneaky hint on the Christmas project that we've got coming up, for example. So over the past years, I've had our vans out they also can be wedding cars and we were working at Croydon venue where we met a professional wedding photographer, she took some photos of our campervan with the bride and groom, without his asking as a beautiful surprise, one day sent some of these beautiful professional photos through to us along with her brand name and so to use these images, we had to obviously tag her. I fully appreciated the images and kept her name on file as well and then this new project cropped up where we're going to hopefully be able to do some Christmas services and I'm like, right, I know her style. I love the colour and the feel of her photography. It's a great match for our brand.

So, I went and reached out to her proactively and said, "Look, during this Christmas project, I need some photos to market it. But I don't just want to take from you. Not only can we collaborate together and cross promote the images, but then for the Christmas project, we need a photographer and it will be a commercial offering would you like to be my partner to work on that project?" she went on and took so by doing shoots we built a relationship that It's going to go on to a project that's going to make us you know, some turnover, hopefully, and also have a lot of fun and I know that the person that I'm going to be working with is not someone that I've just cold reached out to in a directory or had to be bombarded with hard sales calls, I've been able to go out and curate the person with the right skill sets that are going to get on really well with to deliver the project.

Kieran McNeill

Yeah, that sounds amazing. Also, a lot of our listeners are one man bands, if they're listening to this, it sounds amazing. They want to kind of get a piece of a sharing pod and get other businesses. But, let's say they haven't joined any groups, haven't joined any communities. Where would you suggest a new person starts to kind of get into this, maybe try and find their own sharing pod of content?

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Absolutely. So first of all, find the platform that suits the nature of your business. For me, it's Facebook. And I think that Facebook is really good for bringing different people together to collaborate on things, perhaps more so than marketing these days and there are groups for all sorts of industries and businesses. And I would go into that group. So for example, you said you had gaming groups. Maybe you want to go in there and not ask or try and seek anything for the first few months, you want to go in there. Build up a reputation as someone that's helpful, friendly, and positive and if questions come up, maybe without being too self promotional, go in there and try to help them to resolve their challenge, or maybe share something that you've done in the past and once you've built up that trust with that group,

You might be able to go out and say, "Hey, I've got this product, here's some pictures, I would really love to find some like minded people that would like to work with me, could we maybe organize a shoot?" "Has anybody got anything they'd like to bring to the shoot?" "Is there any photographers, maybe some elements of that shoot, nobody wants to collaborate that need to be paid for?" Well, would the others collaborate together to pay for that person to come and join the shoot, and suddenly, you've got a project that you've shared, and you can come together and you know, produce something. But as I said, it is important to build that trust, nobody's going to want to work with somebody, you know, straight up if you go in there trying to sell something from day one.

Kieran McNeill

Yeah and you mentioned there's a sly way of doing it where, if someone asks a question and that question hasn't been answered, and you have the answer on your website, for example, you can link them to your website being like, "Hi, here's the answer to your question. If you'd like to learn more, here's a link to my website, I provide more information." not blatant self promotion, but being a mix of useful and also, it's important to mention, when you join some groups, they do have quite strict rules around self promotion. So it's always good to check those rules with the group admin or the group moderators, etc.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

They do, I think as well, certainly with community groups. So if you look at local groups in the area, it could be a group for parents, it could be a group for sports, whatever it is, you go into that group, they often have rules about do not share your business content, unless it's a Wednesday 12 till 4 or something like that. So you got to make sure you play by those rules.

Kieran McNeill

Yeah, like Delegate Wranglers. Yeah.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Yeah, exactly. If you just flood the feeds, you're gonna get a slapped wrist and kicked out.

Kieran McNeill

Yeah, obviously you want to keep an eye on that for sure. So for some closing thoughts, if anyone would like to get in contact with you or use your services, how can they find you?

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Sure. So we are based in Croydon and we cover a 40 mile radius. Our website is ButtercupBus.com and if you want to catch us on that all important Instagram handle that's the one to catch me, Natalie and the handle is @ButtercupBus. Pretty easy.

Kieran McNeill

Well, thank you for coming on the podcast, Natalie. It was really fun to chat, myself and I'm sure some of the listeners are gonna go away from this having learned more.

Nathalie Selvon-Bruce

Thank you very much. It was lovely to chat to you today.

Kieran McNeill

Thank you, Natalie.