Week 1 Mission Log, A Cheap Christmas & Orange Socks | #3 Confessions of An Agency Owner

So I've made it through the first week of the LinkedIn Creator Accelerator programme! ?

The main mission for week 1 was to do 3 posts including a video about the Creator Programme using the #LICreatorAccelerator hashtag.

The 6-week programme focuses on bringing a creator concept to life and you get support and mentoring from LinkedIn on helping you through it. My concept is called “Confessions of an Agency Owner” and it’s to create a podcast series on different subjects around growing an agency.?

Over the next few weeks, I’m going?to interview 6 other founders and get their insights on a particular subject in each episode and learn about their journey. Thing is... I've no idea how to make a podcast so I've got to learn quickly!

So what have I done in week 1??

I’ve got my 6 guests lined up. I'm amazed that they all said yes. So thank you to all of them.???

Received my LinkedIn goodie pack complete with orange socks and some funky video equipment.

Been experimenting with the free licenses we got for programmes like Canvapro, Descript, Restream and Streamyard.

I've been researching and learning a lot about how to structure a podcast, thinking about the intro, the branding around it etc. But most of all after writing about 100 questions I came to the realisation that it's about keeping the conversation to some key topics and letting the speaker do most of the talking.

I recorded a pilot to practice with Jake our videographer and that really helped. We spoke about some of the outdated traditions of golf and we are using that as a dummy episode to set the format and styling of the video version of the podcast.

It seems from some of the other podcasts I've researched, it's important to add a bit of drama at the beginning so here's our crack at that...

If you're intrigued by this let me know and maybe we'll publish it some day...

What's in store for week 2?

Next week I’m having calls with some of the guests that I’ve not spoken to before. I'm really excited about the lineup (some familiar marketing names in there) and this weekend I'll be writing out the structure and themes I'd like to cover in our chats.

Alongside that, there's some Linkedin Creator webcasts and we've been put into smaller huddles to collaborate with so I'll be meeting them. One of the tasks for this week for me is to listen to an audio event and write a post about it so look out for that one.

And hopefully filming at least 1 of the podcasts.. I'm shitting myself but in a good way, wish me luck!

A Cost of living crisis Christmas...

The team at Honcho have pulled together some great insight on how Christmas might look this year for retail.

With the Ukraine war, energy bills soaring, Liz Truss buggering up the economy in 44 days and the economy still recovering from COVID there might be a slightly smaller turkey on the table this year due to the cost of living crisis.

The headline stat is that ￡4.4billion of non-food spending is expected to be cut this festive season with 58% of consumers planning to cut back on spending according to research by Retail Economics.

Digging this down by category you're likely to get less clothes, electronics and toys in your stocking so maybe set your sights a bit lower when writing that Christmas list!

The article contains some great tips for brands on how to succeed during a financial crisis. Why not check it out below..

Talking of Christmas Jade and Charlotte from the Honchō team wrote this great article published on The Drum that includes 12 tips for creating an effective organic social strategy.

There was also some really interesting stats published by IMRG recently that suggests 'Place order’ as a CTA has delivered the most revenue across the 241 retailers they benchmarked.

So if you work in an ecommerce business it may be worth doing some testing around that!

And finally, if you're carving a pumpkin this weekend I hear that sprinkling cinnamon inside (including the cut top) makes them last longer and gives off a nicer scent that pumpkin guts alone... ??

Thanks for reading!

Chris

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