WiBT (00:00)
Hey and welcome to another podcast episode of Women in Blockchain Talk with me, Lavinia Osborne. Today, I have the absolute pleasure to have Lucy Hall with me. Now, let me tell you a little bit about Lucy. Lucy is a director at Skills of the Future, LTD, and founder of Digital Women and Social
building peer -to -peer community platforms and events for future -ready digital skills. Doesn't she sound like your sort of person? Skills, digital women, the skills of the future. She's definitely my type of woman or my type of person. Anyway, she is passionate about creating an impactful business or businesses that empowers individuals through skill development and community.
She firmly believes that providing people with the right skills and connections can set them free and open up new opportunities. Love it. I couldn't agree more. Lucy, welcome to Women in Blockchain Talks podcast. How are we? Thank you, Lavinia. I'm great. One of the things I should say is that Lucy and I are dear friends and she is
trailblazer and leader in the digital skills, digital marketing space and she's someone who I look up to and so in addition to being an avid fan of Lucy's and a part of the reason why I appreciate her and Demer as someone in a business circle is because she's a woman who walks her talk.
And many people can talk the talk, but that doesn't mean that they're walking it for various reasons. And she does this abundantly. Again, we're friends and we have created an impactful partnership. I've spoken at her events, she's spoken at my events. We support each other. We're both very busy. We always make time just to give each other an ear as on when we need one. So before we delve into you, Lucy,
and your origin story, how did you begin, how did you get to where you are today. I'd love for you to tell me what does Impactful Partnership mean to you? What does it mean first of all? And then what does it mean to you and why it's important to you? Thank you first of all for being far too complimentary with your introduction. And I agree, I think it's been fantastic to get to know you over the years and I think we've become friends.
and it's been great to chat with you and have impactful partnerships with you as well. So when it comes to impactful partnerships, I believe they can be seen in many different ways. So one impactful partnership that you talked about was the one that we have, whereby you all come and speak at our events, and I'll come and speak at your events, and we cross -pollinate our networks with each other, because there's people from my network who'd be interested in what you're doing, people from your network are
and what I'm doing and it just makes a lot of sense. So it's my skills for your skills, fantastic. And actually that's part of what our community does is it really embodies the skill sharing side of things and sharing what you know with what somebody else knows and someone else shares something with what they know and it becomes like an amazing ecosystem of people sharing skills and learning from each other in a very partnered way. But another way that I think you can create impactful partnerships is by partnering with organisations
will provide support or training for example to your audience and the other way is obviously sponsorship so organisations can pay money to talk to an audience but it has to be the right person, has to be the right company so the company has to be a company that really cares about your business, your values, your community and has something to offer them and you provide the platform for them.
partnerships that are impactful are making impact on the people that are within the organization or the business and that kind of thing and I think they're really important not just just pro quo but also people spending money on partnering and sponsoring. I'm going to delve a little bit deeper into that because some people just argue and say well isn't that a partnership isn't that just a normal partnership so what's the difference between the impactful part and partnership
And the reason I ask this question is because we know that the world of business is changing. The leadership styles are changing. The way we build businesses has changed. Internet marketing, digital marketing, which is what one of your founding businesses, Digital Marketing Women, is all about. So when you talk about impactful, how does, what is the difference just between partnering with a company because one...
would always have to look at the audience and make sure that the business is aligned with the company and an impactful partnership, particularly in the way that we do business today. So I
To measure impact you have to understand what the impact is for your company or for the business that you work in first of all. And it's going to be different things for different people and it's going to have different outcomes depending on what your goals are obviously. I think like you said you can have a sponsor and that's not necessarily impactful but...
If you have a sponsor that is willing to provide monetary support or resources for your audience or your business, depending what type of business you have, then that is impactful if they are willing to do as much as you are. And it's not just an exchange, I'll give you money and you just put my logo in front of the audience. That's not necessarily impactful. They're not getting involved in an impactful way. Whereas if you're saying, let's work together long term,
to make sure that you're getting what you need out of this and actually you want to reach more people in this industry and to help them. You want to help these people. Not only are they giving money to you but they're reaching these people and they're helping them. They're having an impact on those people's lives and it's having an impact on the sponsoring business or the partnering business as well because they're actually hitting their goals for
what they set out to do in terms of empowering and educating people as they go. But I think the way you have to be able to measure the impact, like you have to understand what you want that impact to be. Or if you just want to sponsor something, put a logo on it, that's fine. There's no reason why you can't sponsor something, put a logo on it for brand awareness. is, that's people have been doing it since the beginning of time. But for it to be impactful, both parties have to have an idea of the impact that they want to have on the audience.
Okay, I love that and I think a lot of people will appreciate the clarity and explanation of that because you're absolutely right, people have just been doing a value exchange, here's the logo, here's some money, get some brand awareness, where does it, other than getting the brand awareness, how is it actually impacting on the people who are receiving it, either the audience or the company? And I do think that the way that we do business now is a lot more...
intentional in regards to impact and purpose and not just profit? Would you agree with that? Yeah, I think so. I think you can see a lot more people starting businesses that
People who care about the people within the business, people who care about the wider impact that their business has, people who care about sustainability, who care about the well -being of other people and the impact and effect that their business has on the world. think I've sent people who run businesses who always been seen as rich people who... And I laugh there because people who run businesses, I think a lot of the time are just working hard to try and make money like everybody else, but they're putting up the capital.
they're putting up the financial risk and that kind of thing. But I feel like there's, yeah, a lot more companies are starting up now and they're saying, let's just start from a point of, let's make money, let's make profit, but let's make profit with purpose. Let's do something impactful. Let's make a mark on this world for our legacy and not just, for our legacy and also to help other people, not just to make money. Because you can have a business that helps people
And even if it's not, it's just a straight exchange of products, you can still make sure that your product is or your supply chain is sustainable and you're having an impact. Even having an impact on education. if you have a great audience or you have a lot of people following your brand, you can have an impact through education, teaching people about different initiatives as well by supporting charity. There's lots of different ways that you can be impactful. There's not just one way to do it. And I think...
And I think it's up to the organisation themselves to think about what do we really care about? What do we want to be seen to be caring about? And I don't mean greenwashing or anything like that, just to be seen, what do I care about? How can I actually make a real impact? Yeah, even the profits that you make with your business, you can use it to create impact afterwards. It's not just the end process, it can be at the beginning, the middle and the end.
in different ways. I totally agree with you when you touched on the education piece, on the sustainability piece, the process piece. How is one being purposeful in regards to creating impact in their business from beginning, middle to end? Love that. And I want to talk about you, but I just want to touch on this part in regards to, for me, with Women in Blockchain Talks, one of the things that we are very intentional about is because the Web3 space is very much about community. And I know that
have a huge community with digital women. And so we do like community partnerships so that we can, for me community partnerships is not just about supporting each other as one community to another community, but it's also about in some ways holding each other accountable to do what we say we're going to do, to stand by the values that we both preach. Recently we had women in blockchain talks was involved with an event.
called Connect and Collaborate with other women -led organizations because unfortunately what we're seeing, particularly coming from the States, is a number of nonprofits. I'm talking about nonprofits now rather than for -profit. digital women is for -profit and as is the skills of the future, for -profit. Women in blockchain talks is also for -profit. So the companies I'm referring to right now, they are nonprofits and they, Who Code,
And there's another women -led tech company, non -profit, and they haven't been able to get funded. One was going for 10 years, over 10 years. One was going for seven years or something like this. But they had longevity, and they couldn't acquire funding, and they've now closed. And for many people in the space, in the tech space, which I know digital women is in the tech space, and Women in Blockchain Talks, of course, is tech -orientated.
It just feels a bit like a slap in the face because the pushback is coming because of the the dismissiveness around DEI, diversity, equity and inclusion. A lot of companies are closing down departments, getting rid of those jobs and they're saying that they're not putting any focus or energy into the DEI inclusivity. Not necessarily inclusivity, but diversity, equity and inclusion.
as a whole and there has been a pushback from the conservative political parties in America. And as we all know, when America sneezes, the whole world catches a cold, right? And so it's unfortunate because we know as women what we face to build businesses, to get investment. The numbers speak for themselves, but unfortunately there is that pushback and that has now resulted in quite established, well -known established women -led
organisations being shut down. So off the back of that, I had an event here in the UK for those listening outside of the UK where Women in Blockchain Talks is global, but we're based in London. I am based in London. And there are some women orientated organisations on women in automation, women of fintech. was, what were the other groups? Sorry, I can't remember them all off the top of my head. And so we had a summer party event.
And the objective was to do exactly what you just said, which was cross pollinate. Because people don't know what they don't know. And so as women, we cannot just talk about what are men doing or not doing to bring more diversity and inclusion and equity into the world of business, the world of digital, the world of marketing, the world of tech, if we are not also being part of the solution. And so I think it's really important.
for those who are listening, if you run a community as a woman or even not as a woman, how are you supporting like -minded communities so that we can learn from each other, help each other so that the work that we're doing, the impactful work that we're doing, because yes, of course, we all have to make a profit and there's always an element of competition, but if we want to make an impact, we have to work together.
Yeah, so with that being said, please tell me your origin story, Lucy. my goodness, I could start anywhere really, I think I'll start with why I love the digital space so much, why I love digital marketing, why I love new technology and that kind of thing. So when I was younger, my family, my dad was a market trader. So we grew up on a market stall basically and my mom worked
local pub like she used to make the sandwiches and that kind of thing around the corner and then when they broke up I spent a lot of weekends would go to my dad's house and go on his market store and that kind of thing and we didn't have a computer or anything like that we didn't really have whenever felt like was going with that was always like you know great family around that kind of thing you know it wasn't a sad or anything it was great but when
One day my mum had obviously on the never got us a Dell computer, one these big black wide computers with the yellow AOL dial up and you had to wait to get on the internet and then your mum would pull the, said I've got to make a phone call and just pull it out. When you're downloading something it was so annoying. So she got one of those and I got on there and it's almost like as soon as I turned that computer on my world changed.
because there's just so much to explore and so much that you could do. I remember we had AOL and I had an AOL email address and it was like really good and I loved it so much. And then I discovered eBay and obviously my dad, my uncle had a different market store and my dad had a market store and they had a supplier who was a wholesaler, so he'd obviously import the stuff in. I remember he was called William and I used to go there buying with my dad. It was one of the most fun things to do. If I could, I'd go buying with my dad.
Because you get to hear him negotiating and talking to all these people about stuff that they want to buy and what not. I remember the cups of coffee were horrible and the cups of tea were horrible. There was like these powdered things and stuff like that, which is another story. So, I don't I opened this eBay account and I opened a PayPal account. How old was you? I 17. Wow. I opened an eBay account and I got one of these adbells from my uncle's store and I put it on there for I think it
12, 20 pounds or something like that, but the cost of it was less, it was about £2 .98, I remember actually very clearly, it was £2 .98 because we was getting it at a very low wholesale price. And these were selling for 50 quid as seen on TV, so thought £20, really good. Okay, so I put one in and I sold it. Dad, I've sold something that only makes £20 that costs us like £3. And he was like, okay, my dad being one dude, wants to take a bit of a punt, he said, I've bought a load of ad belts for you. And I was like, okay.
So then I sold 1200 up -bills in three months on eBay. Wow! 1200. Some as boxes, some as individuals and I was wholesaling all the eBay traders who were then selling them as well. And I just remember it was such a buzz. I so much adrenaline. I'd stay up till like midnight, like sitting on my computer, going on all of these chat boards and stuff and learning about selling products and things. And then I was like, my God, I love this so much. I have to learn how
I have to learn how to do all the HTML stuff that's on the screen. How do I do that? And I went and signed up for a master web design course. It was this massive, big, thick book and a CD that you had to put into your PC and everything. I remember reading through this book and it was teaching you about the whole internet and how it works. I was like, wow, this is amazing. So I learned how to do HTML, make them a little tick of things across, this is a great product, like ticking across the screen. And that was the thing that excited me the most was
making things work and making things look good and then one day started selling a product called an unbrow I think it was called these like stick -on ones the boob tape stuff yeah chicken fillet and I was loads hundreds of these off the listings because I was a power seller I was one of the first ever power sellers Wow I went up to eBay University in London all that kind of thing it's really cool and exciting early 2000s so I said
bra products are really good and all of a sudden a company said it was copyright infringement and all the money I was making and I was making thousands of pounds a month at this age which was crazy to me because I remember my dad and my uncle said look you need to go you need to do your business so you need to go they dragged me to an accountant and said I think she needs to register for that and all of this kind of thing
And he was like, yeah, so otherwise you're gonna get a lot of trolls. So had to register for all this stuff and I didn't really know what was going on. I 17, I just was enjoying selling stuff online. Making money. I wasn't using it, I wasn't going out anyway. I was just enjoying staying at home, selling stuff, wrapping it, sending it in the I remember taking trolley, remember filling the products into a trolley and pushing it down to the post office until my dad helped me find a different solution and that of thing. But was just fantastic. Yeah, and then I got thrown off. So was like, my goodness, what am gonna do? I did all Thrown off where?
eBay, I got chucked off because they said this is infringement on somebody's copyright of this product because I think it was Nubra. And I must have had a fake version of it, a Chinese version called Unbra. I was like, you're going to get shut down and all that kind of thing. But I was allowed back on in the end. But in that time, I said, how am going to make all this money again? I've got to pay suppliers and stuff. So I downloaded all of the address data out of PayPal.
and I bought a load of second class stamps off another eBay account and I wrote to every single one of my customers and said, would you like to, I've got a new website. I went to an Indian company and I built a website for 300 pounds, the greatest deals online .com and I sent everybody to their e -commerce site and they started buying my products off this website but I think it probably, don't, I know it was dodgy thing to do, buying second class stamps in bulk but I was just doing what I had to do and that's why I.
learn. I love this, have to having bit of resilience and learning how to do things, working things out, maybe a little bit of ducking and diving, that kind of thing, to try and get to where I wanted to get to. then, yeah, and then I just, and then eventually I just, someone said to me, you're, I was like 19, 20, something like that. I was still doing college, so I was doing performing arts actually. I did performing arts. Yeah, it's pretty good. And then I pulled out of
and I was doing this and then I started doing, I just started getting really lonely and I wanted to be around people and that kind of thing. So I went for a couple of jobs. I got job in a recruitment company and I was actually doing, making all their HTML eBay listings to get people to do the CMAP courses. So I was selling CMAP courses through digital marketing when I was in my 20s. This was a long time ago and then I loved that as well. And then I went to go and work in publishing after sex. I really wanted to go and work in magazine publishing.
and I started working for a pensions magazine and selling all the advertising space and that kind of thing and just really enjoyed it and then it was time again for me to say actually I just I want to do something again like a business I want to do something online and my boyfriend at the time he's my boyfriend at the time had a really good job was getting paid really well my commission was fantastic and he's opened up the air and covered all of these these sounds odd but they were like called butterfly massages but they're like toning things you put on your arms
I fell out and they're about two quid each. So was using my salary to buy wholesale products and selling them online again. He said, you do realize this is not normal. You do have a salary, like you're doing well in your career and everything. You don't need to do this as well. And it was just an obsession for me. I just loved it so much. It was just the whole thing of setting up the websites and learning something new. it was amazing. And it's like that. And then I just to move, miss a whole chunk out and move forward really quickly.
It's how I felt about learning all the new stuff about AI and web 3 and blockchain and all that kind of thing. It's wow, this is another time where all this new stuff is coming. There's so much opportunity out there and it's really early at the moment. I still think it's early. I agree. But with AI, people are using it all the time but there's new products coming out all the time. It just feels like there's a digital revolution again. Web 3 from web 2 to web 3 like simmering away and we're early.
but it's still exciting and it's also frustrating because it's it's exciting but frustrating because it's not quite there yet. Wonderful. Awesome. Obviously you set up Digital Women. Yes. And you set up the, Social day? Not social. We'll talk about social day in one moment. You set up the skills of the future just this year. So congratulations. Last year. Yeah. It was this year, right? Yeah. So I started my company in
I think I registered the company on 10th February last year. Okay, congratulations on that. Thank you. And then Social Day, tell us about Social Day. What is Social Day all about? Social Day is a social media marketing event for brands and agencies, people who are involved with of the super fun and sexy social media campaigns that you see, and the people who want to learn from each other. It's like peer learning again, social media marketers come together and learn. The reason I set that up is because
Basically a few years ago after my job at Jazz FM, was advertising sales of course, I got to a point where I was like I want to do something myself and I started again doubling with selling products online and then I got a store at Greenwich Market and thought I've got it inside me, I have to buy and sell stuff and do a little bit of this. A market trader inside me won't go away. So I started selling products and then I started noticing that all the store
they weren't sharing stuff online and I was sharing stuff online, I sharing stuff on Twitter and social media, Facebook and I was selling stuff through it, I was doing really, well and then they were like, how'd you do this? And I went around trying to help all of the traders and stuff and I thought, hang on, there's something in this, I could be a social media, I could do social media or something, social media wasn't even a thing then, we're talking 12 years ago and people were like, no, I'm not gonna do social media, not as like a way to get.
money in. It started working for me and then I moved to Keg, back to Keg because living in London, was living in Woolwich at the time. yeah, so a family member said, we've got this really amazing online boutique where we sell furniture. And I started my own online boutique as well, which was part of this market store that I had. And I was doing well with that and we said, can we pay you to start putting us out there online on social media?
So was like, course, and doing some updates on our website and I started building websites for people. I was basically freelancing around, like trying to work out. I was not charging enough to live, basically. It was ridiculous. Then I had a baby and stuff like that. And I was still doing it. I remember going into labor and still being on my phone talking to people. wow. How cool. I think you just got to do what you've got to do, you? And yeah, it was
I was then, I was like, there's nothing out here to learn about social media for people. I went to NatWest and I said, hey, can we, can you host us to do an event so people can learn about social media? And they were like, absolutely fantastic about it. They yeah, first of all, we started off as like an SME thing. It's for SMEs to learn about social media marketing and that kind of thing. And then it developed into this content's so good that brands and agencies want to come along to learn from each other as well. And it went from that into this. And next.
year it's going to be a three day social media marketing festival, brands, agencies, a really cool venue. So I'm really excited about that. it does, it's taken 10 years, everything is like 10 years in the making. It's not overnight. It's not taken a year. It's not taken six months. This just develops. starts off as a community thing where you want to educate people and do something good and it turns into a business. It's really freeing. Yeah, it is freeing. And what I feel like is in that 10 years you grow with it.
It's not just about building a business and selling a product and it goes back to impact again and purpose because if your purpose is just to make money then there's different ways to make money and do it quickly but when you're doing something you truly enjoy and you know will make a positive impact on the audience who's engaging in it then that can take a long time to grow because you want to do it properly and there's longevity behind
Just going back to your roots again, I saw a post of yours, because like I said, I'm an avid fan of yours and being an avid fan, I am a follower of yours. And I saw that you posted recently about social mobility, because obviously one can hear that you're very passionate about inclusion, being a woman, women, digital women. But of course, I know that your community and the work that you do is not gender led, women did.
digital women is gender led, but everything else isn't. But one of your other passions or things that you talk about, which I think is important and many of us don't really talk about it a lot, is social mobility. Can you just touch on that and why social mobility is so important to you? And just before you touch on that, in your post, you wrote, professional workers from working class backgrounds are paid an average of 12 % less per year than those from professional.
managerial backgrounds comparable to the gender pay gap. So is this something that you advocate for or something you do want to advocate for? Something I want to advocate for because I do realise that at this point in my life I'm in a very privileged position. But I have come from a background where I grew up on a council estate and my mum would always be like, but we own our own house. There's always an element of we're fine.
Everything's fine. It doesn't matter if the provident man is knocking on the door. my mum would hate me saying this. The provident man was knocking on our door every week. Have you got the money? And mum's hiding and that kind of thing. Just explain what a provident man is. for those of you who don't know, it's one of these loans. You get these loan companies now, don't you, that charge these really high fees. Before the internet, there was the provident. And the provident would knock on your door and they'd say, do you want to take a loan with us? £200. Maybe you it for Christmas or something like that, or just to get through the week.
And I think they'd really prey on vulnerable families. Because what is this guy doing knocking on the door on council estate? Does that make sense? So thinking about it now, I just think it's just ridiculous that was allowed to happen. I don't know if it still goes on, but it doesn't it? Because you've got these online loan companies that you can take out that - People will always need money. Always need money. It's essentially a loan shark, right? So the loan shark then used to come to the door, but it was like a professional loan shark. So it's like regulated and everything else.
and then they would say £200 but you're have to pay back £350. So my mum was always hiding from this Provident man and so there wasn't like a great deal of money going around. Like I said I didn't really notice it or anything. I've digressed now too far I think into the Provident thing so I need to go back to the original question. Which is social mobility. Social mobility. So yes I do want to advocate for social mobility because
And I don't at the moment because like I said, I'm in a very privileged position and in the communities that I'm within, you normally attract the people at the same kind of point in your life or where you are, don't you? Would you say? And you're trying to make it, your community is diverse and inclusive as possible. Like for me, it's always been about how do we include as many people as possible from as many different backgrounds, as many different like paths as possible. But there are, I know there are people I just can't get to, okay?
they're not hanging out in the same circles, they're not linked in, they're not in the same Facebook communities because they don't know it's a thing and they don't know it exists. Like down the line what I do want to do is I do want to have a more impactful part of my business where we're going out into the local community. Outreach, you're going out into those, into the social clubs, local social clubs, because those are local social clubs. If they still exist. I think they do exist and there are different places that they do exist. Into the right Facebook communities and if it's online now.
talking to the right people, letting the people know that there's this whole world of opportunity out there. Because I know once you open someone's eyes to what is possible and they can see someone else like them has done that, they're more likely to be able to do it themselves. So role modeling is really important, we know that. Representation. Representation is really important. Yeah, so just seeing somebody who's like you, they might not seem like you now, but they've been where you are.
and they've done it, so why can't you? And yeah, obviously, no, lot of stuff is a little bit of luck, being at the right place at the right time. Having the right role models. Having the right role models. Mentors. Yeah, so we can help to that extent, and that's what I want to do. I feel like I still need to get my business to a point where I'm happy with everything before I can then dive into the next thing of like right now.
I want to go out into the community and help all of these people. I'm thinking let's get a bus or something. Let's drive into local communities, get digital skills, get a really great job, loads of money. Yeah, yeah. Just open the door, open the eyes. Yeah. So just, let's just talk about business and the fact, because we were having a discussion before we started this podcast, we were talking about community and why you feel community -based or orientated businesses.
are so important and I'm using the word again impactful to society today and you touched on a very important point and that point was that how the way that the business world and media world has shifted in the sense of newspapers, magazines, they were where advertisers went to because that's where the audience was, they had a huge audience and you believe and I agree with
And just from the conversation, I have to say Lucy made me look at women in blockchain talks in a different perspective, which I really appreciate. And this is why it's good to talk. And this is why I love doing these podcasts and having people like wonderful people like Lucy come on the podcast and just talk to her in general, to be quite honest, it's not just about the podcast, but just talk to her in general. But you was just saying that how, because they're losing the audience, those audience have gone online and a lot of them are moving.
communities or have moved to communities. And so just talk about that in the sense of what that means for a business because we use the word. I think what I'm trying to get at here is that as women, and you can correct me if I'm wrong, we will start a business and like I've said before, women in blockchain talks is for profit, digital women is for profit and we use the term community. I do it all the time and I'm very proud of the community that I've built.
the community I've built is also a business. But how do you get funding for community when most people see the, or see the term community as something not as value? And you touched on this with me before. Okay, so I think it's just about reframing it. So yes, we know this is a real community. These are people who are engaged, they're active, they listen to each other. But essentially, if you go back to thinking about the old magazines and the old online forums and that
These were places that people come together to learn about things they love and they like to talk about or where they write in their letters and angry from Essex says this and then everybody would send in their letters and they would talk to each other in this way or then it would go to forums online where people would talk to each other in this way. I think those were the people who were reading the content, those were the people who were providing the content as well for the magazines and everything and that's very...
Advertisable you have an audience there you have a community you know you have community but you have an audience I believe that if you think of it this way you have it's a publishing company because you have an audience or a community You are providing them with content and then a company is sponsoring that so that they can get in front of this community or this audience So the sponsor is trying to get in front of this audience and that's what it is If you just reframe it to be a publishing business, which it also is
then it might open up more doors potentially if it's explained in that way. However, I do think community businesses are so important. When you think about community, people think sometimes that an audience is a community. When an is an audience, that's somebody watching you, whereas a community is people actively getting engaged and talking to each other whether you were there or not. Okay, if you left tomorrow, I
A lot of the time a community does need a lead and they need someone to create the content and that kind of thing and that lead is almost like an influencer or an influential person within that business community as well. Nothing's changed. You're selling audience to a company or to a sponsor. Therefore you are a publisher. Yeah. And you're creating content which is what you're saying. Yeah. It's whether it's educational, whether it's to bind to the community. Your content as a publisher is to try and get people to engage, react, read it.
and take some action if possible from off the back of it. But as a publisher you want people to just be there, engaged, reading, getting involved and listening to you. You have some influence over them as well and they have influence over each other. What's more powerful than that to an advertiser? You can just pay, you can pay for Facebook ads and you're just reaching people and they just see it, great that's an audience, but you pay to be part of a community and then you're reaching people.
in a really impactful way. They're talking about you between each other and then they're going out and advocating for you anyway just because other people are talking about you. It's way more powerful than the old fashioned let's just pay bang and add in here. Yeah. See how many people see it. Yeah. People are seeing it and they're talking about you. Yeah. So much it's worth so much more than spending four grand on
page out in a trade magazine. And I think you hit on something before as well, it's like sometimes companies feel like it's one ad and done or one sponsorship of an event and done. And then they be, they try and gauge, they try and gauge impact or interest off that. But these things, it's long -term and it takes time for an audience to warm up to you. Correct? There was something that you said before, just
round off on this whole community and the fact that magazines are no longer have that audience or carry the same weight as they used to. And so I was reading recently how influencers, because a lot of ad dollars or ad money went to influencers, right? Because they had the 100 ,000, 500 ,000, what have you. And what a number of people are saying now is that they're actually going to communities because with Instagram,
followers, you don't know really and truly how many are actually clicking and just because a woman's had a baby doesn't mean and then you're now saying hey I want you to promote that influencer's had a baby and we want you to promote Pampers, it doesn't mean that majority of her followers are actually mothers. They followed them maybe because they were on love island and now they've got married and had a baby so
You know, and then, so what they were saying is that a lot of, or a number of companies are starting to look at communities as a good way to put the ad dollars, because it's engaged, like you said. It's not just an audience, but it's a community. What would you say for people who community -orientated, for -profit, I'm talking for -profit, but I think it's relevant to non -profits as
who are looking for those sort of sponsors, advertisers or investors, is there anywhere that you would tell them to go or any advice that you would give? Yeah, I think there's various things that you can do to... If you don't want to call it monetise the community by the way, I remember because I was part of a while ago, there was something called Facebook Community Circles and I was one of the leads for London.
And it was amazing. They got rid of all the stuff. They got rid of loads of people and stuff like that. So was really sad for everybody. But they used to these community leadership circles because they realised the people that worked in the company then realised the impact the communities had. And also the impact communities had on people buying products and making decisions with each other, talking about stuff. Influencing. Influencing. So influential communities are. And I think it's been so slow that people are getting on this, understanding how impactful communities are.
Although I did see it happening before. think if you wanted to reframe the way you say it, because you might think, run this community, I don't want to call it like sponsoring the community or like monetizing, because you feel like you're monetizing your people. You might want to say, I need funding to run my community. Just reframing that and saying, I want to fund my community. It just feels so much more like...
bit more representative of what you're trying to do. I want to fund my community. If I want to run this, it takes time, it takes a lot of content. It's very hard to create and run a community actually. Anyone can do it, but not everybody can do it well. Not everybody can take this consistently and make sure everybody feels like they're part of a space where it's not just about one person, it's about everybody within the group. Just change it to, I want to fund this community. And then I think you really need to understand
Who is in this community? What do they want? What are they talking about? What are their problems? How can we help them to solve their problems? In our community, it's our Facebook community for example, our WhatsApp community, our community is very fragmented in lots of different places, but essentially they're all talking about the same things everywhere you go. And obviously we collect data from them and that kind of thing as well. But they're asking questions about specific things, like what tool can I use for this? And then everyone comes and says, I use this one and I use that one.
And if a tool like a company like a digital tool was in this community and they were sponsoring it, they could say something like, have you tried this tool? Well, we're working with the community lead Lucy and she's using this tool at the moment and it's working really well for her. Why don't you have a demo of our product? Do you know what I mean? Or I could say, I'm an ambassador for that. You as a community leader, the owner of that business, that community led business, you should be thinking, where can I go and get an ambassadorship maybe? Because ambassadorship.
a lot of the time they'll pay. If there's a really good product that you think your community are going to love, and you love as well, and you want to be an ambassador for.
you could reach out to them and say, I'd love to be an ambassador for your company. You pay me and I will make sure that I'll always talk about your company within our community. And ambassadorships can be worth tens of thousands of pounds. You're creating content, so you're an influencer in the same way that an influencer would create content for that brand, but you're doing it as an ambassador. You can get a new ambassadorship every year if you want to. If you want to change products or you don't like the product that you're using anymore, for example, you can have several ambassadorship. It doesn't really matter. Again, content.
creating content for some of these brands, you can earn money that way to fund your community. So you could say, look, I know that this educational platform that you have will be great for our community, they absolutely love it. Why don't I use the platform and I'll create a bit of a review, honest review, and then I'll share it to our community. But to create this content, it's gonna cost you an amount of money. Or you could be a community partner. It's paid that you're a community partner, but as part of that, we'll ensure
that we mention you when people are asking about this product, we all ensure that, do you know what I mean? We have your branding, we mention you, we create content for you now and again, and stuff like that. It's up to you how you price it, but there are so many ways to monetize communities, fund communities. It's just about thinking outside the box and thinking, how can I let these people know that I have the perfect community for them? Because the marketers who are spending their marketing budget on this kind of thing, they want to reach the audience. And if you don't...
go and speak to them about what you have, they don't know about it. They don't know, you have to go out and reach out to them and say, I've got this amazing thing. Do want to be part of it? Because I'm doing it anyway and I'll just ask your competitor, you don't have to say it like that, but I'll go and ask someone else. Yeah, I love that and that's great advice. Just to end, what do you have planned for the rest of the year in regards to digital women, in regards to skills for the future?
Okay, thank you very much for asking. On the 18th of September we have an event at the Grand Conaught rooms which is going to be fantastic. It's a conference and awards so we're going to be celebrating all of the amazing digital women who have entered the awards in the afternoon. In the morning we have some really inspirational sessions. We have some really good people coming to speak and inspire and motivate about their backgrounds and the work that they've been doing as well.
with some panels and lovely lunch and everything else networking, beautiful photo opportunities, just a really nice day to celebrate women working in digital. And then on the 6th of November, there's going to be a B2B social day in London at Bounce. And then next year, May the 20th to 22nd, three day social media marketing festival, and probably before that in March, we'll do a Birmingham digital women event as well. So there's lots coming up, lots to be excited about. Yeah, so.
Thanks for asking. Yeah, wonderful. All right. And how can people find you? You can find me on LinkedIn. So on LinkedIn, it's Lucy Hall. And if you want to find out more about digital women, it's Digital Women on LinkedIn. Wonderful. And there's a website as well, digitalwomen .com. There's a website actually. We've got a website called digitalwomen .live. don't know if I'm on .live. Yeah, you can. But at the moment we have a membership discount where you can get 75 % off your annual membership.
So it's like £82 .50 for the whole year for all the C4D credit courses, everything. wow. But it renews at the full price after a year, but you can cancel if you want to. It's just to get you in the community and give you flavour of how amazing and wonderful it is to be kind part of this. If you want the link to that, it's in the bio of Instagram, which is digital women, where they're always replaced with a one. Okay. Probably made that sound more complicated. That's okay, I'm sure if people really want it, they will pause.
and rewind and make a note. Wonderful. All right. And that is our award winning Lucy Hall of Digital Women, my friend and and just like I said, total trailblazer in the world of tech and digital. And yeah, and if you want to know more, then please reach out to her on LinkedIn or click on the links below in the in the write up. OK, until next time. Thanks for listening. Thank
