S5 Ep 2 | Going Viral: The Secrets Behind Building a Network of +15M Followers

2 Jul 2025 · 37 min · 14 chapters

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In short

How George Bacon built GBM, a UK youth meme-page network (Great British Memes, That Girl Page, Student Page, etc.) reaching 15M+ followers without being the face; lessons on platform shifts (Twitter to Instagram), content pillars (tone, emotion, storytelling, relatability), brand partnerships, and AI’s role.

Guests

George Bacon, founder of GBM (Great British Memes). GBM operates 10 daily-posting pages targeting 18–24 year olds in the UK; 15-person team (7 full-time, 8 freelancers).

Key claims

Early traction came from community-based tweeting (e.g., “Secondary School Problems”), not mass follow/unfollow. Instagram worked because it rewarded copy/screenshots before reels; they avoided video/copyright until reels. Virality is driven by emotion and persona-specific tone, not faces. They guarantee baseline organic impressions via audience knowledge and creative briefs. AI can help draft captions/ideation but can’t replicate human emotion; they avoid “news”/fake-news publishing.

Notable examples

Deliveroo’s early Twitter hashtag/trending campaigns; “We all know Emma who can’t dance”; GBM content performance comparisons on TikTok (e.g., 400k views/80k likes vs 200k views with ~1.5% engagement).

Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.

Chapters

Tap a time to open that second in VO

George Bacon's Journey to Social Media Success

0:46 to 2:19

George shares his early experiences in social media and how he built his brand.

The Evolution from Twitter to Instagram

2:20 to 5:14

Discussion on the transition from Twitter to Instagram and how it affected content creation.

Creating Engaging Content for Diverse Audiences

5:15 to 9:34

Exploration of how to tailor content for different communities and platform dynamics.

“But obviously from a brand's point of view, you can kind of tie that in with any, like literally anything, which kind of where Great British Means and That Girl page came from.”

The Power of Emotion in Content

9:35 to 14:00

George explains the importance of emotional storytelling in social media engagement.

The Shift in Social Media Landscape

14:00 to 15:00

Discussing the evolution of social media platforms and their implications.

“It's not something we're looking to implement in our strategy.”

Content Creation and Virality

15:00 to 16:40

Exploring the strategies behind creating viral content and brand alignment.

“Again, we're only a small team in comparison to other.”

Analyzing TikTok Success

16:40 to 18:20

Delving into TikTok's algorithm and the importance of engagement metrics.

Cross-Platform Content Strategies

18:20 to 20:00

Examining how content is adapted and shared across different social platforms.

“So you were just creating that thinking this could be a future revenue stream as well because brands will want you to type into our content to talk about their brand.”

Brand Partnerships and Monetization

20:00 to 21:40

Discussing the evolution of brand partnerships and revenue generation strategies.

The Role of AI in Content Creation

21:40 to 23:20

Analyzing the current and future impact of AI on content creation and engagement.

Show all 14 chapters

Human Touch vs. AI Efficiency

23:20 to 25:00

Evaluating the balance between human-created content and AI-generated suggestions.

“No, I've heard that like if you spend enough time with an AI, it can kind of pick up your mannerisms, which who knows, like that might happen.”

The Future of Influencers and AI

25:00 to 26:40

Discussing the rise of AI influencers and their potential impact on traditional content creators.

The Evolution of Meme Accounts

26:40 to 28:00

Speculating on the continued relevance of meme accounts in the future of social media.

The Future of Content Creation

28:00 to 36:28

Explore insights on the evolution of content strategies and the role of authenticity.

“I think it's hard to tell just for the next couple years just because of everything changing.”
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Transcript

Automatic transcript. May contain errors.

0:04George Bacon:Hi, everyone. Welcome to Beyond Marketing, the podcast. I'm Mara Dinovizi. I'm the founder and CEO of Amgen Power, a global integrated market agency. Social media is evolving fast, and few people understand its future better than today's guest. George Bacon and his team have built a media empire managing pages like Great British Memes and The Girl Page without ever being the face of them. Well, talk about virality, the future of social media and how brands can thrive in this new landscape. So welcome to Beyond Marketing the Podcast, George. Hello, thank you for having me. How are you? I'm very good and I'm very excited to finally meet you in person because I was thinking, oh my God, as I was mentioning to you when we met, so I've been hurting of you for so many years and I always wanted to understand how you started, how did you see the opportunity with Mimi's account and today having the opportunity to have you here to talk us through about you know your vision and how you became this social empire when it comes to meme account so first of all introduce yourself to our audience uh that would be amazing yes i'm george founder of gbm um gbm own operates a network of highly engaged youth communities in the uk specifically ranging from 18 to 24 year olds being our main target demographic um as you mentioned great british memes is our flagship one um but we have a range i wouldn't go into all of them but we have about 10 that we post on daily such as that girl page great british memes that student page great london and memes the list goes on george tell me like how everything starts like because it's like you're visionary right because like who would say that meme accounts will be such an important content driver for brands nowadays so how it's always started and when you realize that this could be a great potential for the landscape of social media yeah so I started really young actually I kind of fell into back when Twitter was really fun and I kind of had a page called secondary school problems uh something with me as well i'm not very creative in terms of the names are very to the point and they do what they say on the tin sort of thing so secondary school problems i was in school everyone has these like i guess relatable problems or moments that happen in class and i thought why not just tweet about them really and see what happens picked up some traction i had about 50 000 followers on twitter which at the time was quite a lot for a page where i didn't follow anyone either um i used to have other accounts that i used to follow unfollow and like mass build following but this one seemed a bit more community-based and people chose to follow rather than just following back for the sake of it um and it was approached by steven dom founders of social chain to sort of at first i wanted to buy the page which makes sense now i understand why they wanted to do that and i was kind of like no it wasn't really for the money but i just kind enjoyed tweeting and that live reaction was so good um and then they offered me a job once i said no so it was kind of a okay cool they saw the value in maybe me as a person um and they brought me on to sort of build multiple pages i think i had about 10 at once just on twitter which on twitter at the time just twitter i think twitter was a massive thing i don't know if you're familiar like social change campaigns at the start but they used to do massive just like they just got it trending on Twitter that was like kind of like the campaign goal and so brands would be like I want to trend on Twitter and through our pages and tweeting about it enough and people engaging that kind of made that hashtag for whichever brand I remember Deliveroo when they first started had one uh giving away 10 pound codes if you signed up remember those days so yeah they were good days they were so anyways that that's where I started um and as the business progressed uh they're racing Manchester and I was down in Brighton and I was like an 18 year old I thought a bit too far for me to go uh i really wanted to go to university as well um and kind of study marketing more because at the time i didn't know whether social media or normally knew if social media marketing would become where it has today so took the traditional route learned the basics and left social chain to do my own thing which what is now gbm effectively uh eight years later which is kind of crazy to say um so yeah wow and then like i love what i said about Twitter and I miss those Twitter times do you because it's just like it's not the same anymore it's not the same anymore it was just so much like you know no algorithm and it was the free of speech on Twitter and how people were engaging and it was so quick as you said and to have the immediate response but we don't have that anymore I think Instagram is not the same I don't think TikTok's the same um seeing a tweet like a thousand retweets in like an hour was like it's unheard of nowadays I think unless you are like a public figure can you give me an example of like one tweet that you did at the time as you say that you wanted to create a you know content on Twitter that was related to what your experience within your community your school and your friends do you remember one of your tweeters that you said wow this is actually it's can can be a thing so I remember that so this was probably a couple years in social chain and I had like my designated pages and had a page called we all know a which there is already an american one but there was a gap in the market for a uk one so i remember when i first made it i was like right this is worth them and built it to like a quarter million followers and i was with my friends at uni and a game i used to just for like content would be like pass my phone around about like pre-drinks and be like right think of something that will like get some numbers quick so like a person with a really common name and it's funny so like we all know emma who can't dance or or something like that, like literally just as simple as that.

6:10But obviously from a brand's point of view, you can kind of tie that in with any, like literally anything, which kind of where Great British Means and That Girl page came from. Because those pages can kind of, you can kind of work with anyone. We're very particular with now what brands we want to partner with, but leaves a wide scope of brands from apps to food products to services. So yeah, I'd say that was the first moment I realized, okay there's more yeah just a bit of fun and then when you left social chain when you start

6:43George Bacon:your own business you were you're still a twitter or instagram was already so i think at that moment instagram was changing from because it was in my second year so i would have been 19 but i remember the pages like great british memes archbishop of banterbury i'm just bait these were all slowly starting to build like a following on instagram really quickly like I remember our growth was something crazy like 50 to 500k in a year to like 1.2 million to like two and then over the last couple years it's been about two to 300k a year um but yeah the initial those two years of like people were using Instagram not to follow their friends anymore it was kind of it might have been I think it took away the audience that Twitter had like people we still use Twitter but none was like creating content on Twitter it just moved over to instagram um same with facebook as well facebook i remember i used to flip pages to like zero to a quarter million in a week and then kind of just be like oh it's not usually probably was like for you was like a uh an interesting transition from going to twitter to instagram because on instagram was more like a copy driven app so you're not necessarily needs to have the creative and the design behind so how you manage to do that transition and continue to be relevant into a new platform right because then instagram it's like it you didn't know if you would be the same engage in the same level of interest of people that were having the twitter so how that transition happened at first it was kind of hard because there was no formula and i think the pages kind of set like the way for everyone else to be like right this is the way the content's gonna go obviously reels weren't a thing for ages so it was very much still images screenshots that sort of that was like the content to start with then like funny videos became a thing um but with video content as well you always got to be careful like copyright and stuff so it was a place that i didn't really want to touch and that's actually kind of stuck to my guns and was like we're gonna stay still form for pretty much until reels came in we didn't really touch videos it was just something that when we were working with agencies and stuff it was something that they kind of warned us against the other publishers and stuff were starting to like build ip and licensing became a thing so it was kind of like a great area at that time that i just wasn't ready to touch i was on my own still as well at this point so it was like i can only do so much yeah and how many accounts you had at the time uh i had about 10 to 15 it's always been that's like the manageable amount for like one person i think 10 to 15 and you're managing by yourself yeah and vary from one or two posts a day to four or five or six on like the bigger pages and that was across facebook instagram and then twitter would be the content for instagram so it would be kind of be like repurposing piece of content with different platforms but still required at the time and effort you're thinking right but like yeah so that's interesting that you're you're by yourself because you have to do the creative, right, the design, but plus, which I think is the most important thing for what you do, is actually content, right, the copy.

9:59Yeah.

10:00George Bacon:So where your inspiration come from? Yeah. If I'm honest, I just kind of saw what I wanted to do at Social Chain, and as I got older, Social Chain was no longer sort of a thing in terms of content powerhouse, so I think it really kind of, the learnings I'd learned from that job really helped me just be like, right, I want to kind of make something of this work. because I did believe in like sort of that I guess way of working and there's room for like me marketing like here we are sort of like it's worth using and I think with the right people and the right creative and the right brand it is really really effective so kind of just wanted to build that community and then see where it was going I didn't plan to kind of end up here this wasn't the best thing yeah exactly so it was kind of like uh I fell into it and then realized okay i'm actually quite good at this i think and kind of building these communities which was in a tone of voice a lot of our pages have like different tone of voices and how i say to like our team if they're posting on a certain page i'm like right you might not find this funny but is this like the great british memes hat is this british is this relatable is this has it got any sort of emotion i think these three or four like key things are important for content in general whether it's paid whether it's organic um to perform well and that was kind of like the four pillars that we had for every page so our student one you can tap into some culture but at the end of the day if it's not tied into university or like school it doesn't really fit uh like the world cup or the euros like we would cover on great british memes near the end but like student page would never cover it like unless it somehow was linked to like not turning out to a lecture So you create a persona for each of your accounts.

11:41George Bacon:Persona meaning like you know exactly who is your community in each account that you have and what the content will resonate to them. And why do you think memes account, it's so engaging? Why do you think attracts the community? Just because everyone is kind of in need to say something that is fun, but at the same time taking the away from the actually day-to-day content that we see from the influencer from the news so what do you think is the the secret source of that variety that you created with your accounts I think back when I first started as well there wasn't too many pages I don't think the space was crowded so everyone had their own section and as I said like emotion is a key thing like storytelling like every piece of content needs to have something along those lines for each page um what do you yeah i think that's why emotion like because i read some of your quotes that you mentioned about emotion is a is a key driver for engagement why that i think especially just in a normal piece of content or a brownie piece of content like people want to sort of read things and either relate to them or be like oh that happened to me then or I can relate to that or I can't at the end of the day you can't please everyone however when creating piece of content or posting piece of content if I can be like okay I could relate to that maybe a year ago or I'm going through something like that right now I'm sure there's others who are also in the same boat and so I think that's very important and then like because the amount of content that you guys created are very impressive today I am assuming you have a team behind right so how many people you guys are in total so now there's 15 of us uh seven full-timers eight freelancers and how many pieces of content do you guys produce per day or per week is piece of content going out across every platform is well over 100 maybe just shy of 200 pieces of content machine of creating content right but what's the most interesting thinking because you don't see faces right it's just yeah we tend to stay away from faces the only thing now with the new edition of like tick tock and snapchat we kind of integrate faces uh with like vox pop interviews they're the only however we have presenters which we're trying to like build into some brands but not all and i think for the beauty of what we have is like there is no face it's just like you recognize the logo or you know the name which i think is way more powerful way more powerful it's just and and where do you think the industry is going now with overall like with the content and also with all these chains from you know meta and now twitter that is no longer twitter is x and it's not the same thing and then we see all the social platform trying to be Twitter like Blue Sky.

14:44George Bacon:Do you have Blue Sky? I've tried it. It's not something we're looking to implement in our strategy. I think we've got enough. We're on everything from Reddit to Snapchat to YouTube to Instagram to Facebook to TikTok. I think six is enough. As a business point of view as well, I think you can actually do too much. Again, we're only a small team in comparison to other. But if Blue Sky become a thing, then you're probably going to have to... Probably would, yeah. But I think for now, as what it is right now, of again my original uh origins loyalties i guess later with twitter so it's kind of one of their ones so you're still driving content on twitter so you still have your community going stronger there even with all the change some but it's also just really good platform to source content yeah that might change it depends i can't lie with the structure of like um social media platforms it's hard we're keeping on top of it every day but like for now twitter is is fine to source content there's a lot of stuff that we have to go through and kind of like sift through and it's definitely a lot harder than it used to be because i remember i used to just go on my personal account and like help source content now because i don't use it too much my feed is just stuff that yeah i don't really want to see or is relevant to the pages anymore and i think that's really important to like with every platform is to use the app all the time like it really does reward you um so now i don't post that much so my twitter's fine yeah i'm just and then every time like you guys creating content do you think when you're creating um and thinking about copy and do you think you on your strategy it has an element of okay if you're creating this the objective is to be content that's going to go viral or the virality it's more organic if happens happens or there's a strategy behind your content that you're creating that because you want to go viral with organic stuff it's more very much like the tone of voice of the page so like does this piece of content fit the tone of voice of the page for branded stuff there's a bit more of a strategy behind things and that kind of taps into the storytelling the emotion being like related to this or like the humor which again from a i hate the word meaning because we're trying to get away from it but i feel like uh our communities that we built provide humor majority of the time um and yeah i think that's really important to then tap into the chance of going viral or reaching as much people as possible i think because we do actually guarantee like a certain amount of organic impressions just because we know our audience and there's like a certain bar that i'm very confident that we can hit if creative and the brief allows us to sort of be as i guess creative as possible really to sort of tap into that um with tick tock we've noticed there's that yeah i can't get too much away but there's a little formula we have and we've noticed that like faces get picked up so okay you might see the same face on your tick tock all the time and there's a reason why because that particular person has been interesting has hit the algorithm x amount of times or like there might be someone's tick tock count you got you find and they've got 100k followers but every video has got a million views and the kind of reason why if you go through it you won't really see too much of a strategy but like people's faces just get picked up and okay the engagement might not be the highest yeah and like we've we've had videos like we just went through some strategy this week and certain type of video got at least 200 ,000 views on a page but like the engagement rate was about 1.5 % which I was like I was a bit low but then you have the views but then the views are there but then there's a post that's got 400k like 400k views 80 000 likes which the engagement rate on that is like 20 just under 20 which is crazy but like it's completely different to the other pieces of content so i think tick tock's a really good one where we use it as a tester okay interesting and the chick talk is like is there's any platform that for you guys are the predominant platform that you folks more than daughters or the attention is is is equal with instagram is probably our main which then feeds off to facebook with the stills tick tock and then the best of the best make it to instagram as well so like i said before when i was doing on my own i kind of had i was making content for instagram but i was tweeting it which also counted as a tweet for the day yeah same with facebook as well like we'd maybe put a still on facebook if it did well then maybe we push it to instagram because clearly it's worked if not then we just stick to our guns and kind of facebook and instagram are two different audiences as well that are or it's a bit older on facebook across all the pages which it's just naturally i think what facebook is and and then when you like because of course that's me assuming like when you start creating this content and unknown twitter and immigration uh to instagram have Have you ever thought that what you're creating as a business could type into brand partnerships or the brand partnership was a surprise for you or no?

19:54George Bacon:So you were just creating that thinking this could be a future revenue stream as well because brands will want you to type into our content to talk about their brand. So how that happened? I think at first when I first created the pages there was kind of that of like finger black I can't go and continue this was so strange I'm gonna do it for myself there was no like revenue I was a university as well so I kind of was didn't need that revenue stream I was just kind of there to study a surprising had a lot more spare time than I thought so obviously more time came I could put my more F &C's page which I didn't think would be any possibilities for like brand partnerships to start with until agencies used to reach out and they'd be like we have this creative like how much for a post it was very transactional it was kind of like here's the content like how much and then whatever you negotiate and then cool you post it i had no kind of share in like the creative or i didn't get given a brief it was very much like here's the page here's the post post this sort of thing then i left uni and i kind of took control back of that i think realizing that you can use the creative to kind of then build something for page that actually fits it's the page way more like way better i learned when i first started that like if you do an ad you're going to lose followers but it's fine because you're just going to grow back when in reality when you have a page so big that's not the best practice you shouldn't like plan on okay we're just going to take a hit we're gaining back because as the pages get bigger now the market's way more saturated it's harder to get people to follow than it is to like get people just unfollow because all it takes is one bad post have people off straight away straight away so true yeah and then because now you because we worked a lot with you and then you know all the transparency you were one of the accounts that drives the most engagement and you know downloads and sales for one of our clients that's why we keep repeating but i think that's what you said that because now you have the ability to create the content for the brand that is aligned with your community and aligns with what you think is going to engage i think that's your secret sauce when it comes to rent coming back to you because i like we see the numbers that you guys generated on behalf of the brand and it is it is very impressive and how do you see the future of social content right because everyone says that all content creators and social media they're like saturated there's no much more space which i think it's it's the opposite so how do you see the future of social in general especially now with the ad of ai and you guys are thinking about how we're going to type into ai or are you already using it we use it for some stuff but in terms of content creation I really think like you can't beat like a human doing it with like emotion as well like an AI has no emotion whereas so if you're making a piece of content around yeah anything that's like relatable again these those four pillars I think are really key for like viable content in the sense of people can relate to them so yeah don't get wrong AI is great and we're implementing it in some aspects but you just can't go wrong with like dealing with people as well um which comes with having a team like you said the good work we've done with one of the clients does come from the whole team itself kind of putting together ideas and like believe it or not some of them actual piece of content happened to like myself or another member of the team um which probably backs up to why it does so well because i'm not the only person that's experienced something like that before um so yeah don't get me wrong ai's got a place but for creating content for now do you think that's not going to take over like there's a lot of talks about like oh especially for writing and design so ai can be you know not replacing but can help them to become more agile and more effective or even cutting costs on resources but i am with you so there's not much that we can rely on ai because ai there's no emotion unless you prompt prompt prompt prompt until you get the emotion out of AI, but I don't think is the case too.

24:16No, I've heard that like if you spend enough time with an AI, it can kind of pick up your mannerisms, which who knows, like that might happen. But I just think like ChatGPT to sort of like help you with a caption, maybe. That's probably like the backs we're going to get from it and we'll probably have to then slightly change a word to make it sound less robotic.

24:37George Bacon:Because it's like your work, right? because i like sometimes when i am using chat gpt for my own social content sometimes i go and then i have to prompt and i have to prompt and then trying like five six times and i still have to then rework yeah and i'm like but is this actually being effective because if i am here trying to prompt a caption yeah and then keep back and forth back and forth and in the end i have to rewrite some of the stuff is actually being effective in agile and efficient yeah that's kind of like a question mark yeah I think that is the case but also yeah if you've got nothing I feel like it's a good start if you have generally nothing just out there pen to paper nothing's on there it's a good way of being like what would someone else say and we find as well that when we're in the office that helps to like bounce back ideas so again if you're on your own and you can't speak someone's be like what do you think AI is a good one yeah to be like okay cool i agree or i don't agree or i like that but i'm gonna amend this and make it more me um because yeah i see a lot of ai stuff on like linkedin all that and you can kind of pick up if you use it you can see if you see it you know i mean so like you're scrolling you're like oh that's a bit of an odd word um so yeah i just kind of tend for us anyway just keeping it i guess gbm time yeah it's kind of uh keeping the same tone of voice but also the the human element behind the copy which is in the end is demotion yeah right uh because it was interesting to ask this question because because you guys create so much content i was like maybe they're already using ai to to drive more content but it's interesting what you said because it's so true because i think creating content is something that ai can will help and is already helping but i don't think is going to be able to take away from the humans the real people making the thinking because it's all about the critical thinking right so i can be as good as you can prompt to help you to this with the thinking but yeah so it's an interesting kind of you know to see where this is going to take us yeah because i've seen it's like dipped into like influencers and now there's like ai influencers a lot of ai influencers yeah i tend to stay away from that side of social so i'm bit like i hear about it i'm like cool i feel like i wouldn't get fooled i'd like to think i wouldn't get fooled by somebody like it's like oh it's not actually a real person but i've seen the content it is very it's cool as a consumer to consume it but i just don't see how it would fit within us but it's just nice to acknowledge i think it was the south by southwest this week and there was a of uh talks about like the ai influences ai avatars and the amount of the tech companies that were there with you know their packs are both presenting um their technology with it's a talent agency for avatar so i went to see one guy that he was there with his his both and uh he has a host like a roast of uh talents ai talents ai talents and uh different languages so they was like oh we have you know ai influencers that can create content in portuguese in chinese in english and i was like oh my god so basically they're like a tech company that they're creating many influences as ai avatars and they're now approaching agency and a brand and say okay this is our portfolio of talents and you have you know and they adapt their content within the culture relevance of where like this there's one ai avatar that is based in california in l.a so all the content is around the lifestyle i was just like i was shocked i was like wow yeah and and i thought the same as you like yes maybe we'll have an impact for brands to use but as us i don't know i i is a type of content that i'm not sure if i would no if i would consume yeah but no but where do you see the future now like do you think it's like the type of accounts that you create the meme accounts is something that's going to continue to you know grow do you think that's continued to be relevant in the future do you have any plans from the future that you think that you're gonna have to shift or add into your strategy?

29:10I think it's hard to tell just for the next couple years just because of everything changing. I think video content sort of here to stay and whether or not there's a lot of like more publishers like popping up which I think people at the end of the day will like choose to trust their publisher. Obviously like old media like news outlets and stuff are kind of not relevant like Like people aren't getting their news from them anymore. So it's kind of like, who do I, who have I followed? Or maybe who have I known about for the last five, 10 years growing up and who do I trust? Who hasn't tried to sell me some dodgy product or who's posted some fake news for like clickbait?

29:49Which again, sort of, our GBM, I believe, like pages and stuff have kind of stuck true to themselves and we haven't really done that. So I think we don't want to go down that route right now. Like the publishing route is not where we want to go down. like we'll cover stuff that publishers will cover it cover but like we're not here to tell you your daily news we're here to give you like some light heart relief and keep the humor which I think there's not many of them out there

30:13George Bacon:anymore so we all need a little bit of humor yeah we do now days exactly just a light heart relief to be like oh that's a funny video that was I nearly did that earlier so that's our plan and I think again the platforms won't change X is only one i'm like i'm slightly concerned about but we will see because like i said blue sky is there so there's always a backup i think yeah tick tock meta youtube as well especially something we really want to look to go down um i've noticed that longer form content and longer form creators have started to pop up again from doing longer videos and more raw content rather than like a really polished like one minute asset of their day that literally like a daily vlog if like longer videos are coming back in yeah especially when i first started you have the youtubers like alphie days etc who are pumping out one video a week on their main channel and then daily vlogs that were like 20 minutes 25 minutes longer like i used to probably set aside an hour to just like watch some stuff um especially with tv changing as well so i think yeah there will be a shift to youtube i I think it's already started.

31:24It's just how us at GVM kind of like do that correctly is the challenge.

31:31George Bacon:But yeah, but you're going to have to play into the video, right? So to become relevant. And a lot of like original content as well in terms of long form. So that may involve utilizing and leveraging people that we know through our Instagram page to be like, do you want to come be in our like YouTube video? That's a good, yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of ideas. I feel like in the next six months, more will come, but that also requires manpower and as a small company it's we only have a certain amount of people to work with but yeah we're expanding which is nice so just good this is like you have to evolve as the industry evolve right because like even like for us we started as an influencer marketing agency but now we're integrated marketing so why because a lot of our brands they just wanted to go beyond social they want to do rl events so we needed to now when they're creating a strategy like how we evolve from creating content engaging with influencers and creators to create content on social but now how to engage those talents on in an rl yeah experience so it's just like following what's the industry is evolved because we as a human we are evolving right as well so like i think the especially like communities uh on social they are changing the demand as you know yeah they want more but also i think this is like everyone talks about oh have to be authentic and it become like a cliche oh the content needs to be authentic it needs to be real needs to be but it's true like i think we wanted to see content that sounds more authentic more real and fun the humor right because i think the word is needed yeah definitely needs to be like not everything is sunshine and rainbows everyone has bad days or bad moments um which i think was definitely lost and i feel like the influencer like tag has been slightly tarnished with like living a perfect life which is not necessarily true at all um because everyone is just human it's true and mental health on social media do you what do you have a view on that like how social media is affecting or can affect because we talk a lot about especially the young generation like rights the gen c but also generation alpha and etc so do you do you want to think about content do you think about is this helping or this is actually gonna make it worth because mental health is something that we especially the ones that are creating content we need to take in consideration yeah 100 % but the stuff we post as well we try and keep it as like light-hearted as possible um especially along with like all the guidelines like the meta guidelines etc etc we don't want to like step on them so in terms of content we post and distribute it's very like light-hearted no like like conversations in the comments where people could like say one opinion and someone else say another and it gets a bit heated yeah um so again like yeah crm like keeping on top of comments is like another thing it's not only posting it out into the world and let it get its numbers also being like oh wait how about like our audience is not fighting in the comments but they're having a debate that probably no no no it doesn't look good for anyone and this is not the conversation we wanted to spark um personally as well i don't really use social unless I'm sourcing content I'll use Instagram occasionally but um yeah limiting like screen time and just like switching off like I think for people who work in social it's like it's a great excuse right like there's a team we say like we're chronically online and like yeah we are but like I hope out of hours that we can't like all switch off and it's like right let's leave it for now yeah put your phones away let's go like to the pub after work or something like that just to like have some human conversations like not everything has to be to be on social yeah so i think that's it's hard and you can get stuck in it because like there's that fine line between like i'm enjoying especially if you're starting off in the industry you want to embrace it all and take it all and like absorb as much as possible but then there is like a fine line between like okay there's more to life um maybe like just take it off yeah yeah interesting George what an amazing journey what is amazing what you have created and again we are like biggest fan and I was just very excited to hear about you know how you started and how do you see where you know the social content is going and thank you so much for being here and uh is there any plan to do more accounts on Instagram so do you have hours we're always making always making There's a couple new ones that have popped up, but yeah, you'll see.

35:56You'll see coming out in the next month or two. Wow. Okay.

36:00George Bacon:So there's no stops. So there's an opportunity for a new account. There's forever new stuff that's popping up. There's running nowadays. That's a new trend. So you might see a running account soon. Who knows? Amazing. Because the sport is a big thing. So a big thing. And I think for this new generation that's coming. it's healthy wellness it's kind of the direction i feel like everyone is kind of it's going yeah rather than just drinking i think we're leaving that stage it's a stage with just so many no alcohol yeah drinks right all right thank you so much george i could stay here forever guys because uh yes i i i'm so fascinated about what george has created so i hope everyone that's listening to us today have you know discovered the man behind all the meme accounts here in in in Britain and uh if you're not following us please make sure you do on Amazon Apple YouTube and Spotify and George thank you so much for taking your time because I know you're very busy creating so many content for us uh to have the humor in our life so I appreciate the time that you've been talking to us today thank you family you're welcome yes thank you so much and i see you guys thank you for listening and i see you on our next episode thank you so much

From the publisher

What does it take to build a digital empire that reaches over 15 million people a month? In this episode, George Bacon, founder of GBM Media, takes us behind the scenes of the viral UK meme pages like Great British Memes and That Girl Page. With zero reliance on personal branding or even a face showing up on the content, George reveals how culture, humour, and emotional storytelling fuel community-driven engagement.

In this episode, we explore his journey from early X (aka Twitter) days to launching a media agency, navigating platform shifts, mastering branded content, and his take on the role of AI in the future of social. 

If you’re curious about what makes content go viral, this episode is for you.


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