👋 Pretty Little Marketer 600k Community! FOUNDER: Sophie Miller Unpacks the Blueprint to REAL Community!| Ep. 406

0:00Welcome to Do This Not That, the podcast from marketers. We share quick tips, things you can do right now, and then we add a little bit of chaos at the end of every episode. We also keep it short, like this intro. Let's check it out. We are back for Do This, Not That podcast, and I have to tell you, this episode is why I started the podcast. Secretly, it was all about meeting the people that I was desperate to meet that are just doing the coolest stuff, and we have one of those people today. Like, short list, top five I want to meet, Sophie Miller is here. Now, you better know who Sophie Miller is.

0:34If you don't, I don't know who you are. First of all, she's huge on LinkedIn. Her own page is over 200 ,000 followers. Put that aside for a second. In 2020, she started this thing called Pretty Little Marketers sitting on her couch when she was at university, okay? And she has turned Pretty Little Marketers into the community. If you care about social media and you don't know Pretty Little Marketers, I don't think you actually are in social media. is a community of over 300 ,000 of the most passionate social media people on earth. And I will tell you, there is no source other than Pretty Little Marketers that I get more information out of about what's going on in social media than Pretty Little Marketers.

1:11It's amazing. Sophie's amazing. Welcome to the show. Oh my goodness. What a wonderful introduction. Thank you so much for having me. And I love that. Sat on her couch. On the couch. To me, it's my sofa. I love. Brilliant intro. jay thank you so much for having me all right the most important question is do you still have that sofa i don't know it was so it was our um so in 2020 same year i've started my business i moved into my first apartment with my boyfriend and like funds like sofas couches are expensive guys um it was the most uncomfortable thing in the whole world so as soon as my business made a penny So where the sofa's going.

1:53So it had sentimental value, but it wasn't good for the bum. It wasn't like a pink color that you needed to be like your brand. So it was a little different. It was ugly and gray. I now have a white sofa, so even less exciting, but it's comfy for a movie night. So we're good. I love it. We're good. All right. So before I just ask you a zillion questions, because we're going to get so much out of Sophie today about how to do social media right and email too at the end. Can you give everyone like, what is the 60 second? how did sophie miller wind up being this you know thing pretty little markers being a thing of course it all started in june 2020 as you mentioned i was a second year university student in england i lived in gloucester which is a small town think like the holiday the holiday countryside vibes just finished my second year of university expecting this big moment of relief oh my goodness i graduate in a year i'm so excited to start my career in marketing and what i was met with was overwhelm and loneliness.

2:52I burst into tears the second I press submit on my final essay. Oh my god, I have one year and I have absolutely nothing figured out. I have this diehard passion for social media marketing. I think people are fascinating. I think how lucky we are to live in an age with such a cool industry and it felt so far away, inaccessible. And I felt like I was the only person who was feeling like that. I am a Gen Z baby, so I started an Instagram page called at Pretty Little Marketer. And within a week, we had 1000 followers, two weeks, 2000 followers. And by January 2020, we had 40 ,000 followers across platforms, which was Instagram and LinkedIn.

3:34I freelanced for a few years as a consultant and social media marketer with some of the world's biggest brands. But it was the end of 2023 into early last year, 2024, kind of put down all my clients and decided to figure out what PLM could be as a business. And it now sits at almost 700 ,000 followers across platforms. We have a private membership of 500 members and quickly and beautifully growing. And it is my mission to grow a media brand for people in and on social media that connects marketers, but ultimately makes social media simple. I think that on paper, we have straightforward jobs, but there are so many roadblocks to making it fun and enjoyable.

4:17So uniting marketers and giving them what they need to enjoy their nine to fives is my goal. So you're accomplishing your goal because it's working on me. I stop, I look at all of your posts. I'm not just saying that because I'm staring at you. I do. So I'm curious about something. Before I start, just asking you about different tactics. Do you think that you literally started from zero, right? Did you catch social media at the exact right time? Or if there's a Sophie Miller out there, maybe they're frustrated in their job as a marketing manager, or maybe they just graduating from school or whatever it is, but they don't have a following, but they're passionate about something.

4:58Do you think it's possible today to do what you did again today? And what is it that allows somebody to kind of come out of the gates and break through the noise like you did? I love that question. I think too. Yes. To the first question. I think I never want to attribute anything to luck. I've worked really, really hard to build. I'm a team of one currently still. So I am. I've actually just hired an operations manager to join me in September and that'll be my first ever hire. So everything you see has just been me in this room, in this dark room um since day one so that is out of control wait a second wait a minute i don't understand something you put out an incredible forget about how good the content is you put out a lot of content and then you're speaking you're doing whatever and i'm not just trying to say wow you're this amazing human legit are you just like the most organized efficient human being like of all time how do you do that i am very type a everything in my life like we in our home have like a meal plan so when we order our food shop i know exactly what i'm eating on which day i know the times i'm going to the gym i've got lunch scheduled in my calendar um but also content is at least now my full-time job so i do have more time than most i have a pretty rigid social media strategy but there's a lot of repurposing in there as well not all of my content is new all the time So it's possible.

6:35I think on the outside, it looks like a much bigger operation than it is. It's just me posting and emailing and doing things. And we have a brilliant community that lend more than a hand. So, yeah. Back to that original question. Can somebody, now I'm freaked out. Can somebody actually do what you're doing today? I think absolutely. I started in 2020. funny. So I caught our audience at a time where we literally were in it together. We couldn't leave our houses. The job market was uncertain. For my direct audience at the time, which was students, we had paid to go to university in person. I lived at home during that period, but a lot of people would live in student halls or campuses.

7:21And we had nothing to do but be on our phones. So I think timing was very much on my side. I was looking for an audience that were struggling because I was struggling and I mean who wasn't in 2020 was a awful year for so many equally however I think that there are many things started in 2020 that five years later haven't grown into what you see of PLM today so timing was absolutely on my side but I do think it's still possible I don't think we need nor want another 2020 for anyone to be able to build and scale either a personal brand a media business or a social media community for me from day one I didn't start PLM to be a business I started it to find friends and build experience but without realizing I was strategizing even in those early days without having it on paper every Monday I would do marketer Monday so I'd reach out to followers I would DM other peers people in marketing, be like, can I feature you on my stories?

8:27Can you answer a few questions? Can I tag you? On a Saturday or a Sunday, I do like a small business Sunday or a small business Saturday, and I was featuring people in our community. It was unstrategized. I just wanted it to be a place that wasn't about me. I never wanted it to be the selfie show. I wanted it to be a place that we could learn together. But what I didn't realize was through building this shared space. It was something that people hadn't really experienced before. You know, when we follow marketing publications, we're learning from them. They're interviewing our peers, but we don't have much of a say.

9:01Or if we're following career influencers, marketing creators, it's them educating us, but it's still their space. So I think unknowingly what I was doing was hopefully, and hopefully still now, despite the growth, building this shared space. Something where if you have a thought you can comment it and I will respond and if I don't someone else will because this is a safe space it's a place where you can feature in a newsletter with 20 ,000 readers it's a space where you really matter and I hope that our audience really feel that so for me if I was to start again my first thing or my first action would be to you how can I make this a shared space and I think now a lot of platforms have amazing features that you didn't have in 2020.

9:48You know, you've got broadcast channels, you've got sub stack, I know sub stack existed back then, but it's so much bigger, so many more people are on it now. I know that TikTok have a similar feature to broadcast channels as well. You have so many more opportunities to involve an audience in what you're doing, you can do polls in your comment section on Instagram. What can you do that makes it a shared space? I think we live in such an oversaturated landscape that if there isn't something in it for the audience, they're not going to care. So giving the mistake in it really matters. So unknowingly, I was doing community before I was doing community.

10:25And I know it seems like such a buzzword and every marketer and their dog talks about it. But yeah, I think if I lost everything today or you look at PLM and think, I wish I could do that. You absolutely can. It's just the power of bringing your peers in and doing it together. I think it's so powerful that you come from a perspective of you're not you wanted to start as a shared space. Like you don't come out and say, I'm building a community. I think the best communities are the ones that are communities without even realizing their communities. The ones that try to set out to be a community usually are horrendous and become a ghost town in five seconds.

11:04Sorry, let's get into some specifics here because I'm curious about a lot of stuff. So when you're like, OK, this thing's starting to get some traction. I'm going to make my big community on TikTok, on YouTube, on Instagram. No, no. Sophie Miller did the thing which I think actually helped LinkedIn become cool. I think you're one of the reasons LinkedIn is cool. You went all in on LinkedIn. Why did you do that? I love LinkedIn. I was at a event, a non-marketing event recently. I was watching the Formula E and I was with a group of other creators and we were talking oh what platforms are you on and people like oh i've got like a million followers on tiktok like i'm this and i'm like oh i am a linkedin creator and everyone kind of looks at you like what the heck does that mean but two like are you okay there are so many cooler places on the internet but linkedin changed my life i started posting on linkedin in january 2021.

12:06So PLM was around six months old. And it started as me just repurposing our Instagram posts. So our Instagram page then and still now, like I'm not the profile picture. It doesn't say Sophie anywhere. It's very much its own brand. So I set up PLM on Instagram as a company account. I was repurposing our carousels. I wasn't doing anything special. But what I noticed was that there were people over there who wanted to talk. People that had thoughts and opinions that but no one else was really facilitating. Again, going back to community. Continued growing our PLM page, and I was graduating very soon.

12:48I didn't have a job lined up. I didn't have much experience. So I was like, right, if I can do this on PLM, maybe I can start posting as Sophie. And I didn't have a big network at the time. I didn't really know anyone in marketing, which I think was a bit of a blessing. I think very often, you know, if you're not posting on LinkedIn now, but you want to, what you will do is go on and see what other people are doing to understand how you can do what they are doing, but in your own way. I didn't have any of that. No one was really posting fun stuff or conversational stuff on LinkedIn at the time.

13:24So it was literally just a case of like, what do I want to post creatively, educationally? Who does Sophie want to be on LinkedIn with no external influence or impact, which I'm really grateful for. There was no one to strategize that for me. I think what really sold LinkedIn again for me was that conversational aspect. And my content was nothing special. Oh my goodness, it was honestly awful. I found old screenshots recently. The copywriting sucked, the call to action sucked, my creative sucked. but I could screenshot and I remember one of the big posts that I shared on my personal LinkedIn was about Triangle Swimwear.

14:06I was listening to a podcast with their founder and they shared this story about how to get Kendall Jenner to post about them. They gifted all of her friends a bikini. Major FOMO, Kendall's team got in touch, hey Triangle we would love to check you out and then all of a sudden she was posting and she was like in on it and it kind of blew up their brand. I posted about that on LinkedIn got like millions of impressions loads of likes awesome but what I love the most was the comments oh cool I didn't know this so oh I loved that podcast have you listened to this or I saw a similar story here I think we see LinkedIn as this kind of corporate box that sucks the life out of you but I think really it's just people that have thoughts opinions experience that really don't have anywhere to share it and if you can leverage that I think the platform can be a really powerful place career and business wise but also a really enjoyable place for you to be as a creator you're not posting to nothing you're posting it's received and there's people that will speak back so I think learning that Arlene through both profiles Sophie and my business profile that's my strategy visibility how can I be known to the most amount of right people because I think like in business in career you don't need to be the best I think just being the most visible can be really quite beneficial so understanding people and I think as marketers we are in the business of people so it just made sense to be on LinkedIn I I think it Well, I'll tell you, I, um, I, everything you said, I completely am on board with.

15:47And also for some reason, I think LinkedIn is a very positive place. There's not a lot of like haters and angry people. I don't know why, just relatively positive, which is nice. Um, so let me ask you some very specific things on LinkedIn that I see that you do. And I want to know if it's intentional. So you have your pretty little marketers company page, and then you have your Sophie Miller page, both with massive followings. on Pretty Little Marketer, you have a very distinct brand that you've created that if you go on there, everybody knows your font and your layout, all this stuff. But what I see on Pretty Little Marketer's page is you provide basically all you do is put out value.

16:25It is, here's the new things this week. Here's this cool campaigns. Here's what you need to know about changes to this platform. And it's value, value, value, value. In almost every post on that page, you don't really have links going elsewhere. You're not sending people off of platform. You're not selling anything on that company page. Whereas on Sophie Miller, your personal page, you still provide a lot of great content, fun stuff, whatever. But on your personal page, you will talk about, you know, maybe join my club. Here's a link to join my club, a little bit of selling. You'll have links to stuff that's off platform.

17:02Is there an intentionality about what you're doing on your personal page versus your company page? For sure. When it comes to PLM and selling, so what you see is a online community, but what we sell is our membership. We have 500 people in our membership. It's off platform. It's closed platform, so it's not on social. We also have a digital shop launching soon as well. So PLM is a resource and it sells a resource when it comes to selling those things I very much rely on people's natural curiosity I use this analogy often of like if I offered you a bite of a really delicious cake like you're probably going to want the whole slice like who who just wants one bite of cake so if I can give you like a piece of goodness through PLM's business page content And like, why would you not then click through like, oh, Sophie, okay, what's on Sophie's page?

17:59Oh, cool. There's a link in bio here. I'm going to click it. Oh, newsletter. That's cool. People sign up to the newsletter. I'll mention our membership. It's a very much a trickle through funnel. Whereas on my personal LinkedIn, I very much see myself as like the face of the selling. I am much more unafraid to be like our membership's opening in a week. Here's a link. here's what we're up to or I'm speaking at this event or come and sign up to my newsletter I think for a few reasons one I feel it's much more well received I know we're in this age of personal branding and I kind of get personal branding ick sometimes I feel like we talk about it so much it's pushed as this amazing thing and it totally it totally is um but I do get the ick sometimes but I feel like when people put a face to a membership oh I know Sophie Sophie's in there I can chat with Sophie or even if they don't speak with me directly because that isn't the selling point of our space it's not access to me it's access to others and peers well I know Sophie so there's going to be people like her in it so why would I not want that or the newsletter is written by me so why would i not be the person to speak about that so i think firstly the reception people are so much more into receiving it from a person rather than a faceless account because you can feel it you can imagine it you can put a face to a name um two i find engagement on a company page on LinkedIn.

19:40So challenging. I think anytime I put a link in there or I remember for our membership announcement when it reopened for I call it membership 2.0. It was like a revamped version in March this year. I remember doing the announcement post on my personal profile. Amazing engagement, great click throughs, great joinings, post on PLM. We have 340 ,000 followers on there currently at the time i'd estimate around 300 000 and we maybe got like 30 likes the second is a drop of selling cool i'm not here for that i think we've also set this benchmark on the plm company account so like i'm not here to do that so people don't expect it so as soon as there is something in that realm i didn't follow i didn't follow for this whereas when it comes to a personal account when i'm following you to know what you're up to i run our membership that is what I'm up to.

20:35So I think reception first of all, but also you're setting those expectations. So I don't think that works for everyone. I think there are many company pages out there that can do a great job of selling, but I think I set the expectations early that you don't see that here. It would be really challenging for me to find an effective way to do that through our company LinkedIn page. The one thing I do do with our company LinkedIn page, and I've dropped the ball recently but i'm hoping to get back on it is every friday i used to have a top things happening in marketing trust me i know i was like where is it it's coming back i promise okay good so it would come out every friday it was like carousel you just swipe through and be like mark zuckerberg did this or whatever the updates are and in the copy of that post every single friday it was if you want more i have a newsletter that comes out every thursday in that thursday newsletter our membership is mentioned every week.

21:31When doors open, that email list, get a reminder email to join the waitlist. So whilst I'm not selling on PLM, I'm pooling people who are interested into a space where they are happy to receive selling from PLM, which is our email marketing and newsletter. So there's no direct selling. You see that on my personal account, but there are still ways that we funnel people who are interested into those kind of paid service spaces. So I hope there's some value in that. Oh, yeah. No, I think there is. I love what you're saying because I think that people get it. They do it backwards. They have their company page sell.

22:08It does nothing. And to your point, company page engagement that's not providing value is like horrendous. So let me ask you rapid fire LinkedIn questions. And then I want to ask you a little about email. So links in post on LinkedIn, you're not afraid to do it. You're like, it doesn't really hurt engagement. Is that your take? That is my take based on my data. I think people have different experiences there. But I think whenever we see a lack of impressions on a LinkedIn post with a link, I don't think and if anyone wants to prove me wrong, please DM me. I'm so open to a conversation. I don't think it's LinkedIn suppressing that.

22:50I think it's just because it's naturally probably tied to a more salesy message. Less people engage, less people see it. Impressions are lower. So for me, I've never had any problem there. If I have a link, I expect it to have less engagement because I'm selling. So I think it's more the kind of nuance of the post over LinkedIn, but I see people talk about it often. So maybe, maybe it's me. No, it's not. It actually makes a lot of sense. What about reposting? I see you repost sometimes. And so my question about reposting is, because I'm scared to repost, I'll be honest. I feel like if I repost, it's going to ding me for my next post that I do.

23:28Is it fine to repost? And if you repost, are you better off reposting with no comments? Oh, good question. So whenever I repost content on LinkedIn, I will just like straight repost rather than the option to like add your own post with it in terms of metrics i partially don't see much of a dip like post repost i know that i have seen a few creators talking about like if you're posting twice a day or say let's say you post in the morning and then you repost at lunchtime you come to post the next day you might see a dip but for me, I like data matters for business account more than I care about it for my personal profile.

24:15I very much think that if you're solving value consistently, count the buzzwords here guys, but if you're solving value consistency and people want to see your content, then like, why does it matter if I reposted twice yesterday? Cause you want to see, we have favorite creators, I engage with them nonetheless. I do repost sparingly. For me, it's kind of like if someone tagged me in a really beautiful post or maybe one of the businesses that I'm involved with has done something that I would like to pin and stamp on my profile. So I'm not reposting all the time. I'm using it intentionally. I personally don't see an impact on my metrics, but as with everything, have a try, see what happens for you.

24:57But I think it's a great feature. You know, know if someone's tagged you in something great that you want to show your followers like repost it jay i would love all right i will i'm going to start reposting you is what i'm going to do all right before we run out of time i want to talk about your newsletter for a minute because there's something that you're doing in your newsletter that i think people need to do more of and especially you being a one-person band and what i mean by that is so your newsletter is ridiculous when i say that actually makes me upset because it's so good that we can't i can't put out what you put out because there's a lot in there.

25:27But one of the things that you do towards the bottom of your newsletter is almost like in a digest format, you're like, here are 15 things you need to know what's going on. And you'll write like four or five words, you know, meta, just change the app for Instagram or whatever. And there'll be a link somewhere else. Okay. About that thing. And there's literally like 15 of them. And the thing that I think that people need to realize, whether you're a big company or a small company or a personal brand, you don't need to, I want to hear your take on this, but you don't need to like be the greatest writer.

25:58You don't need to have all this original content. People get a lot of value. I know for me, no offense, I get the most value out of you going out there and gathering up all the most important info. So I don't have to do that work. And I think it's such a great move for a newsletter for any type of company to do, because you become a thought leader by gathering thought leaderships. Was that like a whole intentional idea that you did that? Cause that is awesome. thank you I love our newsletter I started it in I think it was September 2023 um and I have posted it it used to be on a Friday morning and then I think I read somewhere that Fridays suck for emails so I was like right I'll do it on a Thursday then so now it goes out at 10 a.m UK time every single Thursday without fail and it's called the weekly roundup and the goal is exactly that to give you a weekly roundup and the first section is kind of like a hey guys here's what I'm up to this week it's like a chatty intro I want it to feel like it's coming from and written by a person we then have two or three segments underneath that where I will deep dive a piece of news so it might be last week I spoke by Instagram reposts we'll explore what it is but more so than that I kind of want you to have my take on what it means for you so you're getting something that you're not getting everywhere else right the penultimate section as you mentioned is kind of like the new in the news section and that is literally just me copy and pasting about 15 20 links everything that i've been saving that week it might be a thread of a screenshot of a a new feature on instagram or tiktok band news or whatever that might be um and then at the end i'll do like a wrap up, ask a question, help people respond and then sign up off with from Sophie.

27:47For me, when it came to thinking up, I always wanted to have a newsletter and it took me three years to launch one because I didn't know what I wanted to talk about when really what I should have been thinking on. And when I landed on the weekly roundup, it was that flip of like, what is the most valuable for people? What do they want in their inbox? And, you know, if they want a big takeaway on what's happening on socials right now, they're probably going to look on my LinkedIn or my Instagram. So what can I give people that they're not getting from me somewhere else? I really wanted it to have a purpose.

28:24More so to that, the one thing that I really, really thought on was what PLM is known for. For me, it's my goal to make social media simple. When I write our social media content that's what i do that's why i try and instill in there how can i do that differently in an email format and that's when the roundup was born so taking that onus off what do i want to write about what does our company want to put in people's inboxes and actually like honestly to ourselves what do people want to see do they even want to see us in their inboxes how can it be something about you that's really welcomed and then two in that like how do we feel elsewhere and how am I putting that into email format I have the best time writing our newsletter it's the one thing that I get the most kind of great feedback on and I'm so pleased that everyone else loves it as well but yeah it took me three years to land on something that worked and it was enjoyable for both sides so I think yeah biggest thing for me is like what do people want from you and how can you give that to them by way of email rather than and I know it's so hard for marketers that have stakeholders who want it to be on them but yeah I think what does your audience want what can you deliver to them that's welcomed well I think it's fantastic and it doesn't matter if you're in like a boring b2b plumbing industry or you're in healthcare you know billing software If you do a roundup style thing with links to everything going on that week, you will have people that want to consume your newsletter.

29:58They'll be excited about opening it because you're helping them get smarter. And that's what I love about your newsletter. Speaking of your newsletter, Sophie is going to be speaking at Guru Conference, our giant free email marketing event. It's coming up in November. GuruConference.com. Sophie will be there talking about her newsletter and email and all the things. Sophie, are you excited about this? I'm so excited. I have never I do a lot of speaking and I love it. I also love our newsletter and I've never I've never shared anything about it before. I'm not an email marketer. So I'm hoping I can bring that new perspective of someone who is new.

30:38And I really I really made it work for our business has changed my business has changed my relationship with our community as well. So, yeah, I don't know if I do things conventionally or properly or in the best way. So I'm hoping I can kind of share the messy behind the scenes and inspire you guys to give it a go as well. So I'm really thrilled. I am so grateful to be part of the two days. That's amazing. Honestly, I will be tuning in. I'll be so excited for your session. Thank you for doing it. And everybody for real. First of all, go and track down Sophie Miller on LinkedIn. If you're not following Pretty Little Marketers, stop listening.

31:17Go do that. Join her club and her community. It's not expensive, right? I mean,$20 a month. Do I have that right? Yeah. I want everything we do to be like I'm growing a business, of course, but I want everything we do to be accessible whilst reflecting our value. So it's 20 pounds. 20 pounds. 20 pounds. Great British pounds. a month we have so much fun inside and I am the sort of person who's like never content with what we've got so I am rehauling our membership again nothing's changing except more good stuff is coming so yeah my goal is to just deliver deliver what the people need so we have a lot of fun inside you are fun and I appreciate we're gonna put everything in the show notes everybody go sign up for everything going on with Sophie you're incredible thank you for doing this and can't wait to see you at Guru.

32:10I'll see you then. Thank you so much for having me today. You did it. You made it to the end, but wait, the party is not over. Listen, I want to keep hanging out. Subscribe to this podcast. And if it wasn't the worst podcast you've ever listened to, give it a five-star review. Why not? But you know what? I want to do even more with you. Go to gurumediahub.com and we can partner there. You could find out about all of our free events, all of our stuff. And if you're epically bored, go to jschwedelson.com and we could stay connected. You could find my newsletter and everything else I got going on.

32:44Thanks for being here and hope you subscribe.