When it comes to curating your brand’s social media content, we’re firm believers that original is best. Social media, Instagram in particular, is flooded with millions of pieces of content daily, so your content marketing strategy must cut through the noise, stand out and generate sales or bookings for your business. Gone are the days of inspirational social feeds and “regrams”, people want to see their favourite brands making an effort with their content, creating engaging images and clever captions to boot.

But how do you do this? You call in the big guns, that’s how. 

We recently executed a brand and product shoot for our client and collagen queen, Edible Earth. Following a stunning rebrand of her marine collagen, organic bee pollen and adaptogen wellness formulas, the purpose of the shoot was to capture Edible Earth’s new packaging in situ as well as imagery of the brand’s founder, Sarah. This content would then form part of an integrated content strategy as well as extending to PR and media opportunities.

Outstanding creatives and long-time friends of Dark Horse, photographer Thom Davidson (Shot by Thom) and stylist Clare Ryan helped us bring this vision to life with a brand shoot that captured the new style and branding of Edible Earth whilst keeping it accessible to a wide market. The end result was a catalogue of images we regularly swoon over and have had massive impact on Edible Earth’s social media growth.

Investing time and money into a professionally implemented brand and product shoot is worth its weight in gold. It will give you ownership over your own catalogue of high quality, perfectly styled images, allow your brand to stand out from the crowd on social media and ultimately result in more sales, followers and bookings.

We are also incredibly fortunate to have friends with a lust-worthy house and the patience to allow our whole team take-it-over for several hours while we captured this amazing brand story.

It takes a village - curating content to make your brand glow

You can probably guess my thoughts on this before I start . . . by putting quote marks around 'let'... I've 

 to make it clear that you don't have a choice.

Trying to stop them creating a personal brand is also kind of… stupid.

I hear many business owners bemoan a staff member building a strong personal brand, especially in the creative industries such as photography, hair and make-up, marketing, events and social media; simply because they are afraid they will build their brand under the umbrella of your business and then walk away with your clients and business. Yeah, that can happen (snakes will always slither ), but you are missing an opportunity if you don't support the amazing people in your team (and their personal brand journey) - and your business will miss out too.

1. If you don't support it - they'll find a company that does


We live in a time where building a personal brand is not just an option, it’s highly recommended. It ensures job prospects, career advancement and personal growth will follow you and will act as a walking, talking resume. By restricting your team's ability to grow in this space, you’ll increase the chances of their departure… not decrease it.

2. It builds respect and trust for them and by extension - your business


Trust and respect for your team and your business are not mutually exclusive. If people trust your team, they will trust your business. With the rise of AI and the lean into authenticity and humanity, people need to connect to a person - and individual - a human. Not a faceless brand, product, service or business. So if you have many trusted humans as part of your brand story, the trust and faith in your business will be amplified too.

3. It builds brand awareness and visibility for your business in their niche audience


Is it such a leap to think that the audience that follows the superstars you work with, also would be the EXACT audience you and your business are trying to attract? Whether that be as client attraction or recruitment - both are solid wins.

4. It helps to soften the impact of any negative brand fallout from other staff


If one of your team members cocks it up royally and publicly, having many other team members with strong personal brands will soften the impact of bad PR amongst potential clients and the general public… you know the old rule… it’s the negative reviews that give the positive reviews context and weight.

5. It's a strong testimonial tool for potential staff (and clients!)


Happy, supported staff talk about being happy and supported. They talk about you... and about your business. A big part of what makes businesses great is the amazing team and culture they cultivate… and the attraction of quality staff can be one of the toughest jobs out there. What better testimonial is there than team members that sing your praises… even better if it’s to a large audience of like-minded individuals. Jackpot!

6. Building trust and a strong positive relationship with your team means they'll support you too


Support, trust, collaboration and respect are all two-way streets. It can't just flow one way. You should openly and genuinely support your team and help them build their profile and reputation. Of course they may leave to fulfil their dreams and career aspirations, but that is something that's outside of your control - and trying to restrict that is like trying to put an octopus in a vase . On the flipside, by supporting and encouraging the growth and development of personal brands in your team, they might come back one day - or even stay - imagine that?!

7. By holding back their personal growth, you do yourself and your business a disservice


If you start by assuming the worst in people, you can create a self-fulfilling prophecy. But not only that, by hindering their potential for growth you are holding back the growth and development in your own business too. Your team and your culture and the foundational blocks for your business. You want everything and everyone to grow - and that includes their own personal brand.

Should I "let" my staff create a strong personal brand on social media?

If that statement sounds like I’ve turned into an unbearable bossy britches, then let me explain. Put simply, you wouldn’t feed a Mogwai after midnight… would you?

As much as I have trouble saying ‘no’ to calls for help, when those plaintive pleas happen in November and December alarm bells ring.. Managing a digital agency for nearly a decade means I have certainly noticed a pattern with the type of folk who come knocking on our door for our services in November and December.  There are always exceptions to the rule - but there is a very solid collection of negative past experiences that have informed our firm policy to not onboard new clients in this ‘danger zone’.

Here’s some of the top reasons why we’ll be saying NO

Onboarding a new client to manage their social media takes time, concentration and lots of love. It’s like dating someone new but with the clock ticking, your clothes on fire and Jingle Bells playing on a loop. First you have to organise the logistical bits and bobs like contracts, service deliverables, social passwords, admin rights and connections to name just a few. This is assuming there is no weirdness like rogue Facebook Business Manager ownership by Tegan the intern who left in August. It also takes time to work out your voice, what you like, how you/your business tick and how you want to be represented on social. This process alone can sometimes take up to three months. Which obviously does NOT fit with the ‘let’s make this work’ in the two-months-before-Christmas timeline. Just writing all that makes me feel anxious and tired so please take note and say ‘no thank you very much’.



7kg babies – or delivering the undeliverable


There is a very real sense in this current world that bringing in a digital team will ‘solve all your woes’. Fair enough, we are pretty damn awesome, but even Team Amazing can’t perform actual miracles (most of the time). Whether they’re expecting you to manage the overflow from an overworked marketing team, ticking off some looming KPIs or myriad of other businessy things, the simple truth is it’s impossible to deliver everything in this short time frame. Add to the mix management trying to navigate increased days off (Chrissy functions!) and holiday requests within both the incoming business and your own team and you’ll understand that we have to manage expectations with a very firm dose of tough love. No matter how much you try to offer realistic insight into what can and can’t be achieved, I can almost guarantee those warnings will not be remembered in the heat of the moment, and everyone will be left with feelings of being let down with targets (real or imagined) not being hit.



Sell Season makes everybody a little nutso


Even for our long-standing clients, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Pre-Christmas and Boxing Day sales are seen as the Hail Mary patches not only for most businesses, but especially for e-commerce. Those that have seen lower-than-expected sales for the past 10 months of the year, will see your digital agency as their saviour to finally hit those lofty goals (and deliver bonuses in time for Christmas). Of course, we have been known to work miracles, but this time of year is a highly competitive and noisy sales space. If your digital strategy has been woeful for a while, it’s going to take some work to get you out of the dumpster bin that’s on fire and hurtling to Nowhereville.



Our normal clients want fries, a Fanta and a super sundae too


Even with our already on-boarded existing client list, things start to get a little… intense. They want extra photo shoots, more ads, supersized content and EDMs all day long because tis the season of golden sales. Not unreasonably, they too want to ride that purchasing wave and want us to help them get there. We’re super sorry, but that means at this time of year we have no more room at the Inn (even if you turn up on a donkey with some myrrh on the side).



We get it. The lead-up to Christmas is rarely ‘drama free’ - both in our professional and personal lives. All of us are spread thin, a bit tired and some of us are even ready for a full-blown punch-up on the best of days. Taking that into consideration, we’d prefer not to put the ‘boxing' into Boxing Day.



Once the tinsel is put back in its box, January brings renewed ideas, refreshed staff and plenty of down-time for a lot of us. Come-a-knocking then, we’d love to hear from you!

Putting the 'NO' in November – why we don’t onboard new clients in November or December . . . and why you shouldn’t either. 

You may have heard plenty of Instagram experts talking about how hashtags are dead… or not dead… or you should only use 3 to 5… or 10… or you still should use the full 30… well - they are kind of ALL right.


Well, Instagram is becoming more sophisticated in its search capabilities (about bloody time) - even though searching for a username is still a massive pain in the butt and it has to be EXACT for it to be found… (hang on - where does that underscore go?).

In terms of content search and indexing, Instagram is operating more and more like a search engine and picking up common keywords across ALL your content - be that your bio, username, 

 AND hashtags. This is operating very much like SEO does for your website, using keywords regularly throughout to ensure those web crawlers can find you and get your site seen by people who are actually looking for your type of content.

Previously hashtags and your bio/username were the only ways keywords could be searched. NOT SO ANYMORE. The algorithm is indexing ALL words - even in your captions and across ALL your posts.

Start using Instagram like you would your website - using keywords that relate to your niche regularly, in your 

. I’ve seen content presented as an option in search, even when the keyword is not even used - but it was certainly used often enough in their other posts to ensure all their content started coming up in search as relevant.

What else does this mean? Stop using made-up, stupid, nonsensicle words. The ones that personally make my eyes roll back into my head are: biz, widdle chids, soshewwwl (seriously - I’ve seen this - it’s social - SOCIAL 🙄 ).


Unless your ideal customer is going to search “soshewwwl 4 biz”,  then maybe you need to rethink your strategy. I’m not saying don’t play around with language - hell, I do it all the time - just don’t do it for your KEYWORDS or anything you think your audience will be searching for.


To answer the ultimate question - are hashtags redundant? No and yes (don’t you love answers that are as clear as mud 😂 ). If you are using keywords relevant to your niche and customer, then your content will still be searchable - but maybe add a few industry hashtags in regularly to improve your searchability even more.

Are Hashtags Useless? Instagram as a Search Engine.

Latest News

It takes a village - curating content to make your brand glow

Should I "let" my staff create a strong personal brand on social media?

Putting the 'NO' in November – why we don’t onboard new clients in November or December . . . and why you shouldn’t either.

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