September 2, 2025 • 23 mins
The Mullet is our small rural business and marketing advice mini-series, brought to you by Richard P and Callum of CountrySlide.
This episode we answer a question from Danum Blades about how to get around the meta algorithm which appears to be slowing his growth on social media as a craftsman who makes and sells knives.
You can give Alan a follow over on @Danumblades
If you have a question, please DM us or send an email on contact@countryslide.co.uk
This episode we answer a question from Danum Blades about how to get around the meta algorithm which appears to be slowing his growth on social media as a craftsman who makes and sells knives.
You can give Alan a follow over on @Danumblades
If you have a question, please DM us or send an email on contact@countryslide.co.uk
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Bird's eye potato Wa falls there, waversatile?
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Why were you late to this podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Because I was standing in a farmyard talking to a
man about the closure of local abattoirs. Wow, this is
important stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
We live different lives.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Yeah, why are you late normally.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Today? To get this podcast out? I had to put
my put my dinner in the form of a rap
so I could eat it while I walked the dog.
Life is too busy for single tasks.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Do you just have a list of like shorthand of
a food that weighs You can just make food easier
to consume.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
It was going to be a chicken salad, but I
just couldn't do a chicken salad like that, so I dumped.
You know, I considered what was okay to put into
a rap. I drew the line at pomegranate seeds. I
felt like that works on a salad, doesn't work in
a wrap.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
So if you're listening to this and thinking that your
mate told you to listen to this because it could
help you with your small rural business, then yeah, this
is the right place. It's just we haven't got anywhere
near the topic yet.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Maybe we never will.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
No, we never will. This is the Mullet. This is
the business and marketing oriented offshoot of Britain's Finest Rural podcast,
because of course this is where we went first for
our little diversion. This is episode five. There are four
more that have already been recorded, so you can go
back in the catalog and listen to those if you wish,
(01:40):
or if you just wonder if they're all as bad
as this one. They are all recorded in big blocks,
so if you want to send in your questions for
future episodes then you can send them in or the
links are in the show description, but they might not
get read out for a few weeks. So we're going
to start with this first one, which I think Callum
(02:00):
can read out because he wasn't ready and it's fun
to watch him.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Pas I can read. Where are the questions?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
They were sent to you in an email?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I know I've got them. I've done some I've done
some work.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Oh go on, go on, do the questions.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
General feedback for the Mullet is we've actually provided some
benefit to people's lives, which is is nice to know.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
None of those people are on this call.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Time bandits, so the stop chuckling is like reading in
class isn't it. I'm finding the business info very interesting
and has given me a few ideas to work on.
I started to go through my part. Oh oh, have
ruined it already. I started to go through the podcast again,
(02:55):
and Richard mentioned dilemmas. My dilemma is that the gods
have Instagram and probably Facebook will not share my content
as a knife maker. My content obviously contains photos of knives.
Am I best to delete everything and start again, or
keep going with one profile and start another from scratch
(03:16):
and do it completely differently. I like the idea of
social proofing. Look at other options, or all of them.
I don't believe that people are searching for what I do,
so I think I need to be seen. Alan Johnson
and his social media is danum Blades, which is d
A n U M Blades.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
A very good knife baker as well. He's he had
a stare at the game fair and I was fondling
some of his wares.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
What about his knives?
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Oh they were good too, Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I saw them too. He was in the ferreting things
with the pugs and drummers. Let's so the knives good
to specify that they are largely hunting knives. I'm just
having a look. Does some good lever work as well? Amazing.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
So are you aware then of this Instagram issue around guns,
knives things like that. And it's not just Instagram, it's meta,
it's Facebook as well, that they really don't like you
having knives and guns in pictures on their platform.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
So I've come across backstory. I've worked with a lot
of people doing a lot of different social media content.
I've come across a variety of things that have been
really troublesome for marketing. Transformation photos is one of these
(04:49):
things that you can't put any money or spend behind
because it often relates to selling people diet pills and snakes. Okay,
so that's one that's almost been impossible. I haven't noticed
I put guns in there. I have noticed many content
(05:10):
creators since words like suicide and death and guns.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And people because those you saying those words, we're not
going to cut them out, but you saying those words
will have been picked up by Spotify. I can guarantee.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, so people say unlive themselves in place of that,
which I assume the algorithm only just picks up. But yeah,
it's I am familiar with the censoring and I have
experienced some of it before and I did a little
did a little research and the the AI algorithm that
(05:52):
Meta uses, so that's both Facebook and Instagram, has zero
idea of the nuance of whether this is a deer
stalker's knife or crafted and you know, a thing of art,
or it's a weapon. So it really doesn't have any
idea even with captions. And there's a bunch of hashtags
(06:17):
around this topic that are completely banned and cannot be
used like blacklisted.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, and for add creative with the sort of you know,
the sort of thing that you produce, and that me
as an occasional influenza for sort of large bearded men.
That is my my audience. The when you're working with brands,
sometimes they have very specific instructions about none of this
(06:44):
to be included in shots, you know or don't had
to shoot something not that long ago, which was for
a rifle carrier, so it's like a rucksack frame that
sort of the rifle goes on and to demonstrate how
it comes out, the model or the artists was using
a stick to show how Yeah, I think you wanted
(07:06):
to use a French baguette, but it kept breaking apart
every time we tried to do something with it, so
we had to use a stick from somewhere in the woods.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
So specific to the gun, the gun is yeah to
it limits the algorithm.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Since AI has come into the algorithm for image detection,
it's got worse because knives are a pretty distinct shape,
but guns it's quite good at picking out guns now
or components of guns. So I've seen that a TikTok
is more strict with it than Meta, than Instagram or Facebook,
but generally it's a good thing to assume across all
social media platforms. Knives, guns, difficult topics like that are
(07:47):
going to be harder to get through than others. And
you might be listening to this thinking, but I've seen
loads of gun stuff on YouTube. I see loads of
gun stuff there are If you get to a certain
size and you're bringing enough people in YouTube, particularly for them,
and bringing a big enough audience to them, you will
get a direct contact at YouTube who will manually approve
(08:10):
your content that gets flagged by the algorithm. That's how
those big American gun YouTubers do it, and that's how
they get through. But I know that it's not just
a UK problem for the knife thing because there's a
guy called Josh Smith who has Montana knives. So if
you're into your outdoor knife blade stuff, you know that's
(08:32):
the tools you like buying, you will have come across
their stuff. They're a very, very successful brand. He has
a huge problem with either his post being taken down
or being put you know, it gets that blurred sensitive
image thing goes on it, or he just can't get
it on there. So we're talking about the subject. How
(08:53):
do we solve this for Alan? How do we answer
his question which is should he keep going with a
profile he's got or or should he start again from
scratch or should he do both and sort of ab
test it.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
My my thing would be to do a hybrid strategy
to do both the same at the same time. What's
your thoughts on it.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
I think having backup accounts is never a terrible idea.
You see that a lot with people who do controversial
things or things that the algorithm doesn't like. They say,
you know, this is my backup accounts, so you can
follow that so that if they lose the main account,
they don't have to build it up again from scratch.
But by creating a second account. You're not going to
(09:45):
move away from the problem because a problem is built
into the platform. You know, if you just put another
knife image, it's going to get eventually get flagged in
the same way. So I would say to try and
balance out the fee. So it's not just photos of knives,
it's photos of the process, photos of of somehow of
(10:07):
them being used, or showing them maybe in the sheath
on a belt, it might be less likely to get flagged.
Maybe experiment with the content rather than the account, you know,
to ab test does it get through if it's like this,
does this get more engagement or is it only when
the knife is out on a table or a background
(10:29):
or something like that. Is that when the problem kicks in.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah, I'm just having a closer look. But yeah, I agree.
It's quite funny that some content absolutely bombs and then
some of it gets through. It seems to be like
a carousel of images does quite well for him, but
then others not so much. I can't find the Instagram
because I really wanted to look at the Instagram.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Is something to consider as well. While Callum looks for
his Instagram. I think Instagram's not having a great moment
whilst we're recording. I think, because I'm trying to get
onto it as well, I think they might be server issues.
Something to consider is that if you're a business, if
you've particularly if you're listed as a business account on Instagram,
(11:17):
Instagram does not see you as an asset. Instagram sees
you as a potential customer or neutral. That's it. So
they want you to buy ads from them. They want
you to do boosted posts, run ads, do ads in stories,
those kind of things. There if you can try and
boost a couple of the posts, if you experiment with
(11:39):
putting different kinds of content on and then see if
you're allowed to boost those posts, that might that might
show you what is acceptable to Instagram. You don't have
to boost it for huge amounts, and maybe ten quid,
throw ten quid behind an ad and target UK people
who like phishing and just see if that gets a return.
(12:02):
Because also you get this with ads anyway, anytime you
spend money on ads, you want to target certain demographics,
see if you get more response from that than another one.
But maybe see if you get sort of tacit approval
from the meta platform by trying to boost it, by
trying to give them what they want, which is money.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, that gives you a little bit of confirmation. I
can't seem to find that in search. Interesting yeah, oh yeah,
who and if has arrived from danam Blade and it
is not appearing in search, which is really quite interesting sign. Yes,
(12:45):
I am searching this from Essex and I am searching
danum Blades and I cannot find it. So that would
I found it now somebody mentioned dan and Blades. The
Cigar Smoking Hunter has mentioned dan and Blade, and then
(13:05):
I can click on it and go it, so that
would appear. That would appear as if Dan and Blade
is shadow band.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Yes, So whether shadow banning exists, I mean Instagram always
deny it, but it definitely one hundred percent exists. And
almost everyone I know who has either a shooting related
account or a knife related account or something involving butchery
and things like that, they all seem to have sort
of plateaued in their growth the moment they started posting
(13:35):
that kind of content. That is something you have to
be aware of. If that is the kind of content
you're going into for yourself or for your business, is
that you are almost voluntarily stepping out of the algorithm.
Pushing you to people. You're volunteering yourself out of organic growth,
So you have to be canny in how you do this.
(13:58):
You have to look at things like, OK, can I
get tagged in things? Can I appear on other things?
Can I build an audience that doesn't rely on being
recommended on social media because that is not available to you,
Which means you've got to reach out to other people.
(14:18):
You've got to try and get onto things like podcasts
and get onto other people's do collaborations with other.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
People, build that rapport and that authority for sure.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Leverage what other people have.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
So some of my I did write some notes down
for this, and I did a little bit of research.
So don't delete posts from your Instagram, but archive posts.
So go in and archive, do not delete them because
that is not seen as good to the gods that
(14:54):
are Instagram. Look, do a caption, caption audit and look
for things. Hashtag knife is not allowed. Hashtag blade is
also not allowed. Combat not allowed. And weirdly I've run
into this before. E d C, which is an everyday carry,
(15:17):
is a a band hashtag which annoyed Electric Daisy, Carnivoid,
Las vegas no end because that was a that was
the hashtag for a long time.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
They got back stuff as well, like self reliance and
survival and things like that are all banned as well.
You won't get your post taken down. It just means
the moment that's there and that's tied to the post,
that's it.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
So go through, do a audit of those, and then
archive those posts. If they've got some semi good, semi
reasonable engagement, simply repost them with new captions that you're
going to focus on your craft. The pro says, material
origins and just sort of the story of the brand. Really,
(16:07):
just focus on that kind of thing. Don't necessarily say
knives every day. Carrying on all those bits.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Hashtags seem to be making less of a difference on
social media as well now than they're used to, particularly
on reels and videos that.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Because the AI picks it up. Yeah, so it knows
the words you're saying.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
He's got it, which is something else to be considerate of.
Be careful of literally of the words that you say
in your video. Yeah, that's because they are. You can't say, well,
I didn't write it down, so it won't be picked up.
You know that when you upload it. It's being scanned, transcribed,
and then what you say is being used to push
(16:49):
things forward, and it's to expand to what Calum said,
there's this weird list of things that you cannot say
if you want growth, Like if you you can't say Nats,
you have to say mid century German or something like that.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
They identify as mid century German.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Yeah, it's more seriousness. That is, there's all these layers
to it. It's not just what you do, and at
some point you have to accept there's a limitation on
how much you'll grow on that account. So follow the rules,
follow the rules that CON's given you there, follow the
or the use to be aware of all these things
(17:31):
that the algorithm is looking at, but also maybe try
and sidestep it and use that social media account as
not the place to grow and not the audience you're
trying to build. It's more of a portfolio.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Having met Alan, I think he's probably quite a funny chap.
So I would put the silliest name possible for a
knife and use that in place, and just talk normally
about such things, and just make sure you're using a
(18:07):
silly name, yeah, like a not fork danger spoon, Yeah,
I have crafted, hand crafted this danger spoon.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
A long time ago. I used to sell outdoor gear online.
We had a business doing that. We had original outdoor gear.
We hit a problem with the eBay shop at some
point because they stopped selling. They stopped selling knives on eBay.
You couldn't sell any knife at all. And there was
this famous meme and sort of screenshot doing the rounds
of somebody was selling a potato, a genuine Second World
(18:41):
War German potato, and all the history of the potato
and the unit the potato had served with and you
bought the potato, and it's about two grand. And with
a potato, you've got a free potato peela. A potato
peela was the bayonet that was actually we were trying
to sell, but all the focus was on this potato
they were selling. Yeah, I'd say get creative. I'd say
(19:03):
stick with the accounts you've got. But maybe it is
a sad acceptance of you're not going to grow in
the same way, but at least you can try and
talk around the subject. Maybe maybe get political I talking
about Trump.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
That will help focus on focus on the crafting and
show all the bits of the lever work. And the
blade can be a kind of cursory glance the storytelling.
Download someone like cap cut have a look at study
some viral hooks. You can use our friend Chatty caffe
(19:44):
chat GPT to look at what viral hooks work. So
that will be something like starting with this is the
coolest thing I have ever made. This danger Spoon. Took
me forty eight eight hours just to craft this one day,
just spoon, and then you know, you can show the
(20:05):
process of like I drew this out, so you're like
drawing the knife, your how it's being made, the honing
of it, and make sure that the a particular item
doesn't fill with the frame. If it feels a frame,
then it's going to do that. Interestingly, I just had
to look at some of the pictures and there's one
(20:26):
picture that's on a background that's quite confusing with lots
of letters and texts and a bit of wood and
a bit of leather and the knife isn't very prominent.
That does really well. So I think that probably did
well because it didn't know that it was a knife.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
It's going to be difficult to progress with this. That's
my final takeaway is just don't expect huge organic success
in this unless Alan starts wearing really tight but you know,
the influenza leggings and starts doing squats in front of
the camera. That seems to be good for organic growth, and.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Can we have that in our Patreon.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
I'm going to do squats in front of the camera
just for that. I might wear a dress or something.
And that does seem to be the only way to
grow now, So if you if you can find some
way of incorporating that into it, sort of like an
only blades.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Thing on Danger spoons.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Actually we've got only blades. It'd just be a little
adds from Hereford coming out. Six people got that joke, right.
I think we should close this one off because we
haven't actually given that much good advice. But we've sort
of talked about the subject, but we haven't got a
golden bullet.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
I would say focus on storytelling and don't show knives
and try and do everything to avoid it.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Well, it's not it not give up, don't grow, it's
don't choose that platform for growth.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yeah, there's also YouTube and TikTok. YouTube is terrible for discoverability,
but bloody good for SEO.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Yeah, and focus on you on your website, focus on
your SEO, focus on your focus on your ecosystem as
well of touch points, and you target those people who
are going to buy your thing. You're not hoping for
huge success across the entire population. You're after the zero
(22:30):
point five percent who actually want to buy your think.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Do you know this sort of thing like send an
email to someone at shooting times and see if you
can get it in a six six of the best
knives that exist roundup or or something like that. You
only need to Recently, a friend of mine did a
piece about craftsman and he sold lots and lots of
(22:53):
products off the back of it in the field. So
actually something like that. If you're making really nice high
end print media, I rarely would say this print media
could be the way to go. Just find your niche
and double down on it.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
There we are some very confusing advice. Thank you, Allen,
thank you for your sending you your email. We will
be back with another question and answer, hopefully maybe bye
bye then bye bye driver
Bird's eye potato Wa falls there, waversatile?
Speaker 2 (00:07):
Why were you late to this podcast.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Because I was standing in a farmyard talking to a
man about the closure of local abattoirs. Wow, this is
important stuff.
Speaker 2 (00:18):
We live different lives.
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Yeah, why are you late normally.
Speaker 2 (00:23):
Today? To get this podcast out? I had to put
my put my dinner in the form of a rap
so I could eat it while I walked the dog.
Life is too busy for single tasks.
Speaker 1 (00:40):
Do you just have a list of like shorthand of
a food that weighs You can just make food easier
to consume.
Speaker 2 (00:46):
It was going to be a chicken salad, but I
just couldn't do a chicken salad like that, so I dumped.
You know, I considered what was okay to put into
a rap. I drew the line at pomegranate seeds. I
felt like that works on a salad, doesn't work in
a wrap.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
So if you're listening to this and thinking that your
mate told you to listen to this because it could
help you with your small rural business, then yeah, this
is the right place. It's just we haven't got anywhere
near the topic yet.
Speaker 2 (01:17):
Maybe we never will.
Speaker 1 (01:19):
No, we never will. This is the Mullet. This is
the business and marketing oriented offshoot of Britain's Finest Rural podcast,
because of course this is where we went first for
our little diversion. This is episode five. There are four
more that have already been recorded, so you can go
back in the catalog and listen to those if you wish,
(01:40):
or if you just wonder if they're all as bad
as this one. They are all recorded in big blocks,
so if you want to send in your questions for
future episodes then you can send them in or the
links are in the show description, but they might not
get read out for a few weeks. So we're going
to start with this first one, which I think Callum
(02:00):
can read out because he wasn't ready and it's fun
to watch him.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Pas I can read. Where are the questions?
Speaker 1 (02:11):
They were sent to you in an email?
Speaker 2 (02:13):
I know I've got them. I've done some I've done
some work.
Speaker 1 (02:16):
Oh go on, go on, do the questions.
Speaker 2 (02:19):
General feedback for the Mullet is we've actually provided some
benefit to people's lives, which is is nice to know.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
None of those people are on this call.
Speaker 2 (02:32):
Time bandits, so the stop chuckling is like reading in
class isn't it. I'm finding the business info very interesting
and has given me a few ideas to work on.
I started to go through my part. Oh oh, have
ruined it already. I started to go through the podcast again,
(02:55):
and Richard mentioned dilemmas. My dilemma is that the gods
have Instagram and probably Facebook will not share my content
as a knife maker. My content obviously contains photos of knives.
Am I best to delete everything and start again, or
keep going with one profile and start another from scratch
(03:16):
and do it completely differently. I like the idea of
social proofing. Look at other options, or all of them.
I don't believe that people are searching for what I do,
so I think I need to be seen. Alan Johnson
and his social media is danum Blades, which is d
A n U M Blades.
Speaker 1 (03:39):
A very good knife baker as well. He's he had
a stare at the game fair and I was fondling
some of his wares.
Speaker 2 (03:48):
What about his knives?
Speaker 1 (03:49):
Oh they were good too, Yeah, so.
Speaker 2 (03:52):
I saw them too. He was in the ferreting things
with the pugs and drummers. Let's so the knives good
to specify that they are largely hunting knives. I'm just
having a look. Does some good lever work as well? Amazing.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
So are you aware then of this Instagram issue around guns,
knives things like that. And it's not just Instagram, it's meta,
it's Facebook as well, that they really don't like you
having knives and guns in pictures on their platform.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
So I've come across backstory. I've worked with a lot
of people doing a lot of different social media content.
I've come across a variety of things that have been
really troublesome for marketing. Transformation photos is one of these
(04:49):
things that you can't put any money or spend behind
because it often relates to selling people diet pills and snakes. Okay,
so that's one that's almost been impossible. I haven't noticed
I put guns in there. I have noticed many content
(05:10):
creators since words like suicide and death and guns.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
And people because those you saying those words, we're not
going to cut them out, but you saying those words
will have been picked up by Spotify. I can guarantee.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Yeah, so people say unlive themselves in place of that,
which I assume the algorithm only just picks up. But yeah,
it's I am familiar with the censoring and I have
experienced some of it before and I did a little
did a little research and the the AI algorithm that
(05:52):
Meta uses, so that's both Facebook and Instagram, has zero
idea of the nuance of whether this is a deer
stalker's knife or crafted and you know, a thing of art,
or it's a weapon. So it really doesn't have any
idea even with captions. And there's a bunch of hashtags
(06:17):
around this topic that are completely banned and cannot be
used like blacklisted.
Speaker 1 (06:23):
Yeah, and for add creative with the sort of you know,
the sort of thing that you produce, and that me
as an occasional influenza for sort of large bearded men.
That is my my audience. The when you're working with brands,
sometimes they have very specific instructions about none of this
(06:44):
to be included in shots, you know or don't had
to shoot something not that long ago, which was for
a rifle carrier, so it's like a rucksack frame that
sort of the rifle goes on and to demonstrate how
it comes out, the model or the artists was using
a stick to show how Yeah, I think you wanted
(07:06):
to use a French baguette, but it kept breaking apart
every time we tried to do something with it, so
we had to use a stick from somewhere in the woods.
Speaker 2 (07:14):
So specific to the gun, the gun is yeah to
it limits the algorithm.
Speaker 1 (07:22):
Since AI has come into the algorithm for image detection,
it's got worse because knives are a pretty distinct shape,
but guns it's quite good at picking out guns now
or components of guns. So I've seen that a TikTok
is more strict with it than Meta, than Instagram or Facebook,
but generally it's a good thing to assume across all
social media platforms. Knives, guns, difficult topics like that are
(07:47):
going to be harder to get through than others. And
you might be listening to this thinking, but I've seen
loads of gun stuff on YouTube. I see loads of
gun stuff there are If you get to a certain
size and you're bringing enough people in YouTube, particularly for them,
and bringing a big enough audience to them, you will
get a direct contact at YouTube who will manually approve
(08:10):
your content that gets flagged by the algorithm. That's how
those big American gun YouTubers do it, and that's how
they get through. But I know that it's not just
a UK problem for the knife thing because there's a
guy called Josh Smith who has Montana knives. So if
you're into your outdoor knife blade stuff, you know that's
(08:32):
the tools you like buying, you will have come across
their stuff. They're a very, very successful brand. He has
a huge problem with either his post being taken down
or being put you know, it gets that blurred sensitive
image thing goes on it, or he just can't get
it on there. So we're talking about the subject. How
(08:53):
do we solve this for Alan? How do we answer
his question which is should he keep going with a
profile he's got or or should he start again from
scratch or should he do both and sort of ab
test it.
Speaker 2 (09:08):
My my thing would be to do a hybrid strategy
to do both the same at the same time. What's
your thoughts on it.
Speaker 1 (09:24):
I think having backup accounts is never a terrible idea.
You see that a lot with people who do controversial
things or things that the algorithm doesn't like. They say,
you know, this is my backup accounts, so you can
follow that so that if they lose the main account,
they don't have to build it up again from scratch.
But by creating a second account. You're not going to
(09:45):
move away from the problem because a problem is built
into the platform. You know, if you just put another
knife image, it's going to get eventually get flagged in
the same way. So I would say to try and
balance out the fee. So it's not just photos of knives,
it's photos of the process, photos of of somehow of
(10:07):
them being used, or showing them maybe in the sheath
on a belt, it might be less likely to get flagged.
Maybe experiment with the content rather than the account, you know,
to ab test does it get through if it's like this,
does this get more engagement or is it only when
the knife is out on a table or a background
(10:29):
or something like that. Is that when the problem kicks in.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
Yeah, I'm just having a closer look. But yeah, I agree.
It's quite funny that some content absolutely bombs and then
some of it gets through. It seems to be like
a carousel of images does quite well for him, but
then others not so much. I can't find the Instagram
because I really wanted to look at the Instagram.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
Is something to consider as well. While Callum looks for
his Instagram. I think Instagram's not having a great moment
whilst we're recording. I think, because I'm trying to get
onto it as well, I think they might be server issues.
Something to consider is that if you're a business, if
you've particularly if you're listed as a business account on Instagram,
(11:17):
Instagram does not see you as an asset. Instagram sees
you as a potential customer or neutral. That's it. So
they want you to buy ads from them. They want
you to do boosted posts, run ads, do ads in stories,
those kind of things. There if you can try and
boost a couple of the posts, if you experiment with
(11:39):
putting different kinds of content on and then see if
you're allowed to boost those posts, that might that might
show you what is acceptable to Instagram. You don't have
to boost it for huge amounts, and maybe ten quid,
throw ten quid behind an ad and target UK people
who like phishing and just see if that gets a return.
(12:02):
Because also you get this with ads anyway, anytime you
spend money on ads, you want to target certain demographics,
see if you get more response from that than another one.
But maybe see if you get sort of tacit approval
from the meta platform by trying to boost it, by
trying to give them what they want, which is money.
Speaker 2 (12:22):
Yeah, that gives you a little bit of confirmation. I
can't seem to find that in search. Interesting yeah, oh yeah,
who and if has arrived from danam Blade and it
is not appearing in search, which is really quite interesting sign. Yes,
(12:45):
I am searching this from Essex and I am searching
danum Blades and I cannot find it. So that would
I found it now somebody mentioned dan and Blades. The
Cigar Smoking Hunter has mentioned dan and Blade, and then
(13:05):
I can click on it and go it, so that
would appear. That would appear as if Dan and Blade
is shadow band.
Speaker 1 (13:14):
Yes, So whether shadow banning exists, I mean Instagram always
deny it, but it definitely one hundred percent exists. And
almost everyone I know who has either a shooting related
account or a knife related account or something involving butchery
and things like that, they all seem to have sort
of plateaued in their growth the moment they started posting
(13:35):
that kind of content. That is something you have to
be aware of. If that is the kind of content
you're going into for yourself or for your business, is
that you are almost voluntarily stepping out of the algorithm.
Pushing you to people. You're volunteering yourself out of organic growth,
So you have to be canny in how you do this.
(13:58):
You have to look at things like, OK, can I
get tagged in things? Can I appear on other things?
Can I build an audience that doesn't rely on being
recommended on social media because that is not available to you,
Which means you've got to reach out to other people.
(14:18):
You've got to try and get onto things like podcasts
and get onto other people's do collaborations with other.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
People, build that rapport and that authority for sure.
Speaker 1 (14:28):
Leverage what other people have.
Speaker 2 (14:32):
So some of my I did write some notes down
for this, and I did a little bit of research.
So don't delete posts from your Instagram, but archive posts.
So go in and archive, do not delete them because
that is not seen as good to the gods that
(14:54):
are Instagram. Look, do a caption, caption audit and look
for things. Hashtag knife is not allowed. Hashtag blade is
also not allowed. Combat not allowed. And weirdly I've run
into this before. E d C, which is an everyday carry,
(15:17):
is a a band hashtag which annoyed Electric Daisy, Carnivoid,
Las vegas no end because that was a that was
the hashtag for a long time.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
They got back stuff as well, like self reliance and
survival and things like that are all banned as well.
You won't get your post taken down. It just means
the moment that's there and that's tied to the post,
that's it.
Speaker 2 (15:44):
So go through, do a audit of those, and then
archive those posts. If they've got some semi good, semi
reasonable engagement, simply repost them with new captions that you're
going to focus on your craft. The pro says, material
origins and just sort of the story of the brand. Really,
(16:07):
just focus on that kind of thing. Don't necessarily say
knives every day. Carrying on all those bits.
Speaker 1 (16:15):
Hashtags seem to be making less of a difference on
social media as well now than they're used to, particularly
on reels and videos that.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
Because the AI picks it up. Yeah, so it knows
the words you're saying.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
He's got it, which is something else to be considerate of.
Be careful of literally of the words that you say
in your video. Yeah, that's because they are. You can't say, well,
I didn't write it down, so it won't be picked up.
You know that when you upload it. It's being scanned, transcribed,
and then what you say is being used to push
(16:49):
things forward, and it's to expand to what Calum said,
there's this weird list of things that you cannot say
if you want growth, Like if you you can't say Nats,
you have to say mid century German or something like that.
Speaker 2 (17:06):
They identify as mid century German.
Speaker 1 (17:09):
Yeah, it's more seriousness. That is, there's all these layers
to it. It's not just what you do, and at
some point you have to accept there's a limitation on
how much you'll grow on that account. So follow the rules,
follow the rules that CON's given you there, follow the
or the use to be aware of all these things
(17:31):
that the algorithm is looking at, but also maybe try
and sidestep it and use that social media account as
not the place to grow and not the audience you're
trying to build. It's more of a portfolio.
Speaker 2 (17:45):
Having met Alan, I think he's probably quite a funny chap.
So I would put the silliest name possible for a
knife and use that in place, and just talk normally
about such things, and just make sure you're using a
(18:07):
silly name, yeah, like a not fork danger spoon, Yeah,
I have crafted, hand crafted this danger spoon.
Speaker 1 (18:20):
A long time ago. I used to sell outdoor gear online.
We had a business doing that. We had original outdoor gear.
We hit a problem with the eBay shop at some
point because they stopped selling. They stopped selling knives on eBay.
You couldn't sell any knife at all. And there was
this famous meme and sort of screenshot doing the rounds
of somebody was selling a potato, a genuine Second World
(18:41):
War German potato, and all the history of the potato
and the unit the potato had served with and you
bought the potato, and it's about two grand. And with
a potato, you've got a free potato peela. A potato
peela was the bayonet that was actually we were trying
to sell, but all the focus was on this potato
they were selling. Yeah, I'd say get creative. I'd say
(19:03):
stick with the accounts you've got. But maybe it is
a sad acceptance of you're not going to grow in
the same way, but at least you can try and
talk around the subject. Maybe maybe get political I talking
about Trump.
Speaker 2 (19:20):
That will help focus on focus on the crafting and
show all the bits of the lever work. And the
blade can be a kind of cursory glance the storytelling.
Download someone like cap cut have a look at study
some viral hooks. You can use our friend Chatty caffe
(19:44):
chat GPT to look at what viral hooks work. So
that will be something like starting with this is the
coolest thing I have ever made. This danger Spoon. Took
me forty eight eight hours just to craft this one day,
just spoon, and then you know, you can show the
(20:05):
process of like I drew this out, so you're like
drawing the knife, your how it's being made, the honing
of it, and make sure that the a particular item
doesn't fill with the frame. If it feels a frame,
then it's going to do that. Interestingly, I just had
to look at some of the pictures and there's one
(20:26):
picture that's on a background that's quite confusing with lots
of letters and texts and a bit of wood and
a bit of leather and the knife isn't very prominent.
That does really well. So I think that probably did
well because it didn't know that it was a knife.
Speaker 1 (20:40):
It's going to be difficult to progress with this. That's
my final takeaway is just don't expect huge organic success
in this unless Alan starts wearing really tight but you know,
the influenza leggings and starts doing squats in front of
the camera. That seems to be good for organic growth, and.
Speaker 2 (21:04):
Can we have that in our Patreon.
Speaker 1 (21:06):
I'm going to do squats in front of the camera
just for that. I might wear a dress or something.
And that does seem to be the only way to
grow now, So if you if you can find some
way of incorporating that into it, sort of like an
only blades.
Speaker 2 (21:25):
Thing on Danger spoons.
Speaker 1 (21:29):
Actually we've got only blades. It'd just be a little
adds from Hereford coming out. Six people got that joke, right.
I think we should close this one off because we
haven't actually given that much good advice. But we've sort
of talked about the subject, but we haven't got a
golden bullet.
Speaker 2 (21:46):
I would say focus on storytelling and don't show knives
and try and do everything to avoid it.
Speaker 1 (21:55):
Well, it's not it not give up, don't grow, it's
don't choose that platform for growth.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Yeah, there's also YouTube and TikTok. YouTube is terrible for discoverability,
but bloody good for SEO.
Speaker 1 (22:09):
Yeah, and focus on you on your website, focus on
your SEO, focus on your focus on your ecosystem as
well of touch points, and you target those people who
are going to buy your thing. You're not hoping for
huge success across the entire population. You're after the zero
(22:30):
point five percent who actually want to buy your think.
Speaker 2 (22:32):
Do you know this sort of thing like send an
email to someone at shooting times and see if you
can get it in a six six of the best
knives that exist roundup or or something like that. You
only need to Recently, a friend of mine did a
piece about craftsman and he sold lots and lots of
(22:53):
products off the back of it in the field. So
actually something like that. If you're making really nice high
end print media, I rarely would say this print media
could be the way to go. Just find your niche
and double down on it.
Speaker 1 (23:11):
There we are some very confusing advice. Thank you, Allen,
thank you for your sending you your email. We will
be back with another question and answer, hopefully maybe bye
bye then bye bye driver
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