Suzanne Zandbergen - It's about content

Summary

In this engaging conversation, Suzanne Zandbergen, founder of Degenerator, shares her journey in the social media industry, discussing the evolution of platforms, the importance of authentic brand voices, and her experiences with local businesses in Hamilton. She emphasizes the value of genuine engagement over follower count and highlights successful projects like the Hamilton Winter Solstice Festival. Suzanne also offers insights into empowering women entrepreneurs and the significance of doing what you love in business.

Keywords

Suzanne Zandbergen, social media, Degenerator, Hamilton, authentic brand voices, follower count, Hamilton Winter Solstice Festival, women entrepreneurs, business passion

Takeaways

• Social media has evolved significantly over the past decade.

• Authentic brand voices are crucial for local businesses.

• Engagement is more valuable than follower count.

• The Hamilton Winter Solstice Festival is a successful project.

• Empowering women entrepreneurs is a key focus.

• Doing what you love is essential in business.

• Video content is increasingly important on social media.

• Instagram's collaboration feature boosts engagement.

• LinkedIn is effective for B2B and industrial clients.

• Cross-platform posting can be beneficial if done thoughtfully.

Title Options

• Suzanne Zandbergen: The Social Media Pioneer

• Building Authentic Brand Voices with Suzanne Zandbergen

• From Follower Counts to Genuine Engagement

• The Success Story of Hamilton Winter Solstice Festival

• Empowering Women Entrepreneurs Through Social Media

• The Importance of Passion in Business

• Video: The Future of Social Media

• Instagram Collaborations: A Game Changer

• LinkedIn: The B2B Social Media Powerhouse

• Cross-Platform Posting: Best Practices

Sound bites

"Engagement is more valuable than follower count." "Authentic brand voices are crucial." "Video content is the future." "Do what you love in business." "Instagram collaborations boost engagement." "LinkedIn is great for B2B." "Cross-platform posting can be beneficial." "Empowering women entrepreneurs is key." "The Hamilton Winter Solstice Festival is unique." "Social media has evolved significantly."

Chapters

• 00:00:00 Introduction to Suzanne Zandbergen

• 00:01:00 The Evolution of Social Media

• 00:03:00 Building Authentic Brand Voices

• 00:05:00 The Value of Engagement Over Followers

• 00:07:00 Success Stories: Hamilton Winter Solstice Festival

• 00:09:00 Empowering Women Entrepreneurs

• 00:11:00 The Importance of Passion in Business

• 00:13:00 Trends in Social Media: Video and Collaboration

• 00:15:00 Cross-Platform Posting and Best Practices

Transcript

Alex Hobcraft (00:04)

Hello everyone and welcome to Local Grit. I'm Alex Hobcraft, your host, and I'm here with Suzanne Zanbergen, who is the genius behind Degenerator, which is the leading social media company based in Hamilton and Dundas. Welcome to the show, Suzanne. I'm very excited to talk to you about social.

Suzanne Zandbergen (00:24)

Excellent. Thanks so much for having me.

Alex Hobcraft (00:28)

Yeah, so, I mean, great place to start as I start out with most of everyone is just, you know, what ignited the idea of going into social media? ⁓ You've been at it for a long time. As I said, you're one of the leading social media, if not the leading social media in Hamilton and Dundas. How did it all start and what were some of the gritty moments in the beginning?

Suzanne Zandbergen (00:51)

Um, yeah, so started 11 years ago now. Um, I had a first career at the Hamilton spectator in advertising and, uh, social media came onto the scene and I just was really super interested in that. Um, so, you know, decided to start, um, my own company doing social media marketing for people. Um, so yeah, very, very different from now. 11 years ago versus 11 years ago.

⁓ Back then ⁓ Facebook was king. Nobody really had Instagram accounts yet. Twitter was huge in Hamilton. So very different. ⁓ yeah, just tons of stuff has changed since then. ⁓ know, ⁓ a lot of the time we were just trying to convince people like they needed to be on social media.

Alex Hobcraft (01:30)

Wow. yeah, completely.

Suzanne Zandbergen (01:47)

They didn't really quite get it. They certainly didn't really understand paying somebody to help them with social media at that time. ⁓ So we were working with a lot of early adopters for sure.

Alex Hobcraft (02:00)

Yeah, then so, know, Hamilton's known as this gritty, community-based city. ⁓ How did you win over those voices? How did you build authentic brand voices for those local businesses?

Suzanne Zandbergen (02:18)

⁓ Yeah, because Hamilton is like, it's just a very real city full of very real people. ⁓ So it's important to mirror that on social media, I feel like. And so that I think is sort of the secret to our success as well is that we've been doing that since the beginning. ⁓ You know, trying to tell the stories of businesses and organizations ⁓ directly with them and, you know, showing what they offer.

directly, we're on site all the time with our clients and trying to get that real kind of content.

Alex Hobcraft (02:56)

Yeah, I see you on site often coming to help local businesses. And it's something you don't think of. I think a lot of people think that social media people just sit in their office and do everything from there. But you really are hands on, which I think is a big difference because I haven't seen huge amount of other companies who are hands on as you are.

Suzanne Zandbergen (03:18)

Yeah, I mean, ⁓ it's a more labor-intensive way for sure to do it, but I think it just pays off.

Alex Hobcraft (03:28)

Yeah, definitely. And can you share one of your face-to-face event coverages or on-site photo or video shoot that turned out to be an unexpected win for a local business?

Suzanne Zandbergen (03:42)

⁓ I think probably one of our really big successes working with a Hamilton charity, ⁓ we created this idea of doing a Facebook Live. that's when Facebook Live was pretty new. We did it every year for close to a decade at Niagara Falls, and they're a worldwide charity. So people would tune in from around the world to see the falls and we would talk about the

Alex Hobcraft (04:06)

you you

Suzanne Zandbergen (04:12)

the charity and the awareness and all that kind of stuff. And we did that every year and it really took off and people looked forward to it and asked about it in advance. I think that that just shows how you can really connect people who are all connected by a certain issue or

whatever, right? So, yeah.

Alex Hobcraft (04:34)

Yeah, no, I mean the connection is is that's where Facebook live really was helpful it made it more real and less processed and and I know that's for for a lot and that also I Just like that. You're one of the co-founders of fempreneurs. It's funny Rachel my wife talks about fempreneurs all the time. So that was nice to ⁓

Suzanne Zandbergen (04:48)

Mm.

Alex Hobcraft (04:57)

to see and so how have you, ⁓ what are some key lessons that you've learned from empowering women entrepreneurs, ⁓ especially through social media. Now I don't know if social media is male dominated as much as it used to be, but is it different for, what have you learned from that group in helping other women succeed?

Suzanne Zandbergen (05:20)

Mm-hmm. Well, think, you know, the main thing about women as entrepreneurs is that we do things a little differently when there's a room full of just women networking. It's quite different because we're all just sort of looking for the commonalities between each other's businesses and we're looking for opportunities to help each other. ⁓ So, you know, with social media, we've been able to have like a Facebook group so we can do that virtually.

Alex Hobcraft (05:42)

Yeah.

Suzanne Zandbergen (05:47)

But then it also helps just to sort of mobilize everybody and make sure we're all together when we have in-person events as well. We have sold out tons of events with the group. So yeah, it's been pretty special.

Alex Hobcraft (06:02)

Hmm

yeah, nice. ⁓ There's something that I've noticed with social media and with working with business owners and that is whether you buy your following or not and you have a zero tolerance, non-negotiable, you cannot buy ⁓ your followers or likes or what have you, which I really admire because many, many places have told me the opposite.

How have you stood by that? Have you had to convince business owners that that's the best way to go? And what evidence do you have that it hurts rather than helps when you buy your likes or followers?

Suzanne Zandbergen (06:45)

Yeah, and I think, you know, especially at the beginning of social media, I think this is where the idea came from. It actually was beneficial to have more followers because like on Facebook, whoever was your follower would see your posts. ⁓ But that very quickly changed. And then, you know, every year they would just scale back who would actually get to see your posts. And, know, the percentage is like, I don't know, one or 2 % now of your followers who see it.

Alex Hobcraft (07:00)

Mm-hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (07:12)

Of course, once you're creating content that is being shared and engaged with, that's when they start to roll it out more more. So it's always been about the content itself. And if it's interesting to people, which you think would be a no-brainer, but everyone's always looking for the quick way. And the follower count was this sort of vanity metric right from the beginning. But it's never really meant anything. And now...

Alex Hobcraft (07:20)

Okay. you

Suzanne Zandbergen (07:37)

for sure, it really does not mean anything at all to have tons and tons of followers. If they're not engaging with your posts, they're not seeing it anyway. I've always just sort of preached that, don't worry about the followers, we make excellent content, and what matters is the results for your business in the end. What are you trying to achieve with social media? Let's focus on that.

Alex Hobcraft (07:59)

Yeah, that's something that from the very beginning when we opened our music school we were like, why would I want 20,000 followers who live not even where we give lessons? They will never take a lesson with us. Instead of having 200 parents who are hyper local focused, which is what you're, what

Suzanne Zandbergen (08:10)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Alex Hobcraft (08:17)

the generator focuses on, why would I not want that? They're the ones who are gonna talk more, they're gonna see more of my posts. So I agree, I'm surprised that people still think, and I know it's a vanity metric, but it's amazing how many business owners think that it has value.

Suzanne Zandbergen (08:34)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that still persists for sure.

Alex Hobcraft (08:38)

I know. ⁓ So interestingly enough, you've been in Hamilton since you went to McMaster, and you're also ⁓ based at Dundas. ⁓ You didn't want to scale big. Tell me about that story. You wanted to keep things real. ⁓ Tell me how you came to that choice.

Suzanne Zandbergen (08:59)

Yeah. So when I did first start my business, it was a different situation where I had never run a business before and I was working out of a coworking space. So I was surrounded by a lot of this new entrepreneurship energy. And what you hear a lot is about growing your business. Everybody's like, oh, you got to hire more. You got to scale up. And it's always this hustle and grow and

⁓ So I did get caught up in that for the first couple of years and you know ended up hiring a lot of people getting into services that you know web design stuff that I didn't really know much about ⁓ and Yeah, I real I did realize pretty quickly that this is not the direction I want to go in like I was spending all my time managing people and Doing sales so that I could keep enough work to you know pay all these people

Alex Hobcraft (09:32)

you you

Suzanne Zandbergen (09:55)

And I just realized this is not what I started

a business for. I'm interested in the creative side, working with business owners, telling their story, the creative side of it. And so I've since then, you know, started to scale down basically ⁓ to the point now we have a mighty team of three people. We're agile, we're quick, we can be on site quickly, we can come up with ideas quickly, and we just have so much fun doing it.

Alex Hobcraft (09:58)

Okay.

Suzanne Zandbergen (10:23)

So to me, I feel

Alex Hobcraft (10:23)

Hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (10:25)

like the growth for me has been understanding what I want out of my business and how I can serve my clients best. So ⁓ the good thing has also been that I can kind of pick and choose who I work with and who's the good, best fit basically for the generator. So yeah, it's been a learning curve, a decade, but yeah.

Alex Hobcraft (10:45)

Yeah, no, that's. Yeah,

yeah, we as we spoke about that, I mentioned to you the same thing we.

At one point we had 21 teachers for our school in Toronto and Rachel's just like, you are spending so much time managing 21 people and it's not like some of them would have like three students, it's just not worth it. So it is interesting how you don't have to scale. know everyone like Tony Robbins is like, if you're not scaling, you're dying or not growing, you're dying. And I just don't believe that everything has to be on that grandiose

Suzanne Zandbergen (10:59)

over.

Mm-hmm.

Alex Hobcraft (11:25)

⁓ kind of ⁓ large ⁓ scale for lack of better word. So it was interesting to hear that it's okay to be mighty. I like that word. ⁓ Now in your mightiness, you've got multiple city awards ⁓ and ⁓ what would be a client project, small business or non-profit that really tested your thinking ⁓

Suzanne Zandbergen (11:37)

Yeah.

Alex Hobcraft (11:54)

about Hamilton and how you wanted to proceed. Is there any particular ⁓ business that stands out to you that was just like, okay, this is it, I need to stay small and this is a wake-up moment for me, so to speak?

Suzanne Zandbergen (12:09)

Well, there's been so many great clients and so many great projects that I've worked on. ⁓ One that I wanted to sort of highlight though was the Hamilton Winter Solstice Festival, which started, I think about six years ago. it was nothing at the beginning, it was just a few friends, like artists' friends kind of doing something in the park on December 21st. ⁓

Alex Hobcraft (12:37)

Mm-hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (12:38)

They reached out for my help and they wanted to grow it, make it more a bigger thing. And we did that. Like the first year, they went from a few people to like hundreds of people showing up in the dark in this park. They didn't even have funds to like light up the park earning, but we had fire and artists and music and stuff. We got spectator ⁓ coverage of the event.

⁓ And just like hundreds of people showed up for it and they were just like overwhelmed with the support of the public. And that to me just show like that's the power of social media. And that was like a month campaign that we did. And then we've just grown it every year since. Yeah, so it's just a really cool special event. Yeah, yeah, it's really, it's really not, it's unlike anything else in Hamilton. It's small, it's all artists and volunteers.

Alex Hobcraft (13:20)

⁓ wow.

Yeah. that's. ⁓

Suzanne Zandbergen (13:35)

And yeah, tons and tons of people come out to it. We usually get really good media attention and stuff too. So yeah.

Alex Hobcraft (13:43)

Yeah. And so on that, what have you found to be some growing trends that are coming for Hamilton or even outside of Hamilton, if you're familiar? What are some social media trends that you think that people should keep on hand and to keep an eye out for and to pay attention to?

Suzanne Zandbergen (14:04)

Mm-hmm. I think, you know, one trend that's been happening a lot over the years is just this switch to video. Video is huge. So if you are a small business or an organization haven't really gotten into doing video yet, that's something to try. It's a way to reach new audiences, just the way that the algorithms work and stuff. And then number two,

Alex Hobcraft (14:26)

Mm-hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (14:29)

biggest one that Instagram has rolled out is the collaboration functionality. So that's huge and I've seen it really grown a lot of my clients, ⁓ you know, overall reach and engagement and stuff. You're reaching all new audiences when you pair up with somebody else that's sort of similar audience or even it could be a crossover that you wouldn't have thought would work, can really work well.

Alex Hobcraft (14:36)

Hmm

Hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (14:57)

But what's great about it is that you're often collaborating in real life on something, and then you're sort of mirroring that on social media. So ⁓ the collaboration is huge.

Alex Hobcraft (15:01)

Thank

Yeah.

Nice, yeah. do you, so would you say that you focus mostly on Instagram or what, are there certain industries that just do better with different, different platforms?

Suzanne Zandbergen (15:23)

Yeah, I would say probably Instagram's the biggie right now, but then there are certain industries that don't really fall into that. I clients that are on LinkedIn more so. know, B2B, industrial, that kind of thing. LinkedIn is really, really great for that and I'm having a lot of success with LinkedIn. It's grown a lot as well and has a lot more functionality with paid ads and that kind of thing too now.

Alex Hobcraft (15:35)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (15:52)

⁓ And then Instagram would be the main one though. then Facebook and Instagram are pretty integrated now in the backend tools and everything. So most people are using them in tandem, I find. ⁓ And then, you you can kind of see where your audience is between the two of them.

Alex Hobcraft (15:52)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, and that leads me to a question that I used to get a lot from business owners. Is it still a bad form or a good form to post exactly the same thing to all your platforms or to Facebook? Or should you change each one slightly? Who has the time for that? But what's your thoughts?

Suzanne Zandbergen (16:31)

Yeah. ⁓

If you don't have the time to change them slightly, I would still probably put them on all the platforms unless it's just really not a good fit. mean, sometimes LinkedIn is not a great place to put something that's super casual or like hilarious or something, you know, it just sort of sticks out. ⁓ But definitely between Instagram and Facebook, everyone is doing that and it doesn't look strange anymore. ⁓

Alex Hobcraft (16:52)

Mm-hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (16:59)

Big thing with Facebook is that you can put that direct link right into your posts. So I would take advantage of that. I do get a lot of link clicks when that link, rather than saying link and bio on Facebook, that's like a wasted opportunity.

Alex Hobcraft (17:06)

Hmm

Oh, really? Oh, interesting. Yeah, that's good to know. Getting back to your team, because I noticed that you do have a strong way of doing your social media. It is noticeable. How did you hire a team or how do you find those people? Is it primarily connection of just whether you work well together or are skills as important to those people as much as how much camaraderie you had?

Suzanne Zandbergen (17:17)

Mm-hmm.

⁓ Definitely what I look for for a team member of The Generator is ⁓ what are you doing currently on social media? Like if you have no social media presence, like maybe it could be that you're doing something behind the scenes somewhere else and you know, we can talk about that. ⁓ most people who are really suited well to this career are people that are doing it for fun personally.

They have a blog and they are posting on Instagram, that kind of thing. They're doing videos on TikTok, something like that. Because they just love it, right? And it is very much like a seven day a week kind of a job. So you really need to love it.

Alex Hobcraft (18:19)

Okay.

Hmm.

And do

you find that the younger generation, because they grew up with it much more so than my generation, would you say that they're more intuitive or do they still have to learn ⁓ as much as someone who didn't grow up with social?

Suzanne Zandbergen (18:48)

I mean, it's a big advantage to understand how to use the tools and use them quickly. ⁓ But there's still this huge learning piece about marketing. ⁓ I think you see it a lot on TikTok and Instagram, where a small business has kind of handed over their account to one of their younger employees. And you can see that they don't really understand marketing. They talk about things like, ⁓ you know, they

Alex Hobcraft (18:56)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (19:17)

they play out the bad customer or something like that. It's like this little role play sort of meme thing that people are doing. it's like this content doesn't ⁓ entice people to come to your business. In fact, it probably does the opposite. So yeah, just be aware of that. Make sure that you understand. You need to learn that piece, especially for business owners who are handing that.

Alex Hobcraft (19:26)

Mm-hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (19:43)

that entire voice and panel to somebody who doesn't really understand that, that's super important.

Alex Hobcraft (19:49)

⁓ So would you say that that leads to my next question perfectly like what would be the one piece of advice for small businesses who are just starting to dip their toe into social media? They're starting to see that they have to be far more ⁓ prevalent on whatever platform they choose. What's one piece of advice that would really help dodge some pitfalls or help them grow?

Suzanne Zandbergen (20:19)

So I was going to talk about my advice just in general as an entrepreneur and making sure that you really do what you love. think that's super important. Something that I learned, know, as an entrepreneur, you know, it's a lot of work, a lot of hours. So you really need to love what you're doing and be focusing, have a way to focus on what you're doing that...

the things that you love and outsource the things that you don't enjoy. Because you're just going to get burned out, right? Running a business and not enjoying any part of it. yeah, that's something I'll be definitely...

Alex Hobcraft (20:46)

Mm.

No, it's great advice.

Yeah, it is a seven day a week job for sure. I used to joke with people that I just work from seven, just grazing work all throughout the day. Because there's always something that's got your attention. then people have family and lives and you've to do something outside of your business. You start to just not be so creative and you do lose touch with your business if you're not playing as hard as you're working, for sure.

Suzanne Zandbergen (21:07)

Uh-huh.

Exactly, yeah.

Alex Hobcraft (21:33)

Yeah. Suzanne, it's been a pleasure interviewing you. Thank you so much. ⁓ I'm going to put all of your social handles in the description ⁓ below. And I really appreciate your time. And hopefully, we can do this again at a future date.

Suzanne Zandbergen (21:52)

For sure, yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Alex Hobcraft (21:56)

All right, take care.

Suzanne Zandbergen (21:59)

Bye.

Alex Hobcraft (22:01)

you

Hello everyone and welcome to Local Grit. I'm Alex Hobcraft, your host, and I'm here with Suzanne Zanbergen, who is the genius behind Degenerator, which is the leading social media company based in Hamilton and Dundas. Welcome to the show, Suzanne. I'm very excited to talk to you about social.

Suzanne Zandbergen (22:21)

Excellent. Thanks so much for having me.

Alex Hobcraft (22:23)

Yeah, so, I mean, great place to start as I start out with most of everyone is just, you know, what ignited the idea of going into social media? ⁓ You've been at it for a long time. As I said, you're one of the leading social media, if not the leading social media in Hamilton and Dundas. How did it all start and what were some of the gritty moments in the beginning?

Suzanne Zandbergen (22:44)

Um, yeah, so started 11 years ago now. Um, I had a first career at the Hamilton spectator in advertising and, uh, social media came onto the scene and I just was really super interested in that. Um, so, you know, decided to start, um, my own company doing social media marketing for people. Um, so yeah, very, very different from now. 11 years ago versus 11 years ago.

⁓ Back then ⁓ Facebook was king. Nobody really had Instagram accounts yet. Twitter was huge in Hamilton. So very different. ⁓ yeah, just tons of stuff has changed since then. ⁓ know, ⁓ a lot of the time we were just trying to convince people like they needed to be on social media.

Alex Hobcraft (23:23)

Wow. yeah, completely.

Suzanne Zandbergen (23:40)

They didn't really quite get it. They certainly didn't really understand paying somebody to help them with social media at that time. ⁓ So we were working with a lot of early adopters for sure.

Alex Hobcraft (23:51)

Yeah, then so, know, Hamilton's known as this gritty, community-based city. ⁓ How did you win over those voices? How did you build authentic brand voices for those local businesses?

Suzanne Zandbergen (24:07)

⁓ Yeah, because Hamilton is like, it's just a very real city full of very real people. ⁓ So it's important to mirror that on social media, I feel like. And so that I think is sort of the secret to our success as well is that we've been doing that since the beginning. ⁓ You know, trying to tell the stories of businesses and organizations ⁓ directly with them and, you know, showing what they offer.

directly, we're on site all the time with our clients and trying to get that real kind of content.

Alex Hobcraft (24:42)

Yeah, I see you on site often coming to help local businesses. And it's something you don't think of. I think a lot of people think that social media people just sit in their office and do everything from there. But you really are hands on, which I think is a big difference because I haven't seen huge amount of other companies who are hands on as you are.

Suzanne Zandbergen (25:05)

Yeah, I mean, ⁓ it's a more labor-intensive way for sure to do it, but I think it just pays off.

Alex Hobcraft (25:12)

Yeah, definitely. And can you share one of your face-to-face event coverages or on-site photo or video shoot that turned out to be an unexpected win for a local business?

Suzanne Zandbergen (25:25)

⁓ I think probably one of our really big successes working with a Hamilton charity, ⁓ we created this idea of doing a Facebook Live. that's when Facebook Live was pretty new. We did it every year for close to a decade at Niagara Falls, and they're a worldwide charity. So people would tune in from around the world to see the falls and we would talk about the

Alex Hobcraft (25:48)

you you

Suzanne Zandbergen (25:54)

the charity and the awareness and all that kind of stuff. And we did that every year and it really took off and people looked forward to it and asked about it in advance. I think that that just shows how you can really connect people who are all connected by a certain issue or

whatever, right? So, yeah.

Alex Hobcraft (26:15)

Yeah, no, I mean the connection is is that's where Facebook live really was helpful it made it more real and less processed and and I know that's for for a lot and that also I Just like that. You're one of the co-founders of fempreneurs. It's funny Rachel my wife talks about fempreneurs all the time. So that was nice to ⁓

Suzanne Zandbergen (26:29)

Mm.

Alex Hobcraft (26:38)

to see and so how have you, ⁓ what are some key lessons that you've learned from empowering women entrepreneurs, ⁓ especially through social media. Now I don't know if social media is male dominated as much as it used to be, but is it different for, what have you learned from that group in helping other women succeed?

Suzanne Zandbergen (27:01)

Mm-hmm. Well, think, you know, the main thing about women as entrepreneurs is that we do things a little differently when there's a room full of just women networking. It's quite different because we're all just sort of looking for the commonalities between each other's businesses and we're looking for opportunities to help each other. ⁓ So, you know, with social media, we've been able to have like a Facebook group so we can do that virtually.

Alex Hobcraft (27:23)

Yeah.

Suzanne Zandbergen (27:28)

But then it also helps just to sort of mobilize everybody and make sure we're all together when we have in-person events as well. We have sold out tons of events with the group. So yeah, it's been pretty special.

Alex Hobcraft (27:43)

Hmm

yeah, nice. ⁓ There's something that I've noticed with social media and with working with business owners and that is whether you buy your following or not and you have a zero tolerance, non-negotiable, you cannot buy ⁓ your followers or likes or what have you, which I really admire because many, many places have told me the opposite.

How have you stood by that? Have you had to convince business owners that that's the best way to go? And what evidence do you have that it hurts rather than helps when you buy your likes or followers?

Suzanne Zandbergen (28:22)

Yeah, and I think, you know, especially at the beginning of social media, I think this is where the idea came from. It actually was beneficial to have more followers because like on Facebook, whoever was your follower would see your posts. ⁓ But that very quickly changed. And then, you know, every year they would just scale back who would actually get to see your posts. And, know, the percentage is like, I don't know, one or 2 % now of your followers who see it.

Alex Hobcraft (28:38)

Mm-hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (28:49)

Of course, once you're creating content that is being shared and engaged with, that's when they start to roll it out more more. So it's always been about the content itself. And if it's interesting to people, which you think would be a no-brainer, but everyone's always looking for the quick way. And the follower count was this sort of vanity metric right from the beginning. ⁓ But it's never really meant anything. And now...

Alex Hobcraft (28:58)

Okay. you

Suzanne Zandbergen (29:17)

for sure, it really does not mean anything at all to have tons and tons of followers. ⁓ If they're not engaging with your posts, they're not seeing it anyway. So yeah, I've always just sort of preached that, don't worry about the followers, we make excellent content, and what matters is the results for your business in the end. What are you trying to achieve with social media? Let's focus on that.

Alex Hobcraft (29:41)

Yeah, that's something that from the very beginning when we opened our music school we were like, why would I want 20,000 followers who live not even where we give lessons? They will never take a lesson with us. Instead of having 200 parents who are hyper local focused, which is what you're, what

Suzanne Zandbergen (29:51)

Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Alex Hobcraft (29:59)

the generator focuses on, why would I not want that? They're the ones who are gonna talk more, they're gonna see more of my posts. So I agree, I'm surprised that people still think, and I know it's a vanity metric, but it's amazing how many business owners think that it has value.

Suzanne Zandbergen (30:15)

Mm-hmm. Yeah, that still persists for sure.

Alex Hobcraft (30:18)

I know. ⁓ So interestingly enough, you've been in Hamilton since you went to McMaster, and you're also ⁓ based at Dundas. ⁓ You didn't want to scale big. Tell me about that story. You wanted to keep things real. ⁓ Tell me how you came to that choice.

Suzanne Zandbergen (30:39)

Yeah. So when I did first start my business, it was a different situation where I had never run a business before and I was working out of a coworking space. So I was surrounded by a lot of this new entrepreneurship energy. And what you hear a lot is about growing your business. Everybody's like, oh, you got to hire more. You got to scale up. And it's always this hustle and grow and

⁓ So I did get caught up in that for the first couple of years and you know ended up hiring a lot of people getting into services that you know web design stuff that I didn't really know much about ⁓ and Yeah, I real I did realize pretty quickly that this is not the direction I want to go in like I was spending all my time managing people and Doing sales so that I could keep enough work to you know pay all these people

Alex Hobcraft (31:10)

you you

Suzanne Zandbergen (31:32)

And I just realized this is not what I started

a business for. I'm interested in the creative side, working with business owners, telling their story, the creative side of it. And so I've since then, you know, started to scale down basically ⁓ to the point now we have a mighty team of three people. We're agile, we're quick, we can be on site quickly, we can come up with ideas quickly, and we just have so much fun doing it.

Alex Hobcraft (31:36)

Okay.

Suzanne Zandbergen (32:01)

So to me, I feel

Alex Hobcraft (32:01)

Hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (32:03)

like the growth for me has been understanding what I want out of my business and how I can serve my clients best. So ⁓ the good thing has also been that I can kind of pick and choose who I work with and who's the good, best fit basically for the generator. So yeah, it's been a learning curve, a decade, but yeah.

Alex Hobcraft (32:23)

Yeah, no, that's. Yeah,

yeah, we as we spoke about that, I mentioned to you the same thing we.

At one point we had 21 teachers for our school in Toronto and Rachel's just like, you are spending so much time managing 21 people and it's not like some of them would have like three students, it's just not worth it. So it is interesting how you don't have to scale. know everyone like Tony Robbins is like, if you're not scaling, you're dying or not growing, you're dying. And I just don't believe that everything has to be on that grandiose

Suzanne Zandbergen (32:36)

over.

Mm-hmm.

Alex Hobcraft (33:03)

⁓ kind of ⁓ large ⁓ scale for lack of better word. So it was interesting to hear that it's okay to be mighty. I like that word. ⁓ Now in your mightiness, you've got multiple city awards ⁓ and ⁓ what would be a client project, small business or non-profit that really tested your thinking ⁓

Suzanne Zandbergen (33:15)

Yeah.

Alex Hobcraft (33:32)

about Hamilton and how you wanted to proceed. Is there any particular ⁓ business that stands out to you that was just like, okay, this is it, I need to stay small and this is a wake-up moment for me, so to speak?

Suzanne Zandbergen (33:47)

Well, there's been so many great clients and so many great projects that I've worked on. ⁓ One that I wanted to sort of highlight though was the Hamilton Winter Solstice Festival, which started, I think about six years ago. it was nothing at the beginning, it was just a few friends, like artists' friends kind of doing something in the park on December 21st. ⁓

Alex Hobcraft (34:15)

Mm-hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (34:16)

They reached out for my help and they wanted to grow it, make it more a bigger thing. And we did that. Like the first year, they went from a few people to like hundreds of people showing up in the dark in this park. They didn't even have funds to like light up the park earning, but we had fire and artists and music and stuff. We got spectator ⁓ coverage of the event.

⁓ And just like hundreds of people showed up for it and they were just like overwhelmed with the support of the public. And that to me just show like that's the power of social media. And that was like a month campaign that we did. And then we've just grown it every year since. Yeah, so it's just a really cool special event. Yeah, yeah, it's really, it's really not, it's unlike anything else in Hamilton. It's small, it's all artists and volunteers.

Alex Hobcraft (34:58)

⁓ wow.

Yeah. that's. ⁓

Suzanne Zandbergen (35:13)

And yeah, tons and tons of people come out to it. We usually get really good media attention and stuff too. So yeah.

Alex Hobcraft (35:21)

Yeah. And so on that, what have you found to be some growing trends that are coming for Hamilton or even outside of Hamilton, if you're familiar? What are some social media trends that you think that people should keep on hand and to keep an eye out for and to pay attention to?

Suzanne Zandbergen (35:41)

Mm-hmm. I think, you know, one trend that's been happening a lot over the years is just this switch to video. Video is huge. So if you are a small business or an organization haven't really gotten into doing video yet, that's something to try. It's a way to reach new audiences, just the way that the algorithms work and stuff. And then number two,

Alex Hobcraft (36:03)

Mm-hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (36:07)

biggest one that Instagram has rolled out is the collaboration functionality. So that's huge and I've seen it really grown a lot of my clients, ⁓ you know, overall reach and engagement and stuff. You're reaching all new audiences when you pair up with somebody else that's sort of similar audience or even it could be a crossover that you wouldn't have thought would work, can really work well.

Alex Hobcraft (36:14)

Hmm

Hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (36:35)

But what's great about it is that you're often collaborating in real life on something, and then you're sort of mirroring that on social media. So ⁓ the collaboration is huge.

Alex Hobcraft (36:39)

Thank

Yeah.

Nice, yeah. do you, so would you say that you focus mostly on Instagram or what, are there certain industries that just do better with different, different platforms?

Suzanne Zandbergen (36:56)

Yeah, I would say probably Instagram's the biggie right now, but then there are certain industries that don't really fall into that. I clients that are on LinkedIn more so. know, B2B, industrial, that kind of thing. LinkedIn is really, really great for that and I'm having a lot of success with LinkedIn. It's grown a lot as well and has a lot more functionality with paid ads and that kind of thing too now.

Alex Hobcraft (37:09)

Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (37:26)

⁓ And then Instagram would be the main one though. then Facebook and Instagram are pretty integrated now in the backend tools and everything. So most people are using them in tandem, I find. ⁓ And then, you you can kind of see where your audience is between the two of them.

Alex Hobcraft (37:26)

Mm-hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, and that leads me to a question that I used to get a lot from business owners. Is it still a bad form or a good form to post exactly the same thing to all your platforms or to Facebook? Or should you change each one slightly? Who has the time for that? But what's your thoughts?

Suzanne Zandbergen (38:04)

Yeah. ⁓

If you don't have the time to change them slightly, I would still probably put them on all the platforms unless it's just really not a good fit. mean, sometimes LinkedIn is not a great place to put something that's super casual or like hilarious or something, you know, it just sort of sticks out. ⁓ But definitely between Instagram and Facebook, everyone is doing that and it doesn't look strange anymore. ⁓

Alex Hobcraft (38:24)

Mm-hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (38:32)

Big thing with Facebook is that you can put that direct link right into your posts. So I would take advantage of that. I do get a lot of link clicks when that link, rather than saying link and bio on Facebook, that's like a wasted opportunity.

Alex Hobcraft (38:38)

Hmm

Oh, really? Oh, interesting. Yeah, that's good to know. Getting back to your team, because I noticed that you do have a strong way of doing your social media. It is noticeable. How did you hire a team or how do you find those people? Is it primarily connection of just whether you work well together or are skills as important to those people as much as how much camaraderie you had?

Suzanne Zandbergen (38:48)

Mm-hmm.

⁓ Definitely what I look for for a team member of The Generator is ⁓ what are you doing currently on social media? Like if you have no social media presence, like maybe it could be that you're doing something behind the scenes somewhere else and you know, we can talk about that. ⁓ most people who are really suited well to this career are people that are doing it for fun personally.

They have a blog and they are posting on Instagram, that kind of thing. They're doing videos on TikTok, something like that. Because they just love it, right? And it is very much like a seven day a week kind of a job. So you really need to love it.

Alex Hobcraft (39:48)

Okay.

Hmm.

And do

you find that the younger generation, because they grew up with it much more so than my generation, would you say that they're more intuitive or do they still have to learn ⁓ as much as someone who didn't grow up with social?

Suzanne Zandbergen (40:15)

I mean, it's a big advantage to understand how to use the tools and use them quickly. ⁓ But there's still this huge learning piece about marketing. ⁓ I think you see it a lot on TikTok and Instagram, where a small business has kind of handed over their account to one of their younger employees. And you can see that they don't really understand marketing. They talk about things like, ⁓ you know, they

Alex Hobcraft (40:22)

Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (40:44)

they play out the bad customer or something like that. It's like this little role play sort of meme thing that people are doing. it's like this content doesn't ⁓ entice people to come to your business. In fact, it probably does the opposite. So yeah, just be aware of that. Make sure that you understand. You need to learn that piece, especially for business owners who are handing that.

Alex Hobcraft (40:53)

Mm-hmm.

Suzanne Zandbergen (41:10)

that entire voice and panel to somebody who doesn't really understand that, that's super important.

Alex Hobcraft (41:15)

⁓ So would you say that that leads to my next question perfectly like what would be the one piece of advice for small businesses who are just starting to dip their toe into social media? They're starting to see that they have to be far more ⁓ prevalent on whatever platform they choose. What's one piece of advice that would really help dodge some pitfalls or help them grow?

Suzanne Zandbergen (41:41)

So I was going to talk about my advice just in general as an entrepreneur and making sure that you really do what you love. think that's super important. Something that I learned, know, as an entrepreneur, you know, it's a lot of work, a lot of hours. So you really need to love what you're doing and be focusing, have a way to focus on what you're doing that...

the things that you love and outsource the things that you don't enjoy. Because you're just going to get burned out, right? Running a business and not enjoying any part of it. yeah, that's something I'll be definitely...

Alex Hobcraft (42:09)

Mm.

No, it's great advice.

Yeah, it is a seven day a week job for sure. I used to joke with people that I just work from seven, just grazing work all throughout the day. Because there's always something that's got your attention. then people have family and lives and you've to do something outside of your business. You start to just not be so creative and you do lose touch with your business if you're not playing as hard as you're working, for sure.

Suzanne Zandbergen (42:27)

Uh-huh.

Exactly, yeah.

Alex Hobcraft (42:53)

Yeah. Suzanne, it's been a pleasure interviewing you. Thank you so much. ⁓ I'm going to put all of your social handles in the description ⁓ below. And I really appreciate your time. And hopefully, we can do this again at a future date.

Suzanne Zandbergen (43:12)

For sure, yeah, thanks so much for having me.

Alex Hobcraft (43:14)

All right, take care.

Suzanne Zandbergen (43:15)

Bye.

Alex Hobcraft (43:15)

you