NAVIGATING THE CHAOS

INTERVIEW

Eden Jalland

With

Ultimately people don't actually buy products and services, they buy stories. Stories are engaging and they help us to form connections between the storyteller and their audience, that human connection is what helps  attract potential customers and build long lasting relationships.

With this in mind it’s not particularly hard to see why Social Media has become such a valuable asset to businesses, the potential for building connections quickly, and to a huge reach is undeniable.

The social media space is at conflicting point right now, large businesses and influencers with giant followings are afraid to offend groups due to the anxiety of being virtually shamed and as such we are seeing less genuine content, opinion and ideas due to the risk of backfire and impact on reputation.

This approach comes with a trade off, avoiding being authentic neglects loyal followers and a lack of content which articulate your values or story can result in disengagement. In life and in business not everyone will love you and you have to ask yourself is the people pleasing strategy at the loss of real connections worth it?

Eden Jalland is making a career from navigating the social media minefield and producing authentic content for some really exciting brands. Eden is an amazing individual with a great sense of style and humour, I’m really grateful for her giving up the time in her chaotic schedule to do this interview.

Stephen: Do you want to tell me a bit about yourself? Your background and how you got into all of this?

Eden: Yes. So I've had a bit of a crazy journey to get where I am really. It's not been your typical go to Uni, do marketing, this is what I want to do with my life. I actually had no clue what I was going to end up doing. When I first left school, I went into tattooing, I did that for maybe six months or so whilst working in retail as a visual merchandiser and then a job came up with one of my friends at an advertising and marketing agency who mainly focused on signage, billboards, bus stops, all of those types of things. At the time, I must have been maybe 19 or 20, I viewed the job as just something that was a bit more stable and earn a bit more money

After working there for about a year COVID hit and the industry started slowing down, no one was investing in outdoor advertising. I sat down with my manager to discuss new ways to reach our audience. He said to me, what about building our social media presence? I jumped on the idea straight away. I started a digital marketing course, launched their social media channels and basically fell in love with it.

I began to build my own social media presence, specifically on LinkedIn, where I wrote a few articles about the impact of COVID on the OOH industry. Then I decided, why not do this all the time. So… I went part-time doing care work and started working as a content creator for a jewellery brand. It was a startup, but it had quite a large following, I did that for a while then a custom sneaker brand got in touch.

After that I decided I could this for myself, I could freelance. I spent six months to a year building my business, what I wanted to do and how I wanted it to look and launched it… I’ve now been doing that for the past year or so…

Stephen: A year on, what clients are you working with now?

Eden: I haven't really niched out; I think that’s such a stereotypical thing for people to say ‘you need to have a niche’. I personally think reach out to whoever, especially when you're first starting up, reach out to whoever, appeal to a wide audience and then as time goes on then you can niche down in terms of who you like, what types of businesses you like to work for etc.

With that ethos, I'm currently working with more creative businesses. My main clients at the moment are actually tattoo studios, which is quite ironic from where I started. It comes from applying to different tattoo shops, so I already had my name in there, they already knew me. So… at the moment it's mainly tattoo studios fashion, beauty and wellness.

Stephen: I think social media, in a lot of senses gets a pretty bad wrap. I recently wrote an article about of how I feel that Instagram is this competition as to who can shout the loudest, it feels like this noisy platform. What is your honest opinion of social media? It’s your job, it's your career. What is your opinion of it and what would you say to someone like me that from time to time be a little bit anti-Instagram?

Eden: I completely get it. I get it from a personal point of view because as much as I love social media and what it can bring for businesses, it also has that side. If you don't have control over the feeling of comparison and the noise on social media platforms, then it can be detrimental to your mental health. You have to constantly remind yourself of your objectives, why you’re on social media and what you want your journey to look like.

I try and stay away from doom scrolling through TikTok or Instagram. But… for businesses I see it as almost like a website, a landing page. It's just a matter of keeping it active, keeping it nice and easy, nice and chill for you. It doesn't need to be a massive competition. I think it's so difficult to avoid getting into a rat race of ‘oh my God this person is posting this much and this person has got this many followers’. Break it down, have a bit more control over it and it doesn't seem as scary. I think this is why clients simply pass it over to me because they're like, here you go. You can deal with it. You can deal with the noise and the stress.

Stephen: What's your opinion on influencers? They are massive. I follow quite a few, especially in the fashion space and there's definitely a few pairs of shoes that I own which I know I wouldn't if it wasn’t for certain individuals. What's your opinion on that space, why are people so drawn to these particular people?

Eden: We all struggle, everyone struggles to be themself and accept themselves, we struggle being comfortable with ourselves and what we have to offer.

When you see these influencers and all this ‘stuff’, you're like, ‘oh my God, this is amazing and I want to be like them’ as humans and in society there is always this need to blend in, I guess copy, look to someone that you can idolize. I think for business the influencer market is great. It's a great way to reach new audiences, but, on a personal level it comes back to managing yourself, controlling yourself, ensuring you don’t become too obsessive and start to believe you need something just because an influencer has got it.

Overall though, I think they're a great means for business and I think it's a great thing that people are able to share their personal life on social media and show that you can be accepted for yourself…

Stephen: How would you describe your own style, how would you articulate yourself to others?

Eden: I think it's really hard to actually articulate it to be honest, I am probably quite a chaotic, messy person and I'm always so conscious of being perfect. I don't know how I would necessarily describe it (my style) because to me it's just chaotic. I have other people that say, ‘oh my God, you look so put together. Your aesthetic is amazing and it all makes sense.’ I say, it sounds ridiculous but I didn't do any of it deliberately, I was just trying to be myself and the stuff that I put out is stuff that I like personally. It's not for anyone else. It is designed the way I like it to be.

"Being yourself is what differentiates you and your business from other people, in this massive sea, that is social media."

Stephen: I think there's something admirable about being true to yourself, and I think people engage with that. Going back to the influencer narrative, I believe in a lot of guises it’s been around for some time, brands have been gifting celebrities with handbags for years and years, however the new, social media generation of influencers are so big because people can engage with them, they feel much more relatable, or real than a celebrity megastar.

Eden: Literally! People buy from people. I think we often forget that there’s a real person with real feelings and experiences, behind the screen. All the brands that I work with, I say, ‘you need to get your face out there, or if it's not your face, your personality through your branding.’ It comes back to that complete buzzword of ‘being authentic’ which you hear 24/7 on social media, being authentic is where the values is. It’s cliché, but it’s true. Being yourself is what differentiates you and your business from other people in this massive sea of businesses basically doing the same thing. The one thing that's different is the person behind the screen.

Stephen: Where do you think it's going? What are the trends? What's the platform to be on right now? What are people doing right now?

Eden: With social media, it bounces around, you've got TikTok, which is much more raw, real-life. People literally just filming themselves and posting it as is. With Instagram it’s always had more of a cleaner, more put together aesthetic. It's got to look a certain way. It's almost a bit more… commercially orientated, whereas TikTok is much more personable. I think it will just continue to go in that direction, people want content that is relatable. It’s quite hard to predict, but I think as a consumer of social media, I always come back to what I'm watching. What I'm doing on social media, that's typically what everyone else is doing and a good indication of where it's going.

Stephen: I always ask this, it's such a typical question, but I do really love hearing peoples answer. In terms of influence or inspiration, where do you look?

Eden: I guess, kind of all around? It sounds really silly, but I don't necessarily look at other social media managers for example. For one, you end up going down a rabbit hole of comparison. Two, I don't want to be like them, so why would I look at them for inspiration? A lot of the time it really comes down to speaking to my audience. So, it'll be polls on my Instagram or it'll be my clients and I'll say, ‘so what are your struggles?’ Then that's what I base my services and content off. Basically, it's the audience that I'm trying to speak to that I try and get inspiration from. I've been quite lucky with the businesses that I work with, a lot of their audience are within my age bracket so I can typically look to them for inspiration and what they're liking at the minute, whether it's a generalised thing or it's to do with social media.

Stephen: Away from social media, switching off, what do you like, what do you do?

Eden: I try and turn my phone off. That's how bad it gets. But I go for walks. I like to be outside. I like to climb mountains, as you do. I like being outside and spending time with friends and family. I'm a creative person, so if there's any way that I can have a separate creative project I will do. I haven't drawn or painted for ages, but that sort of thing. I also listen to lots of psychology podcasts. I read lots of things about psychology, that's what I do.

I look forward to sharing Eden’s new website in the coming months, in the meantime follow her Instagram here.