Why riders need social media – Transcript

Rhea Freeman: (00:10)
Well. Hello and welcome to a solo show with me today. And it’s aimed at all you riders. Actually, it’s not just aimed at riders. It’s also a really good one for brands who are interested in working with riders. But it’s all about why riders need to have social media and why they need to take it seriously and also why they need their own website. I’m going to talk about the kind of essential digital marketing platforms for a rider in today’s world. Now, before I go too much further, I want to say that this podcast is, you know, they say sponsored by, I’m not sure if when it’s your own product it’s technically sponsored because I’m not paying me to talk about this because that would just be weird. But, um, it’s inverted commas sponsored by my new digital course called social supercharge riders, easy for me to say! Which is all about helping horse riders to promote themselves better on social media to attract what they want from it.

Rhea Freeman: (01:13)
So whether that’s brand ambassadorship, sponsorships or even owners, supporters, and more of the above. So if you want more information about that, it’ll be in the show notes. And it’s also on my website, under the work with me tab, it’s called social supercharge riders. Um, so let’s carry on. So the first thing I’d say is my go-to is, well all riders need social media. All riders need to have some form of website. And that to me is an absolute essential if, if they want to gain any form of support. So by this, I mean if they want to have their horse and they want to ride their horse and they want to enjoy their horse and that’s all they want to do, they don’t need to do any of this. If they literally just want to enjoy their horse, ride their horse, compete their horse, whatever.

Rhea Freeman: (02:09)
You don’t need any of this because you live your life how you like. However, if you want to gain any kind of brand new ambassadorships, to work with brands, collaborate, have opportunities presented to you, you need to be on these platforms. So if you, I mean the thing is you might be in the first camp, you just want to document your journey and that’s completely fine too. But if you want to attract anything, like I’ve mentioned, social media is a big thing for you. And to be honest, a website as well. So I’m going to just touch on the website to start with. Obviously social media is, is much more my thing. Um, but even if you just have a really basic WordPress free website that is just a hub where people can find out more about you, who sponsors are who work with you, your horses, and anything that you sell or promote.

Rhea Freeman: (03:07)
So whether you give lessons, whether you ride other people’s horses, whether you sell horses, it doesn’t have to be something that you have to put hours and hours and hours and hours of work into each week or month. It can be something in a perfect world, you’d be doing blogs, you’d be doing regular updates, you’d be doing lots of things like that. But I’m saying if you don’t have the bandwidth, I love that phrase, for that at this time, don’t think can’t be doing with a website, then I would still urge you to have your own little space on the internet. I did a podcast last week actually with Ray from Worcester web studio. I would urge you to go and have a listen to that. He talks about three ways you can get websites, things like WordPress and also ways you can have websites in your own domain name. So for example, mine is Rhea Freeman PR.

Rhea Freeman: (03:55)
I own that and my website is, he works with that, but the free ones are usually something like, would be Rhea Freeman, PR dot. WordPress dot, whatever. So if you have your own domain name, you can pay a little bit more and have it hosted. And he also talks about some really affordable hosting options on some of the big platforms. So you can either have it free and have dot WordPress or dot, whatever. I keep talking about WordPress, that’s just because I use WordPress, but I know of people who use other platforms very effectively. But even if you just have that with links to your social media, I would really urge you to consider that because it’s just good. It’s your own shop window that you’ve got control over. So I’d urge you to have that. But now I’m going to move on to the ways that you promote yourself because if your site is your shop window, you want to drive people to said shop window and you want to tell them about your shop window.

Rhea Freeman: (04:58)
And the great thing with social media is it allows us to get involved in these conversations to reach out to people as much as them reaching out to us. And that’s what’s really important. So you need it if you are looking to attract any kind of following because nowadays all the brands I work with and advise and speak to, and I’ll be honest, there’s a lot of them because obviously I have my clients and I have my masterminders and I have the small and supercharged group. I watch carefully and I work with a lot of people, social media is such a big deal. Social allows people to connect in ways they never have before and if you want a brand to invest in you on any level, you’ve got to be out there promoting yourself and doing something about it. And the easiest way to do that, if it’s through social media, as many different channels available, and I’d suggest you don’t have to be on all of them because that’s like a full time job, but pick a couple, pick a couple that are going to work with the kind of content you want to create, what you want to do.

Rhea Freeman: (06:05)
And you might find that actually you can pick more than two. Again, it depends on what you want to do. So if you’re really into vlogging, if you love video, if you love taking videos, you love editing them, then YouTube is a really obvious place to go. And obviously YouTube itself works as a standalone platform because it’s basically a search engine, but you can also use that video content and put it onto Facebook in a native way. You can share the link on the feed,, but you could share the link onto Twitter and Instagram. You could have it as an IGTV episode. You could just repurpose that same content. And/or you could have a link in the bio to your YouTube channel, but you’re still using it to promote what you’re doing. So you could have a main platform and then you promote it through the others, promote your main content.

Rhea Freeman: (06:53)
Although I think don’t underestimate the value of being native because that’s quite a big deal, but don’t think, Oh my God, I need to be on Twitter, Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, um, all the places, Pinterest, all the places because you’ll just burn yourself out. Maybe pick two, pick one to start with, let’s be honest and really focus on that. But a couple is quite good. And to be honest, most of the people that I work with, it’s going to be Instagram and Facebook because they’re the biggest platforms. They’re the most used platforms. I mean, Facebook has over 2 billion monthly active users. Instagram has got over a billion monthly active users. And a lot of people use the platform daily so you don’t have to kill yourself doing this, but you can use these platforms to really help you. It can be to document your journey.

Rhea Freeman: (07:49)
Again, if you want to create content like videos that you heavily edit together and they are things of beauty, you go for it and they’re beautiful and they’re great to watch and if you enjoy it, please do it. Please do. Don’t think, Oh, I mustn’t do it, but you can just, you can gain huge ground by just documenting what you do with your horses, the products you use, the people you see, the places you go, the things you’re working on. You can make massive gains by just sharing this with people. One of the things I discuss in the course actually is behind the scenes and the value of it and I have to say this is just such an underused area. If I was advising a business, I always say look behind the scenes what goes on behind the scenes. Talk about your members of staff, talk about the products that you are making, the packaging, the way you send things out, the workshop, the shop floor, the members of your team, all the stuff that is unique to you.

Rhea Freeman: (08:52)
Because how cool is that? We can all see the perfectly polished photos. We can all see the, um, I know you can all see the trade stands. That’s an amazing behind the scenes thing as well. But you know, we can all see these perfectly polished photographs but what we can’t all see is what goes into making the stuff that’s in these photographs. And that is something incredible. Flip that to riders. And the same applies when you say that you came seventh at a show. I could probably find that out. I could probably, if you are competing, if you’re eventing, I could definitely find out. Um, and it wouldn’t take much. You take a few minutes. I’m not saying don’t share your results at all, but share more than the results. What’s going on behind that result? Are you pleased with the result? Could your horse have done better?

Rhea Freeman: (09:43)
Could you have done better? Did you make an error? Um, is it a personal best for you? Did you think the course was tricky? Did you think the arena had a scary flower box? Did your horse spook all the way in and then was an angel? Tell us what is going on when, this is just competition I’m talking about now. But tell us the emotions, the feelings, the thoughts connected with competing. Don’t just tell us the end result because we can find that out. We can find the end result out pretty easily. Getting over excited now. And that’s just sort of show and that’s not actually just at a show. That’s just the results of the show. You can talk about the process that you go through. So the preparation to get there, if you’re eventing, walking, actually eventing or showjumping, walking the course.

Rhea Freeman: (10:31)
Um, if you’re doing dressage, kind of your arena familiarisation and how you feel that’s going to play out and how the arenas are laid out and you know all the things that are going through your mind. That’s brilliant behind the scenes stuff. That’s really great insight into what makes you tick and actually these are the things that are likely to attract brands to you because you’re not just saying, yeah, came seventh that was great. Yeah, it came first. It was great. You’ll saying, Oh my goodness, I can’t believe we won. It’s such a brilliant way to finish the season. We’d been working so hard on it. Looking back last year, these were the feelings I had. Can’t believe we’ve gone up level, really pleased we stayed at the level, whatever the stuff that we don’t see from your first rosette that you could also share it.

Rhea Freeman: (11:24)
As I said, the preparation, whether that’s before you go or at the event, and this is just the competitions. Think about the stuff behind the scenes day to day, what you feed your horse, the products you use to make it shiny. All these things are really useful for people and not just useful for your fans or followers because it’s amazing content. If your horse has got the most stunning quarter marks in the County, in the world, let’s say the world, let’s go big, let’s get big or go home, the most stunning quarter marks and you’ve got some really nifty little trick that shows that makes them stay or makes them pop a bit more and you share that. How great is that for your fans and followers? Because really your fans and followers are following you to keep with your journey, to find out about your horse because they’ve got an interest in you as a person and if you start sharing these little golden nuggets along the way, it’s really good.

Rhea Freeman: (12:20)
People try them, they take pictures, they tag you when they try it and you start to spread and grow your following. Now, if you are a brand looking at a rider and you’ve got a rider who is saying that they love the food that their horse goes on because the horse maybe had issues with getting a bit fizzy before or struggled to gain weight or struggled to maintain weight or just got too fat and actually this feed is working really, really well and you’re being completely open and honest. And even if you’re paying for the product, let’s say you’ll see you have no sponsorships or ambassadors, but if you as a brand keep seeing somebody pop up and wave flags for you and rave about you. If you’re then thinking, so you know that your brand, you’re a brand. With your listening hat on, you want somebody who is going to be out there flag-waving for you, promoting what you do, talking about the benefits of feeding your products and you’ve got someone who’s paying to feed it and is still raving about it.

Rhea Freeman: (13:19)
Wouldn’t you go for that person over somebody who has never mentioned it to anyone? I would because to me that person is already on board and it might mean with feed that you get a gift vouchers for example. It might not mean like a full sponsorship but it might mean that you get a thank you and you getting acknowledged or you get shared on their feed. Isn’t that really positive and you’re already doing it. You’re already doing it, you’re just documenting it and that is what you’re sharing with people. If you have got some amazing brushing boots that are just the absolute bees’ knees and you bought them for a very specific reason because your horse brushes and normally they just shred straight through the strike pads and you are saying watch, I’ve had these for like a month now and they’re doing really, really well.

Rhea Freeman: (14:07)
Look how good they are. And you take some really nice pictures and you talk about that through your social and you tag the brand. If the brand has got any idea on social, they’ll be watching that and they’ll be aware of it and there’ll be seeing what you’re doing. And again, even if that’s the case of them dropping you a message and saying, Oh, we love your pictures. Do you mind if we share them? Brilliant way to start any kind of relationship and the best way to start in my opinion, but who knows what that could lead to. I’m not saying you should only do these things for the end goal because if you’ve got your fans and followers who are looking at what you’re doing and you’ve got a product that’s genuinely, genuinely changed the game for you, tell them. Why wouldn’t you tell them?

Rhea Freeman: (14:49)
The only reason you wouldn’t tell them, I guess is if you are sponsored by a competitor, but then in that case you need to really think about whether or not that sponsor aligns with you. But if you’ve got a product that you love that has saved you money, that has changed something for you that has changed something for your horse, why wouldn’t you share that? And you can share the journey you can to say to people, actually, I bought these and more than I normally would spend, but I’m getting through a cheap variation of this every couple of weeks and I thought let’s try something more expensive and hope it lasts and it has. I suppose the other side of this is when stuff doesn’t work and stuff isn’t good and I have to say, I would always be quite careful with oversharing. This, I’m not saying lie never lie, that’s not good.

Rhea Freeman: (15:37)
We are all about authenticity and being genuine, but you’d be much better if you have a product that you tried and didn’t like or you bought and didn’t like. You’d be much, much better speaking even if it’s in a DM, but definitely offline, not offline, online but not in public. So email, DM, phone call, let’s go mad. It’s go the old dog and bone and explaining that to the brand because that’s useful feedback for them. But that useful feedback for them might just be specific to you. So it might be that your whole, this thing about brushing boots, it might be that your horse has got an action that will just shred them. Actually there’s a much better product out there for you in their range because of the way your horse moves. So maybe having a, I don’t know, it’s like some plastic strike pad for example, that they can just shred.

Rhea Freeman: (16:29)
Maybe you need something integrated. So through giving the feedback you might learn something, you might learn a better product for you or it might be that you’ve got a faulty product or it might be that the product is rubbish and you won’t buy it again, but you’ve, that is not necessarily useful for you to give that feedback on unless you have been saying these are the best thing since sliced bread. You do need to be genuine, authentic and honest. But if you are looking to help support small businesses to help build your own brand, you don’t do that by being foul about things. Because I think we can all say that we’ve had products that haven’t worked out how we expected and sometimes it might be that we’ve got a faulty batch and I’m sure that was a product not all that long ago I bought from a, I’m trying to think, just trying to think.

Rhea Freeman: (17:23)
It was a, I think it was a jacket from a high street brand. It was quite awhile ago, like a blazer. And I realised that some of the stitching hadn’t caught obviously when I got home, took it back and they swapped it so that obviously it’s not ideal because the product isn’t doing what it should do, but it’s clearly an oversight. And actually the customer service was brilliant. So I might talk about the customer service, but I wouldn’t say, ‘Oh because the product was rubbish…’ Because the product wasn’t rubbish. You know what I mean? There’s a, there is a difference there. So I wouldn’t ever slate people on social. But I think allowing people to follow your journey and you to talk about the benefits and positives is a really, really good thing that is more likely to attract brands to you. Because if you are using and loving their product, to me that is one of the keys.

Rhea Freeman: (18:13)
I, if I had a pound for every time in one of the accounts I admin, I see a message and sometimes they’re incredible. Like, will you sponsor me? I love those. When that’s the full message from someone who has never tagged you, never commented any of your content. Sometimes they don’t even follow you. That’s a really great one. Um, we lots of sponsor messages. Well that would be a no, but if we, if I’m contacted by somebody who is saying, I love your product, I love your brand. I use a product all the time. Um, this is a specific model I have. I’ve had it for this long and is actually giving me that information. I’ll do my best to help. I might not be able to help, I mean, I think in today’s world, full sponsorships are much rarer, but brands do want to support people that support them.

Rhea Freeman: (19:06)
So even if it’s a free product, a gift voucher, something like that, or even just, ah, that’s amazing. Thank you so much. When we’re next looking to do something, you’ll top of the list. How great is that? But the people that I am willing to do that for and that my brands are willing to do that for are people who have already put in the groundwork. People who have already been actually showing that they use the product, that they love the product. They’re the people that I want on any kind of team, any brand ambassadors team, because they’re already doing the work. So as a brand, you don’t have to think, Oh God, I’m gonna have to make sure we do the content. Oh, I’m going to give them this product, this thing I’m gonna have to chase, chase, chase, chase, chase, or even worse.

Rhea Freeman: (19:52)
I’ve no idea. I’ve no idea if they use it. I don’t even know if they’re going to do what they say because I’ve got no evidence. I’ve got nothing to say that they do tag brands, that they do show behind the scenes that they do do what they’re promising. So you need to put in the groundwork and the groundwork is using your social well. Um, so you’re the one that says, will you sponsor me. Rethink manners. Poor manners annoy the heck out of me because it’s just annoying. But using what you have, documenting it is the way, you’re going to get what you want if you want to work with brands. So yeah, brand ambassadorships are something that is quite common or for better word sponsorships in some degree. But again, if you’re looking to work with brands, you need to be doing this.

Rhea Freeman: (20:50)
And also please be really aware that you can only work with so many brands. So if you’re doing all this content, you’re putting all the social media out, you’re putting all the tags out and someone approaches you from a brand you have never heard of before, wants to work with you. I’m not saying don’t do it. I’m saying if I were you, I would ask to test a sample of the product first and see if it’s going to work for you. If you’re happy to swap something that you’ve used and love for years for it. Don’t just go, Oh yeah, yeah, free stuff. We’ll have that. It’s just not authentic or genuine. Just think hard about that. Another thing that, um, I’ve gone off on a tangent there. Sorry about that. So another thing that you can hopefully gain from using your social media, this is probably more for the professional riders.

Rhea Freeman: (21:35)
It’s potentially owners because owners are people and people use social media and you might find that your owners or potential owners hang out more on Facebook to Instagram for example. But the more you’re putting yourself out there, the more you’re showing all the behind the scenes stuff, the more that people, and also your results, how you feel about it, how the horses come on, all the stuff we’ve talked about. If you are an owner looking to place your horse with somebody, wouldn’t that be really interesting information that you’re basically getting a behind the scenes yard tour, competition tour, all of the above for as long as you want to keep an eye on them before you even have to reach out. How useful is that so you don’t have to declare an interest. You can just watch quietly and see what happens. You can just watch and see if they are your kind of people and not only can you judge this from the way they worked with their horses, but you can judge this from the way people speak, the way they engage with others, the their sense of humour, the way they treat that other owners.

Rhea Freeman: (22:41)
You can gauge all of this from someone’s social media if they’re genuine, authentic, and honest. How great is that? You don’t have to have that awkward like first date period when you rock up and you think, yeah, this isn’t going to work. How do I get out? At what point can I get someone to phone me and leave here? You don’t have any of the weird first dateness, you just, you know them already. You know what they’re like, you’ll actually find out more about them. and go to see them and speaking to them one to one, but as an owner, how good is that? So you can provide that too by just showing what you’re up to and that’s another great reason why you need social media. Other thing you might not have thought of. Obviously the brand ambassadorships and the sponsors are probably still the most obvious if you’re a rider.

Rhea Freeman: (23:28)
Obviously owners might be an extra benefit, but there are other opportunities that present themselves that you might not think of as opportunities or as possibles, but they really can be so when you start to build a really good engaged following, you can knock it up to the level where people will pay you to create content for them. And again, I’d always be careful if this aligns, but you can either with a brand or a service or even a show or event, you have the ability to either reach out to people or for them to reach out to you because you’ve already got so much good stuff there that you can use to promote yourself, collaborations. You know, you might even get to the point where you are working on your own ranges with brands.

Rhea Freeman: (24:15)
There’s so much scope that if you want to take it, and if you use social media well and properly, but you might not want to and that is fine too. You don’t have to do any of these things. And I think this is a really important point because we also choose to push, push, push, push, push. I need to have this because everyone else got it. Especially if you’re someone who’s doing this for fun as an amateur, don’t let something that you are not sure you want hurt something that you love. You might not want to be posting consistently and that’s fine if you’re not expecting anything from it. If you want to have brand ambassadorships, sponsorships and higher level things, you’re going to need to be consistent. If you don’t, you don’t. You do what you want. And this is a really, really key point here because I’ve seen so many people who are amateur horse riders by which I mean they’re not professional and they are so they get so passionate about their social media.

Rhea Freeman: (25:29)
But it’s not just a case of you putting the stuff out there. It can take huge amount of time to do your social media well because not only putting out the content but you are also responding, engaging, creating. And that can take a large amount of time. And if you have a full time job and you have a horse that you are training, fitting, keeping well it might be more than one horse. And the other bit of your, you know, the rest of your life, maybe you’ve got kids, maybe you’ve got husband, partner, whatever and you want to spend some time with them and then you’ve got social media which can be massive if you let it. It can be too much and I’m not saying it doesn’t have to be, but it can be and I think you need to have really clear goal when you start your social media, when you put the time into it of what you want to achieve from it and when you’ve got this idea in your head of what you want to achieve from it, especially if you’re an amateur, if it’s a professional, it’s slightly more obvious.

Rhea Freeman: (26:37)
You want to gain sponsorships to help you do what you do because it’s a key part of your business. If you’re amateur, you don’t always have to have earned the money within your hobby. Basically. If you’re an amateur, you don’t have to make the money in your hobby because you have a full time job that funds your hobby. If you’re a professional rider, your full time job is riding and therefore looking at revenue sources to fund that and whether that’s kit or product that you don’t have to buy is obviously a serious consideration. And if you want to nail that as a rider, a professional rider, you do need to look at your social media as a key part of your marketing. And I really believe that so, so passionately. If you are an amateur that you want to get brand ambassadorship, sponsorship opportunities and you want to grow your following, you want to grow your influence and grow your accounts.

Rhea Freeman: (27:33)
So maybe you can do more as an influencer, maybe you can knock down your full time job to part time and create other revenue opportunities from that. Then yeah, you need to take it seriously and you need to take it probably seriously as a professional rider because you’ve got more ground to make up. But if you just want to enjoy your horse and you aren’t looking for any kind of revenue product/kit to come from your social, then do what you like. Absolutely do what you like and that’s completely fine. More than fine. It’s a good idea. It’s a healthy idea. So yeah, that’s why I think riders need social media and also a few really good ideas of how you can use it and how it can not take over your life. If you’ve listened to this episode and liked it. So I’m kind of hoping you have, please take a screenshot, share it on your Instagram stories and tag me at Rhea Freeman PR.

Rhea Freeman: (28:27)
I’d love to see where you’re listening, when you’re listening, if you liked it, what your key takeaways, any of those bits would be so, so useful. I’d love to know all of that and I hope that’s really helped. As I mentioned at the start of the show, I have got a course all about, it’s called social supercharge riders, which is on my website and links through. Or it’ll be in the show notes too. So any more information about that also feel free to DM me. I’m happy to answer any questions you’ve got. So thank you so, so much for listening to this episode. All about why horse riders needs to use social media or not? No, it is. It’s mainly is. I hope we’ll catch up next week team have a great week.

Listen to the podcast about why riders need social media here

Find out more about the Social Supercharge: Riders course here