12 - The Instagram Shift - Falling in Love with Social for Business with Claire Smith

When Claire Smith first encountered social media, she wanted nothing to do with it, especially as a mum of three. But once she stepped into her business role, everything changed. In this uplifting episode, Claire shares how she went from being a Coca-Cola rep and recruitment consultant to founding Studio 5 Social, helping small businesses grow using Instagram and beyond.

We explore the mindset shift that turned her aversion to social media into a thriving career, the power of listening to your peers, and the joy of helping others build something meaningful. Claire also shares her top tools for staying organised, including Trello, Canva, and simple folder hacks on your phone that make content creation easier.

This episode covers authenticity, visibility, time-chunking, and why growth is about more than just likes or followers. Whether you're a business owner, a parent, or navigating a new work chapter, Claire's story will give you practical inspiration.

🎙️ Edited with precision by podcast editing master, Mike Roberts of Making Digital Real

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Transcript

One of the biggest learning curves, which we'll probably come on to, but for me, setting up Studio 5 was the changing of hats. So I obviously had a very negative vibe for social media. I didn't like it. 

Having just had children, I was like, no, keep this away from my children. But the moment I put a business hat on my head, I totally fell in love with it because it was just such a powerful tool to market your business, find your clients or your customers and ultimately grow as a business. So today's guest on Between the Bells is the rather wonderful Claire Smith from Studio 5. Claire is a whiz on Instagram, on socials, and I know you're going to find her story as to how she ended up doing what she's doing really interesting.

None of us ever quite know how we're going to end up where we do. And what I loved about Claire's story is that she really listened to her friends when they told her what they thought she would be really good at. And she is really good at it. 

So as a mum of three, you're going to learn some great tactics and tools to make your life as a business owner, or if you're not a business owner, your life in general, much easier, more streamlined. So I will leave you to listen to the conversation. Claire Smith, welcome to Between the Bells.

Thank you for having me. What a treat. I only ever seem to see you parading around on the downs, although I don't see you quite so much now, but I see you a lot on Instagram.

So I know that's going to feature in this conversation slightly. It might little, it might a little bit. Do a little bit. 

So yeah, I'd love you to share with our listeners, Claire, your business journey. Yes, of course. So I'm Claire and I run Studio 5 Social, but my journey to getting here was, yeah, I mean, way, way back, I started life as a Coca-Cola rep driving a red van. 

I left uni and loved the opportunity. I joined them on a grad scheme and I was literally thrown into the world in a red van, steel toe cap boots. And my job was to sell, which I now think is hilarious, Coca-Cola, the number one soft drink.

What's a hard shit. Yeah. Yeah. 

How tricky could that be? And I, it was kind of coincided with a move. I'd moved from the north to the south after uni because my mum and dad had, and then they moved back up north and left me. I like to share that story. 

They deserted me in the south, but it was a brilliant way a, to get to know the south of England, which I now adore. And to, I say, cut my teeth in sales. It really wasn't cutting my teeth in sales because the can of Coke sells itself, but it did teach me lots and lots about how important it is to have good marketing. 

And most of my job was to go into shops. And then later educational workspaces to market our drinks, to maximise their sales, which was fascinating. And I really, really enjoyed it, but I did get to the point where I thought, well, look, if I am going to be anything in sales, I should probably try something that doesn't sell itself. 

So I went extreme, joined a startup recruiter at the time and literally walked into an office with a Dun & Bradstreet and my job was to build a database. It was the scariest thing ever because at that point, all I thought existed was Coca-Cola. I didn't actually realise there was any other business out there because they are very, very good at indoctrinating you into the red army, as they call it. 

So this was brilliant, very scary, but actually the best experience I could have had. I helped the other director grow the business and that was my life as a recruitment consultant. Absolutely loved it. 

I was working with qualified accountants. So again, very different to Coca-Cola and just grew the business. Unknown to me at the time, before I left to have my family, I set up a flexible working division. 

So this was way before its time and I thoroughly loved it. I spent three years growing that business and finding organisations in Surrey and the South West that would recruit on a flexible work basis. Not really appreciating how important that was for the people I were placing in the jobs until I obviously left and had my own family.

That often happens, Clare, doesn't it? I think until it's a real for you, you wouldn't naturally appreciate what you were doing. No, and I knew that these people were delighted that I'd found them a job. Obviously that kind of came with the territory, but I hadn't really fully appreciated the impact that then gave them as very good qualified chartered accountants, but to do both, to be mum and also have a very fulfilling career, not just the leftover bits that lots of people used to get if they were coming back to work. 

It was meaty, meaningful work that then led to on a flexible basis. So I did that for 12 years and then I fell pregnant with my first child and went on maternity leave and recognised because I was a director of the business that it probably wouldn't be okay for me to be returning to work on a part-time basis, unfortunately, and the nature of the recruitment I was doing, I wouldn't have seen Elliot at that point. And then I fell pregnant again with Harry and I just took the decision that it was probably time to step away, which I had such mixed feelings about because I loved recruitment and the main reason I loved it was the opportunity to meet people.

And so, yeah, I did make that decision and then I have my daughter and then when I started to think about going back to work, the thing that really had exploded in that time was social media and I was like, well, if I'm going to go back to anything, I need to get my head around what this is because it's not just the internet anymore that we're posting jobs on. Yeah, no, absolutely. A huge, huge beast in itself.

Yeah. And, you know, the FT isn't, you know, the thing that I kept selling to my clients to advertise in, it just wasn't, they didn't want to be in the FT anymore. So anyway, I joined a digital, a course run by the digital mums, which was brilliant at the time because it meant you could learn as well as be at home with children. 

It was very flexible and you left with a qualification at the end and that taught me in six months, it taught me everything I needed to know about all of the platforms. So Twitter at the time, LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and it gave you the opportunity to then run a campaign. So as a kind of using it as a business owner, I got to see exactly what it could do. 

That sort of coupled with a lot of my contemporaries and friends leaving and setting up their own businesses, they came to me to ask for help because they were in a similar position. And then I could obviously show them how these platforms worked. And they just said, Claire, why don't you do this? You know, so many people need this. 

So many of us are setting up on our own and we just don't know how to use these platforms. And I had seen, I, the irony of what I do now is that I was never on social media as Claire. I hated it. 

So I don't like Facebook. I don't like Instagram as Claire Smith. But what the Digital Mums course taught me with my sales and marketing background was this was an amazing tool to market your business. 

And it's free, like you don't pay for it. And you can talk to clients face to face without needing to speak to sick secretaries to get them in front of you. And so that's the bit that I thought, oh, this could be quite interesting if used in the right way. 

And that's how Studio 5 Social came to be, is that I just felt that I would give it a go and I would let it, I would give it a year. And then if it didn't work, I'd go back to recruitment. And my only reluctance to going back to recruitment was that I just didn't have three children not to see them. 

I wanted to be present and involved. Yeah, I hear you. And I think what's lovely, Carrie, is you took what your friends and contemporaries were saying and gave you that confidence, didn't it, then to actually do something for you? Yeah. 

I could see that I was, I could see the value that by them setting up their own business and knowing how to use these platforms, how much value that gave them in terms of growing their businesses. And so I was like, well, that's what I'm interested in. Exactly. 

And I think you clearly, and I've seen you in action, you're very skilled at communicating and actually getting the message across, but being real. And you're accessible. So it's those aspects of your personality that you've been able to bring into a business, which is lovely. 

And I clearly, like me, if you're doing something that gives you energy and joy, you keep doing it, it evolves. It doesn't stay static, but it holds your attention. Definitely. 

Definitely. And, you know, I could, one of the biggest learning curves, which we'll probably come on to, but for me, setting up Studio 5 was the changing of hat. So I obviously had a very negative vibe for social media. 

I didn't like it. Having just had children, I was like, no, keep this away from my children. But the moment I put a business hat on my head, I totally fell in love with it because it was just such a powerful tool to market your business, find your clients or your customers and ultimately grow as a business.

Yeah. And it's the hats, isn't it? No, fascinating. Thank you very much. 

Love that. So in terms of, you know, I love now being able to share some favourite tools or lessons, and I imagine you could probably reel these off for the next half an hour, but have you got some top ones you'd like to share? Yes. So I've whittled it down. 

Some are very Instagram focused. So obviously that is the platform that I do, you know, all my, that's where my expertise lay. So if you are a business owner on a social media platform, Instagram, LinkedIn, any of them, my number one tool right here right now is what you would describe as a phone sucker. 

And what a phone sucker is, is it's a suction thing. You might've seen the youngins, the teens using them. They are about 3.99. And if you are in any way ever going to create any content for your business, I will always be recommending that you are visible in that content somehow. 

And you put a phone sucker on your phone and it allows you to stick it to a window or a computer or anything. And it means you can get the best light. So you don't need to pay loads of money to have a professional photographer come and take that picture that you're going to share. 

You can just create that yourself within seconds by sucking that onto something. I wondered how you often would get your positioning then? Yeah. So I've got a window just here and it just, so long as I suck it there or on my computer, and it means that your hand's free as well. 

You're not having to touch your phone. No, that's true. And you're not having to get one of those huge tripods and getting that chasing around. 

You don't have to carry a tripod around at all. I'm popping on Amazon after this. Perfect.

Anything else within that area? So the other thing for me, organization wise, for me, I use Trello. I don't know whether you've ever used Trello. I absolutely love Trello.

It saves hours and it allows you to collaborate with, so for me with my clients, we can just collaborate on a board. But most, for me as a business owner, it just keeps me super organized and it's a very visual board. So from a content perspective and planning, you can see exactly what goes where. 

I love that. Yeah. No, same here. 

And then the other two are Canva. Obviously, I'm a bit of a Canva freak. So as long as I've got a timer and I don't let myself lose days in there, it's brilliant for creating quick business assets. 

So newsletter headers, anything. It doesn't have to be social media posts, but anything. It's great. 

And you can have all of your brand colors in there. And then probably more specific to content creation. You know, my favorite tool is folders in my camera. 

It was a massive game changer for me. Obviously, I do a lot of content creation, but the moment I took on board the folders that our phones give us for housing pictures. Oh, good idea. 

I've got a folder specifically for LinkedIn content, Instagram content, Reels, and it's just so time, it's such a time saver. So if, again, if you are creating content for your business, folders are definitely your friends. Folders are your friends. 

I love that. Thank you. Because I think this all boils down a lot to organization, doesn't it? And time saving and just being efficient with the limited time we all have. 

Yeah. Because people spend hours trying to create content and it's actually already on your phone half the time. Oh, I know. 

I'm forever spending time leafing back through something. And I find the search facility, certainly on an iPhone, quite useful because you can search on location and things like that, can't you? Yeah. Oh, I love those. 

Thank you. And then in terms of a bell ringer moment, Claire, is there one sort of takeaway piece of information you'd like to share, advice? I think, yeah, I would say, and it applies probably to lots of areas of running a business, is done is better than perfect. Just do it and move on. 

Procrastination must take up, and there must be some data somewhere that will tell you how many hours that's going to eat into your life, but just do it. And that was the biggest learning curve for me is I was constantly trying to make everything perfect, but I'm no longer in this corporate machine where I can go and get everything made perfect. It's just me doing it. 

So I would rather get more done and it not be quite maybe as my brain is telling me it needs to be. And that was a massive learning curve for me. Yeah. 

No, it's funny, Liz from Investing Women has said exactly the same. And I think there are certain things that can hold us back, aren't there? And actually no one else need know it's not as perfect as you'd hoped. I think nobody will know that it's not your idea of perfect. 

But more importantly, I genuinely don't think people like perfect. I think it actually turns people off. I think if you're if you're marketing your business and it looks too polished, people might feel that it's not a space they're allowed to be or they might feel quite threatened by that. 

So I actually think it's a good thing now. Yes. Much more authentic, isn't it then? Yeah. 

And approachable. You want to be approachable. Yes. 

You don't want to put those blockers in. And I think that that links into my whole piece I always say about, you know, go down your lane of the motorway. Don't don't take on too much about what other people are doing because actually it's the version of you that people are buying. 

Yeah, I like that. I totally agree with that. It's your lane. 

And the other bell ringer for me, I think, has been the people. So, you know, it takes me all the way back to my recruitment days. You know, there's so many amazing people out there that you can connect with and collaborate with. 

And these people are going to do very different things for you. Some will cheerlead you on. Some are going to challenge you a little bit. 

Some will support you. Some are going to just just get you and what running a business means. And, you know, whereas your husband might not because he still works in the corporate world. 

It's just good to have these connections that you can kind of lean on and, you know, be with when you need to. And that's that's been amazing. That for me has been such a wonderful benefit of setting up my own business and being on social media. 

It's the it's the people I've found not to work with, but but just to have in my world. Yes. No, no, no. 

I agree. And then you've got your different communities within that then, haven't you? And I think you're right. We know where we are in Guildford in Surrey. 

Lovely. Lots of local businesses, lots of activity happening, but there's much bigger world out there and we can connect with that so much more easily now. No, really interesting. 

Because I always remember we met via daisy chain and you just recognised me when I was walking the dog and you never met. I was like, who's this random coming on the football? You hadn't been for me being the same as I am online, as I am in person before that whole recognition bit wouldn't have been there. Yeah, it's so important that it's you and you were really near my children's school. 

That's how I remember when I dropped them off. We go through our journey, don't we, with different people that we see every day, especially with the school run and then suddenly if you haven't got the school run, that's replaced with other things. But I think at each stage, everything's so important, isn't it? And it feels like it's going to be like that forever when actually things shift and move on.

The people, you're right, people stay with you, don't they? And it's not a hardship to keep in touch. So I've got a lunch tomorrow with two gorgeous friends that I met when my youngest daughter was at the infant school and that friendship is really important to me and I need to make sure we still have those face-to-face things. So it just takes a bit of planning there.

Definitely. And school drop-off shout out. Now, Clare, I know that you're not parading along the pavements, pacing the pavements like you might have done. 

No, my school drop-off has taken a shift in the last 12 months, which I'm missing my walk on Pewley Downs. But so what I do now is I drop at the station and then my big shout out will be Forge on the Green because that is my new destination in Chambley. I know, Chambley Green. 

Best coffee and cinnamon buns outside of Guildford, I will caveat with. Yes. Oh, how nice. 

And you can take your dog. The dogs are welcome. So it's very nice. 

Nice. So it's interesting how it's evolved, but you found a different routine. And do you find doing that at the beginning of the day sets you up then for the work ahead? Yes, I miss. 

The thing I miss the most is the walk because the walk, that 20 minute walk to start your day before eight o'clock was perfect. So now I have to get up super early. So I have to get up at seven and walk Bella because otherwise it just eats into my day too much. 

So I have a longer day, but I start much earlier. Fine. So you've got that loaded, front loaded. 

Interesting. And then probably the most important bit for me, your homework assignment, Teacher Claire, please. Okay, Teacher Claire. 

So I would, my sort of two big, I kind of have two, I'm sorry, I couldn't written it down to one. So one is to start time chunking because that has been so important for me. And I think maybe that is to do with, you know, my role and sort of using social media as much as I do. 

I cannot sit on my phone all day because it's, it just feels too horrible. So I time chunk to be as productive as I can. So I just work in 20 minutes and the amount that I can now get through in those dedicated times between the school bell is brilliant. 

It's gone up tenfold. And some of that is discipline, just hiding my phone. My phone has to go in a drawer and it has to be turned off so I can get my tasks done in my 20 minutes. 

So I never ever turn my phone off. Do you not? No. How to be turned off. 

Isn't that awful? Yes. Turn it off or set it to be like completely silent. So it doesn't interfere with your day. 

I will do that. And like now I would have should have put it on like our play mode, but I'm good. Okay. 

Right. And then with my social media hat on, it would, it would be, if you are using social media and you find yourself getting frustrated, I have lots of conversations about growth and what that looks like. So my homework assignment is to stop thinking about growth as what I call vanity metrics. 

It's not about your followers. It's not even really about your reach. What it's about is having meaningful growth. 

So for example, if you are a business coach, it's how many people are booking that discovery call or booking into have an appointment with you as a result of what you're putting out on social media. So just be a bit strategic about how you're using it because otherwise it will just feel a bit like you're not getting anywhere. Um, so, you know, last year I was all about my email list and I wanted to see just by organically posting what I could do. 

And I grew it by 40%. And that then felt good for me that my content was doing something rather than just posting without really realising what. So it's being as specific as you can. 

Yes. But I think we do get carried away, don't we? On any of the social media platforms, followers, connections, it's just sort of looming there as a number. As a number. 

And it's not meaningful data like it's for your business. Whereas if you, and you will feel so much better about these platforms if you can go, right, well, because I did that for six months on LinkedIn, I've now got, you know, 150 more people on my, on my, on my newsletter or listening to my podcast, like make it, make it work for you. Like you'd be really strategic about how you use the platforms. 

Yeah. And be smart, I guess, with what you're looking to track. Yeah. 

Love that. Well, that's brilliant. And I knew I could chat you for hours, Clare, so we could carry on and on, couldn't we? Thank you. 

And I love your energy. And I love the fact that you've evolved and you're doing clearly what gives you energy and joy, because that's apparent on your smiley face. Oh, thank you, Rebecca. 

And thank you for having me. Thank you for inviting me on. I was really chuffed. 

And we'll be sharing all the links and how to find you in the show notes. So I'm sure you'll be gaining a few more followers as a result of that. So thanks so much, Clare.