023 - Create FOMO for yourself: how to increase your workshop’s visibility - with May King Tsang

In this episode, I talk to May King Tsang, a social media FOMO ("fear of missing out") creator and live tweeter. May King joined a live event I organised a day before recording the interview so that I could have first-hand insights on how she works and how FOMO works. In the show, we talk about how May King created visibility for a small and intimate event on social media.  

In the show, May King shares the steps she took to create visibility: before, during and even after the event. She explains the key differences between the major platforms such as Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook and how we can use the algorithms to our advantage.  

Don’t miss the part when May King explains why she doesn't directly refer to the event she creates FOMO for in her very first social media posts. And what she did to help me to increase my number of followers on Instagram by 6% and by 35% on Twitter without me even using my phone.  

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Feeling inspired by the conversation in this episode? We can have our own - take a seat at my virtual table as part of a Mastermind Group.

 
Questions and Answers 

[2:00] If you had to choose a hashtag for yourself, what would it be? 

[3:08] Can you tell us a little bit more about your story, making tea and making FOMO while making mistakes. 

[6:05] What was your approach of creating pre-FOMO for the mastermind even? 

[13:08] How can we protect us against being tagged without consent? 

[13:49] We just covered the pre-FOMO strategy. What was then happening at the event itself? 

[22:42] If we want to be more strategic, what would be the differences of the different approaches on the three different platforms being Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook? 

[26:54] What is the ideal frequency of posting across platforms? 

[29:32] Why was it important that you used my phone during the event to create FOMO? 

[33:17] What is usually the result that you would hope for that you would bring forth? 

[40:45] From your outside perspective, observing the events you create FOMO for: What makes a workshop or conference fail? 

[47:09] How do you create post-FOMO? How can we keep the buzz alive after the event? 

[52:09] What would you like a listener to remember from our interview? 

Related links you may want to check out: 

• Neal Schaffer on influencer marketing 
• Andrew and Pete 
• Jannet Murray 
• Our sponsor Session Lab (affiliate link)  

Connect to May King
on LinkedIn

Follow her @MayKingTEA

Transcript

Myriam: 0:01

What if your next team workshop delivered the results you hoped for? What if everyone believed that the working session was a valuable use of their time and felt inspired to take action? My name is Myriam Hadnes and it is my mission to help you to deliver workshops that work. Today with me on the show is May King Tsang. She's a social media FOMO creator and life event reporter. We met last year at the Youpreneur summit in London and I was fortunate enough to share a table with her at the mastermind when I realized that many facilitators advertise their events with pictures of empty flip charts or piles of posted notes. I was curious how can we actually create more visibility for our workshops? So that's why I am very excited to have May King on the show today to talk about FOMO creation for our workshops, so stay tuned. Hello May King. Hi, how are you? I am very well and I'm excited to have you here in Amsterdam.

May King: 1:12

Thank you so much for inviting me, Myriam. It's been such a wonderful couple of days.

Myriam: 1:19

Yes, yes, yes. You came here initially to record the podcast. And then I thought, hmm, since we are talking about FOMO creation for workshops, maybe we should try it firsthand so that then I know what I'm speaking about

May King: 1:31

I am so grateful for the invitation because I had so much fun. It was such a great new challenge. Unfortunately we pulled it off. We did really well, didn't we? Yes. Yes. I cannot complain at all. And we're gonna talk more about,

Myriam: 1:48

In a minute. And I like to start with the question of a Hashtag. So if you had to choose a Hashtag for yourself, what would it be?

May King: 2:00

Well, I guess can it be two- of course. So sometimes I would, uh, I am very honest and open. I really want people to listen to the things that I've done and laugh with me. So I use the Hashtag MayKingMistakes. So I'm very, very honest and open about the mistakes that I made with the hope that people may learn from them so that they don't make t he mistakes. But of course, I don't want all of my social media to be about all the mistakes. I also want to show people the successes that I've made too. So the other Hashtag is MayKingitHappen.

Myriam: 2:46

so great. And the thing that caught my attention in the first place when we met around the table of the mastermind was your brand MayKingTEA. I just thought it was so genius. Miss May King is making tea. So maybe you can tell us a little bit more about you making tea and making FOMO while making mistakes.

May King: 3:08

Yeah, so I, I did start my business in making tea. So I was selling tea online and I was a very early adopter of social media. So podcast, youtube, Google plus, Twitter, they were my main platforms. And as I started to get more success for myself, I started to appear on TV and radio and local magazines, national magazines, newspapers and things. Tea companies started to approach me and say, can you do this for our business as well? And so I went from having my own tea business to being more of a consultant to help other tea businesses. And then with my own social media, I don't just talk about tea. I know that my customers like tea, they're like fine dining. They like coffee, they like festivals, they're like chefs. And so I would talk about other things like that. And now we go to festivals, food festivals, and I would talk to people and I would taste their food and I would talk about how amazing their food was and this, that and the other. And that's when I started to realize that people were getting excited by the things I was posting. And they said, oh, I forgot about this festival. Is it still on? How many more days is there? And what I realized is that people were getting FOMO, they were getting excited with all the posts that I was plotting. And then they went to the event itself and they book the tickets. So a lot of people were saying to me, you know, you're do really well here. You're creating excitement and getting people to book tickets onto the next event. You should do that more often. And I don't know about you, Myriam, but I'm not very good at taking compliments.

Myriam: 4:55

I realized that.

May King: 5:00

So I thought, you know, anybody can do this, but I realized, no, not everybody can do it. And when I started to look at the stats, I realized that I was tweeting five, seven, eight times more than anybody else. And that was when I came up with the title professional life tweeter and FOMO creator. And that's where it stemmed from. Really.

Myriam: 5:20

So it's your very clear, unfair advantage. And just a side note for anyone who might be confused or doesn't know the word FOMO, which stands for the fear of missing out. And we just had this event. So you came over to report about the mastermind that I set up and you created not only FOMO at the event, but you even started before that. So you created pre-FOMO model. So the fear of missing out, even having started. And I would love to hear from you what you've done and why you did it.

May King: 6:05

So you know, I am so thrilled that we got the chance to talk to each other and to work with each other. Because when we were at the mastermind, if you remember, we got involved in a conversation and I think you taught me something and I taught you something and you were so thrilled and that's why you invited me to be a guest in your podcast. And those moments like that where you learn from somebody, I think it's really important. So you know the pre-FOMO, what was, because I really was so excited to come to Amsterdam, the thought of working with you and I just wants to tell the world about it now. There's a reason why I'm doing that. So the pre-FOMO is to get excited to tell the world that I'm coming to Amsterdam to tell the world that I am working with the amazing Dr Myriam Hadnes to tell the world that I'm working on something quite new, which is to create FOMO, not on my favorite platform. I love Twitter. I'm very good at Twitter.

Myriam: 7:07

I'm scared of Twitter, he's too fast for me.

May King: 7:11

A lot of people are, a lot of people are. But if you do Twitter in a particular focused way and strategic way, it doesn't need to be as noisy as it is, but you are asking me to create FOMO on Instagram and I thought, great. I was so excited because I've just started to get into Instagram and wanted to know whether I could create FOMO for you on Instagram and just see how it worked and it definitely worked. So that's why I pre-FOMO for you because I was excited t oo at the prospect of working with you, excited to come to town. Excited at the challenge of creating FOMO on Instagram, but it's really to spread the word about what you do for facilitators so that if anybody was looking on Instagram, they searched on the hashtag workshopswork o r they searched on the hashtag facilitators, then hopefully they'll see all these posts about your up and coming event and then they may sign up to it as a last minute person. That's why I created pre-FOMO.

Myriam: 8:18

Great. And fortunately I didn't have any places left for last minute signups and was actually amazing for me to witness how you started actually creating this buzz around the event from the moment that your feet touched Amsterdam ground. And then you explained during the event in the keynote you gave that not every post that you created was directly related to the mastermind event, but you also created just some insights about your experience being an Amsterdam.

May King: 8:56

That's exactly right. So I mean the title of your mastermind is how to create visibility for events beyond a picture of an empty flip chart. And that's the thing everyone talks about the anti flip chart or the post it notes. This is my facilitator mastermind. If you'd like to come, this is what you're going to learn and that's boring. All of that is boring, you know, if, I mean, if you've never seen a an empty flip chart before, great. But because that they are there all the time, it's boring. So that's what I was doing. I was demonstrating how to do something a bit more creatively so that your facilitators will also understand. Ah, okay. That's how you can create new social media content. So when I arrived, as you said, we got off the the station, what was the name of the name of the station? Sloterdijk. And how was she just overwhelmed with the number of bicycles and it was great. So, you know, so I did a little Instagram story about how I've just arrived in Amsterdam. So that's a soft sell to explain that I'm here for Amsterdam with Myriam. So again, people know, ah, okay, May King is working with Myriam, and then I'm doing something creative by saying, and I've just come across all these bicycles, how do people actually find their bicycle? And you know, when I did that Instagram story, I had about six or seven people send me a private message and they said, some of them said, what are you doing in Amsterdam? So I explained, some of them said, how do people find their bicycles? So I explained and that is where the engagement happens. And so I c onnect, you know, i t's giving me an invitation to talk to people about what it is I do. If I'd have just written, just arrived in Amsterdam, I'm just about to get ready for a f acilitators, a mastermind that's happening tomorrow, I probably wouldn't have got as much engagement

Myriam: 11:00

And I wouldn't have got so many page and profile views without even being engaged myself because I don't remember having taken out my phone a single time in the beginning because I was just so excited. And when I then checked I had new followers, I had new profile views, although I didn't do anything myself.

May King: 11:23

And that was because I tagged you in it. Exactly. Yeah, exactly. So you know when, when you're running a facilitators workshop, if you know some of the attendees who are coming, ask their permission first of course. And if you've got their permission to use their name on the social media, then you can talk about that. Yeah. And that's where you can get FOMO and raise awareness about what you do.

Myriam: 11:45

And they might also be proud to be associated with the event and show publicly that they're investing in themselves by joining a mastermind.

May King: 11:53

Absolutely. Absolutely. And I think that that's really, really important when you run a business or you're a freelancer or even when you're working for somebody. We all have a personal brand and we all need to be proud of what it is we do and we want to associate ourselves with other successful personal brands. So, you know, I tagged Dr Myriam Hadnes because she's amazing. She's got this great niche where she's helping facilitators to thrive and grow in a safe haven of a lovely venue. So we can share problems, we can share our successes. I want to be a part of them. So that's why I tagged you because I'm proud to be part of, you know, be associated with your brand. Yeah.

Myriam: 12:39

And I want to underline the fact or what you just said, that it's important to get the consent first. Yes. Because I also experienced that sometimes when we talked about it, you know, maybe yesterday that they are some free rider, let's call them free rider who would just randomly tag us to be associated in a post that has nothing to do with us. And I was always wondering how can I protect myself against that?

May King: 13:08

Yeah. And unfortunately you can't. So I get a lot of people who tag me and if they haven't got my permission, I'll just not talk to them. But if they have my permission, then I will engage with them and if I engage with them, that increases the chances of their posts being seen by more people.

Myriam: 13:27

Yeah. With your almost 10,000 followers. That's impressive. Yeah, I could see the impact of that. So we talked about the pre-FOMO, which was for me exciting because it was something that I didn't even expect and hadn't thought of, at least in this extent and format. What happened then at the event?

May King: 13:49

What happens at the event? Well, I thought that I would experiment and so because we were going to be using Instagram primarily for FOMO, I thought that I would still record the presentation that I was going to deliver on Twitter just so that people could see what it is I was doing. And so in the talk itself I wanted to help people to understand what we are doing with the FOMO and why we are doing it. So in the talk itself, I mentioned about you can create FOMO on Instagram, on LinkedIn, on Twitter, on Facebook. What you need to do to try and engage with the people who are here today is to search for the Hashtag. So search for the Hashtag workshopswork to see if people are talking about it. Because a lot of people who attend an event, they will have tweeted or they will have instagrammed or they will have a Facebook or LinkedIn and said, I'm just going to London for the Youpreneur summit, or I'm just arriving at Myriam Hadnes' workshopswork-conference. And so you want to engage with those people. So in the first part of the presentation I talked about how you search for a Hashtag, which then I believe Myriam you were saying that some people, for them that was a really golden piece of information because

Myriam: 15:11

For me at first, because I didn't even realize until then that I could use the Hashtag workshopswork as my brand Hashtag, right? I unconsciously did it, yes, but I never used it strategically. So when you dropped this information, I was like, ah, okay.

May King: 15:32

So the light bulb moment went off in 37 degrees adding some more heat. So yeah. So I explained about how you can search for your Hashtag and if you don't have one think of one and create it and use it because going forward when you run more workshops in the future, people might want to do a bit of homework and the maze and think, yes, I think I might be interested in going to your next workshop, but I want to know what your workshops were like in the past so they can search on workshopswork or your own branded Hashtag and look at what's happened in the past.

Myriam: 16:12

And then they get all the firsthand testimonials as well because the people who attended, will talk about it and then you'll see the truth and not only what is put on the website.

May King: 16:26

Yes, exactly. Exactly. Yes. As long as they use the Hashtag of course, of course. Yeah. So we talked about that. And then what I also did, because I really wanted, you know, I do a lot of presentations up and down the country, uh, around the world. And I really wanted to customize this presentation, especially for facilitators. So the next thing I talked about was how do I increase visibility, you know, beyond the empty flip chart that I talked about. So on LinkedIn, what I did was I created, we went out for some dinner, didn't mean when I arrived that after the amazing bicycles that we saw everywhere at the train station, we had a quick walk. We went for a beer, we realized that both of us, like La Chouffe, and we had a beer. You know, we raised a toast to each other and I wrote about it. So I wrote about it on, actually I wrote about it on Instagram because Instagram, I can't quite remember how many characters you've got, but I know it's more than 1300. Anyway, so I wrote this long list, arrived in Amsterdam, excited, had a bottle of La Chouffe with Myriam. We also have some traditional food as well. It was the um, the Bitter Bollen. That's right. Which was amazing. And we also discussed about the workshop, what it was going to look like. And that was when I was thrilled with the, of creating FOMO for Instagram. So I wrote all about this on an Instagram post. I tagged Myriam cause I wanted her to see it. I also add the Hashtag workshopswork so that it's recorded. And so if ever anybody wanted to search on that Hashtag in the future they will see this post. And then I also tagged Jeroen, the fabulous photographer because I also wanted him to know as well and I was going to meet him the next day. So I wrote all this. I then copied all of the text and I paste it into LinkedIn because in social media things have changed. You can create one post and you can actually copy and paste it on LinkedIn, on Facebook, on Twitter, on different social media applications. And we all don't have a lot of time. So you know, having one piece of information which we can share across different platforms is fantastic. Now, we didn't do that two years ago, so things have changed. So two years ago, social media experts were saying, you know, Facebook is very different to Twitter is very different to Instagram. You have to do different things on each one. But now two years on we can use the same thing or just change the world slightly changed. Just because I think what experts have realized is that we don't have a lot of time and in reality people do want to know who we are. You know, LinkedIn, the algorithm has changed that, that people want to see more about us as a human as opposed to more about us as a business. So LinkedIn used to be very formal. It used to be about, you know, business business cards, this is what I'm doing. But now you know with LinkedIn you can put in Emojis, you can put in videos, you can even put in gifs if you want to. So LinkedIn is trying to become more human. And so that's why the algorithm changed so that you can put the same post across every social media platform.

Myriam: 19:51

And also I think Facebook might have changed because what I realized over the last 10 years that it used to be the younger generation being on Facebook. Yes. And now we grew up and we're still on Facebook and there are more and more parents on Facebook so their children eventually leave. So Facebook also becomes more of a working people platforms professional.

May King: 20:18

Exactly right. That's exactly right. Yes. The things have changed over time like you said and you know the younger folk are going on to Instagram or they're going onto snapchat. But yeah, a lot of people are still on Facebook, the older generation because like yeah, cause if your target market is, you know, 30 to 50 then you may want to focus more attention on Facebook or Instagram because a lot of people are on Instagram too. So I was just explaining in the presentation that I had one piece of information which are shared on Instagram. I copied and paste it into LinkedIn. LinkedIn, you're only allowed 1200 characters, so I can normally speak for England. So I edited a little bit, but the same pictures, the picture of and La Chouffe, the what were the snacks called again? The Bitter Ballen and Bitter Ballen and yeah, so I put that onto LinkedIn and then I also posted it onto Twitter as well. And Twitter, you've got 282 characters. So what I did was created seven tweets. That was part of the same conversation. So I was just demonstrating how you can do that for yourself, for your workshops as well. So not only did I write something that was different to an empty flip chart, but I also used it in three different places and that's what I talked about

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Myriam: 22:20

So, and you talked about the different platforms and you mentioned a little bit that the algorithm of LinkedIn changed. So when we do take more time, I, if we want to be more strategic, what would be the differences of the different approaches on the three different platforms being Instagram, LinkedIn and Facebook?

May King: 22:42

What a great question on Twitter and Twitter. My favorite platform, so LinkedIn is actually, the algorithm is very similar to the Facebook algorithm and people using the strategy on LinkedIn that they used on Facebook five years ago. So we want more people to see out post. And so I am actually a member of two Whatsapp groups and in the Whatsapp group people will say, hey guys, I have just put a LinkedIn post on LinkedIn, can you like, can you comment? Can you share? And within the first hour if you comments like and share on your LinkedIn posts, LinkedIn will think, ah, people find this really useful. So therefore they will show it to more people. And so this approach used to be adopted in Facebook. And so that's what people are doing now. Now for me personally, going back to the branding we were talking about, I only really want to liking comment on someone's post if I find it relevant to my readers or if I found something useful about it. If I've read it and I don't think I want to be associated with that particular host because some posts people put on LinkedIn or controversial, sometimes people swear, you know, and that's okay, but it's just not for me. So I will not comment and share and like everything that other people put up there, I will carefully consider it. But a lot of people just because they want more people to see their name and I understand that they want the people to see what that their name, they want LinkedIn to increase the number of people that see the post, then they will come and touch on it. So that used to happen five years ago on Facebook

Myriam: 24:35

and I think that's very interesting because I always thought that on LinkedIn I would rather wait a little bit before commenting on someone mentioning me because then I don't want to spam them. So they put a post, then my name is in the algorithm and the said, oh cool. So I gonna wait for a few hours and then my name will pop up again. And now I learned that it's actually exactly the opposite which is true: That I should, I must if I want to be more around comment right away.

May King: 25:10

And also if you want to, you know, help your friend to tag you as well. Yes absolutely. Now I all see is to think like yourself as well because on Twitter we may not want to respond to media because we want the tweet to last a little bit longer. And also Twitter is not the main platform for a lot of people. So we were talking this morning Myriam, about how you know, you're getting a lot of mentions at the moment because I've been tagging you- it is overwhelming and I understand that a lot of people do feel overwhelmed. So I was explaining to you this morning, don't worry, just set five minutes aside once a week to go into Twitter to see who's been talking about you or talking to you. Reply to those and do nothing else. That's all you need to do just five minutes, just to get used to it.

Myriam: 25:58

This calms my mind a lot.

May King: 26:03

And with Instagram, you know, it's a, a similar thing where you know, people are posting the post tend to last longer with the algorithm on the Instagram than Twitter and LinkedIn. So again, don't feel under pressure to comment or to lie can share, but do make sure that if anyone is talking to you do respond, you don't have to respond immediately. But do make sure you check once a week if it's not your main platform just to see if anyone's talking to you and then respond back. I t's just the nicest thing a nd the most human thing to do really.

Myriam: 26:39

So if you say that, a post lasts longer on Instagram than on LinkedIn, this would mean that maybe one post per day or every two days on Instagram is okay. Whereas on LinkedIn you may want to post more often.

May King: 26:54

Yes. Yes, absolutely. And you know, I often get asked, you know, how often do you post on, on Instagram, how often should you post on LinkedIn? And the thing is is that your readers will tell you, you know, if you find that you haven't posted on Instagram for five days and then you suddenly post and you're getting lots of comments, then that means that five days is okay. But if you have not posted for 10 days and then you don't get as many comments, then you know, ah, okay

Myriam: 27:26

I pissed off someone.

May King: 27:29

So you need to think, ah, okay, maybe I need to post more frequently than five days between five and 10 but you have to experiment yourself. Now on Instagram that are for all audiences. Okay. So we've only talked really about Instagram posts, what we did today, but I got talking to an influencer experts, Neal Schaffer, and he recommended that I do a bit more on Instagram and definitely on Instagram stories. So on Instagram stories, if I have something useful to say, I will try and post that every day. But I don't put pressure on myself. If I feel today I don't have anything useful to say, then I won't. So that's the other thing as well.

Myriam: 28:18

Yeah. Don't spam your audience. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And talking about the Instagram stories and coming back to the event and the FOMO you created because I think there's so much to learn from that. So the most scary part of all of that, and it really scared me a lot to say the least, was that we agreed that you will use my phone throughout the event so that I can really concentrate on the time boxing and making sure that the energy stays up despite sauna-like temperatures here in Amsterdam and really make sure that, um, all the tables okay. And maybe also just listening and seeing where the groups are at. So you used my phone to create Instagram stories and I only checked the day after and was amazed how you could just grab some insights from what happened without intruding in this rather intimate atmosphere of a mastermind table. So maybe you can guide us through and why it's important that you used my phone.

May King: 29:23

Yeah. And I, again, I'm so grateful that I was invited to take up this challenge because at the start of the presentation you did talk about the facilitators mastermind where we are sharing ideas. No one is judging anybody else. Everything is safe in these four walls. So my personal challenge was how am I able to create FOMO when such intimate subjects are going to be talked about. And I also didn't want to sit next to the facilitators to listen into the subjects because even though you mentioned at the start of the presentation you says that you know, May King might be sharing some subjects, but she won't be sharing any names. Okay. So all names are protected. I still felt like I might've intruded if I'd have sat next to a facilitator and listened in. So it was a personal challenge to me. How can I create FOMO without talking about the topics that were discussed? So I looked at it from a holistic viewpoint and what I noticed with a lot of things. So one of the things that I noticed was that there were three tables. One table they had decided amongst themselves that they would pair up. So they talked in pairs and then at the last 10 minutes they would share what everyone had talked about. And then another table, they decided they would just have one person speak and then everyone else would share their words of wisdom. So was just little things like that that I noticed. And then I also noticed that sometimes I could hear the same words coming up. This is great, this is great advice. You know, there is connection, the importance of safe space, a safe space. And so all these keywords were popping up. So I shared about that as well. And then of course we also had Jeroen, the photographer who was just getting set up. So I took photographs of that and commented on that. He was just getting set up, getting ready, making sure that he didn't upset anybody in, you know, in the big space, you know. So I was just observing and commenting on that and what impact that your workshop had on people. And you could see, you could feel the energy. I really wanted to convey the positive energy as well in the Instagram stories. Yeah.

Myriam: 31:51

Um, you asked the participants in the beginning to just add their tag from Instagram on a flip chart so that you could also then tag them along the way.

May King: 32:00

Yes, yes, that's right. Yeah. Yeah, so that was great as well. So when I was doing the Instagram stories, I was able to tag some of the participants that they could also see the stories the next day as well. So yeah, I did that as well. Forgot about that actually.

Myriam: 32:14

Yeah, that was a nice, nice add on. Yes. And it helped you along the way obviously. Of course. Yeah, of course. I can only speak for myself in terms of the results that I saw coming through the FOMO. I mentioned before that I got many more profile views than normally and people would start liking my, or your stories. Maybe I should mention that before the event took place, the morning I posted on LinkedIn and on Instagram that I will put my phone and my trust into your hands so that everyone knows that I'm not talking to them directly, but through you in that event. So that was a challenge and a nice experiment and I'm very happy that we did it because I'm still getting now more traction and I can see that even older posts are liked. When you go to other events or when you maybe advertise yourself, what is usually the result that you would hope for that you would bring forth?

May King: 33:17

So it depends on the client really. So you know, for us, you know, we wanted to ensure that the facilitator, it was all about the facilitators. It wasn't about you, it was all about the facilitators. So we knew that we wanted to give them as much publicity as possible. That was our goal. So you know, when you talked about on Instagram stories that I was going to take over your stories to help people understand that, you know, this is who I am, what I do, and we tagged all the facilitators. That's what we were doing. We were, we were honoring that goal of making it about your facilitators. With other clients, their goal was to ensure that they sold tickets. The next conference. So again, I was taking over, one of my client is Andrew and Pete. They had an amazing conference in Newcastle. They asked me to take over their Instagram and also their Twitter and also their Facebook. So I did exactly that. But their goal was to ensure that we have tickets sold for the next conference. So I was tweeting lots, I was instagramming lots, I was doing Facebook interviews live, had a lot of fun. And the end goal was that we managed to sell 450 tickets for a conference for next year. Awesome. It definitely worked. Yes. And I'm very pleased because they enjoyed my work so much. They've hired me for next year. Congratulations! Yes. So it depends on the client what their goal is. So it could be, their goal is, look, I haven't done this before, I just want to raise awareness about what we are doing. So that's absolutely possible. And then there are some people whose goal is, I want to sell tickets for next year. And so we honor that goal. So different clients have different requirements basically.

Myriam: 35:13

And I like that you underline that at the mastermind event. It wasn't about me, but it was about the participants. Yes. And I think this made not only me feel more comfortable. Yes. Yeah. And I think it not only made me more comfortable, but it was also a way to have a soft promotion of the event because I think nobody's interested in me. Okay, Myriam is launching a mastermind event that's fantastic for her. So what? But honoring the guests and giving them the opportunity also to self-promote and to be in the spotlight, then it becomes more interesting also for the outside world because they see firsthand what would be in for them by joining the next.

May King: 36:04

Absolutely. And, and I think that was what was really powerful about this mastermind: giving the facilitators the opportunity to understand what they can do for their workshops going forward. Yeah. And it, you know, in the mastermind you had not only freelancers who worked for themselves, but you also had people who worked for corporate companies and for corporates, they possibly don't want to share that they're facilitating workshops outside onto social media. Okay. So how are they going to promote the fact that they are doing it? Well, they can do it on their intranet, you know, or they can do it via email or they can talk to other departments and say, this is what we've done recently and they can share their knowledge. So there's absolutely lots of opportunities for facilitators to give themselves promotion either out onto social media or within the intranet or the organization. And so in the mastermind, because we made it about them, hopefully they were able to see, ah, this is why we did pre-FOMO. Ah, this is why we, you know, put all of our names on the flip charts. This is why we asked permission. Is it okay that we can talk about you on social media, et Cetera. Yeah.

Myriam: 37:28

And it's a very important point that you just rose, thank you for reminding me about the corporate facilitators. Yes. Because it was only through our conversations we had that I realized how strong this instrument of FOMO or live-reporting social media reporting- or however we want to call it- is also for corporates. Because very often what I hear from those who facilitate within companies is: they have a workshop and it might generate new ideas and excitement, but then very quickly the participants, Monday morning they're back to their daily routine. Yes. But if the facilitator introduces a way to create FOMO to create traction, even if it's only as you said through the intranet. Yes. Or the internal communication. Yes. Platforms. This can not only help them to share their results, throughout the departments to get the buy in, maybe from others to create some engagement, some conversation and also keep those where in the workshop more enthusiastic to follow up. Also it creates actually visibility and accountability because they might be asked, oh, so what have you done since the workshop?

May King: 38:36

Absolutely, peer pressure. It is, but also from a public relations perspective as well, you know, the corporates could actually write a LinkedIn post and say that this is what we did and you know, and to the outside world it shows that this is a forward thinking company. That they are willing to invest in their employees, willing to invest some time in actually listening to them, create these facilitating workshops and sharing ideas, which they can then share with other departments. So you know, the PR can actually be done as one LinkedIn post and then all the participants for their own personal branding, they can then write comments and say it was a great workshop. There's, you know, we learnt so much and this, that and the other because the employees potentially, you know, they may think, well, I've got a career here for 10 years, but I may decide to move on or I may look for another company or I may start by myself. And so they need to think about their own public relations and their own branding. And so they could potentially write a LinkedIn post for themselves. But it also gives great PR for the corporate as well.

Myriam: 40:09

Right. On LinkedIn, we see this a lot already. Um, how they share, I usually ask the question, what makes workshops fail? And with you and with not be so familiar with the workshops, but maybe more with conferences. I would like to just broaden the question to at least give you the choice and permission. So according to you when you're at a workshop or at a conference, what from an outside perspective, and I think that's very interesting and very curious to hear that. What does make it fail?

May King: 40:45

Well, I mean my job title is a FOMO Creator, right? And so, you know, for a conference organizer or for a workshop facilitator, it's very important to look after the people that have come to your event. I understand that. But what about the opportunity to help facilitators who couldn't get to that event, who are wanting to know more information about the next event or the next conference. And so you are doing the whole wide world a disservice if you don't talk about that. If you don't create that FOMO and place it onto social media or on the internet or internal communications. So that is an epic fail because your workshop is so amazing. It touched the hearts and minds of all 14 participants yesterday in that workshop. So wouldn't it be nice if when you run this event again, the other people get to take part in it? Yeah. So if you don't create FOMO, then you're missing out. Yeah.

Myriam: 41:53

So I totally get your point and I think it's a good reminder. I was thinking about at an event, yes. So you might have attended a conference either privately or professionally as you do a lot. That's how we met. Or as a FOMO creator. Yes. When would you say that a conference is a failure that you didn't get or the participants didn't get what they expected?

May King: 42:20

So, you know, I think the a conference or a workshop, the whole idea is that it's a great educational experience. It's a great networking experience. And so if you don't get good speakers, if you don't give the opportunities for people to network, I consider that a fail. So in one of the conferences, I won't mention which one obviously, but in one of the conferences I wanted to network with other people and the organizer didn't give that opportunity. You know, they didn't say, Oh hey, we're just meeting up at this particular pub at seven o'clock would love you to join us. They didn't do that, and if they didn't do that, then that's a missed opportunity for people to network to get to know the people. Because sometimes, you know, some people go to a conference on their own, they're so scared. You know, we were talking about being an introvert and an extrovert, and I am sometimes an introvert. Sometimes I'm an extrovert and there was one particular time I went to a conference and I was so shy. I was such an introvert. There was just too much energy in the room. I nearly wanted to run away.

Myriam: 43:35

I can relate to that.

May King: 43:37

Unfortunately. I was so lucky because someone spotted me and they recognize me and I didn't know that they knew me, which was amazing, and they came all the way over to say, hey, May King, how are you? And that made me feel so much better, but a conference, if they don't have those opportunities to network, then I feel that the conference organizers are not looking after the introverts who it's already a big deal for them to come to an event.

Myriam: 44:08

Yeah. I remember at the conference where we met, I think for the entire first day I didn't talk to anyone because I just started my business. I was so scared, I was so overwhelmed. I thought that everyone was professional and like who could, people would ask me, so what do you do? And I got so scared. I just blanked. I didn't even know how to describe myself,

May King: 44:31

so that was a challenge. I can relate to that too.

Myriam: 44:35

And then even though the, when going back, when we met in London again in May, I walked into this venue and first I thought that maybe it's a one venue because I didn't know anyone. I didn't see any branded posts and then you recognized me and start talking to me and we had this amazing chat and I was like, okay, after these 10 minutes I can already go home. Because I got so many insights. All the rest was just a bonus. Yeah. And yeah, I think to help participants to connect beforehand, to facilitate the space actually, even if it's just an informal drinking thing the day before, I think that's very valuable.

May King: 45:19

Yeah, definitely. And I've seen many conferences do this really well through a Facebook group where in the Facebook group they will say, hey, we're just going to hang out in this pub, this restaurant the day before. I just want to get numbers. Is anybody interested? Would you like to meet? And so that's great because it gives people an opportunity to say, yes, I will be there. And on the next day hopefully the organizers have written a poster to say this is where we are meeting so that we know that we are meeting there. So yeah, I think it's really important.

Myriam: 45:54

And then to come back to the FOMO, this even helps the conference host to get more visibility because these people, as soon as they meet, they have something to talk about they want to share it and then they will use the Hashtag and tag each other. Absolutely. So it's actually even mutually beneficial to create space for participants to connect because they have at least one thing in common, which is the conference at the workshop. And they will most surely talk about that.

May King: 46:22

Exactly. That's exactly right. Huh.

Myriam: 46:25

Thank you for teaching me that. I learned so much. Great. So we talked about pre FOMO and FOMO and as a last question I would be interested in post-FOMO, post-FOMO. Amazing. So how do you keep people engaged and you mentioned that on Twitter it makes sense to delay the answer in order to quote keep the tweet alive for longer. Yes. So what can we do if we have a workshop and then we wrote this one post and get all the testimonials or feedback hopefully. And then what?

May King: 47:09

Yeah, I mean well one of the things I like to do is actually gather a report, create a report. So I'm not normally a numbers person, but I'm trying to get better at that. So I actually have a couple of reports that I will bring down based on the Hashtag. So if you've got a branded Hashtag, I will search on that just to see how many people were talking about it. Who are the top speakers, the top tweeters, the top, top engages and how we can maintain the FOMO afterwards is we can maybe say, Hey, thank you so much for coming. What was your biggest takeaway? And ask them, you know, is there anything else that you, you know, we would love some feedback. Have you gotten any constructive feedback that you'd like to give us? And that enables you to have a conversation and keep that conversation going.

Myriam: 48:00

And would you do this on social media or in a survey?

May King: 48:04

You can do both. You can absolutely don't do both because some people will love to give you feedback, but they don't want to show it publicly on social media. So you give them the opportunity to either complete the survey or send you a private email or send you a private message, something like that. We also talked about, you know, on the day of the event, what I try to do is to do interviews with people and if the interviews had been done, well. Which I made a mistake and there was so much excitement in the room. The microphone didn't pick up the interview

Myriam: 48:41

We underestimated the background noise.

May King: 48:42

we did, but you know, because of the excitement in the room, which is great, we did the interviews, you could use those interviews as you know, drip feed them into social media, you know, and get sound bites from the interviews and you can post those along the way. You know, one of the interviews that I did early this year was about how to create FOMO on Twitter and join the podcast. There were a few bloopers. So Janet and Janet Murray, she interviewed me and one of her family members popped to the loo, so there was a toilet flush. So she kept that and posted that after the podcast interview as a blooper. So it keeps the conversation going. It's so cool. And then there was one time where my mom's got hay fever, really bad hay fever at the moment. So she sneezed and Janet said, Oh, is that your dog? Is My mom. So that was a blooper. And so she shared that maybe a week after the podcast. So you know, maybe there were funny moments in your work in your workshop, you know that you can share post FOMO and that's again, it's that soft sell and you know, you can send up the Instagram post, this is our blooper or this is a funny picture or something like that. And if you would like to know more details, you can sign up to my newsletter and that's how you can create the conversation and keeping going. Yup.

Myriam: 50:16

Very nice. And I'm excited to see how it will work with ours. Where we, so Jeroen, as you mentioned, he took beautiful headshot pictures of the person. Yeah. So I asked them whether they would be willing to, to agree that I share their pictures with a quote about the, about the mastermind. Right. And put it on social media because I thought it might be easier for me to post a beautiful picture of them because I can only speak about myself. But even if I have a fantastic picture of myself that I like, I maybe I wouldn't put it on on social media just to say, Hey, look how beautiful I am. Maybe I would just change my profile picture, but it's not something that I would do. So I thought giving them the chance to show how pretty or how beautiful they are. Yeah. And then, yeah, still keeping them. And again, post-FOMO alive

May King: 51:11

So again, there're two recurring themes here that it's demonstrating. Again, it's not about you Myriam, it's about the facilitators. It's about the participants of that workshop. So by you consciously, you know, receiving that photograph and putting in a caption, asking for permission. So again, you're being consistent. That is just another way of extending that FOMO. But you're doing it consistently because you ask permission. You also want to make it about them. You know, you want them to associate their brand with your amazing brand. So it's all these lovely themes that are coming through and it's all consistent and it's great. That's what you're doing. Basically,

Myriam: 51:54

since we're coming to the end of our interview and maybe a dear listener fell asleep after minute one just woke up and thought, oh my goodness, I don't have time to listen to all of that again. What do you want this person to remember?

May King: 52:09

Oh, the one thing to remember that you are not alone. You know, sometimes being in business, being a facilitator can often feel like the loneliest place in the planet, but it doesn't need to be because you have masterminds like this to come to, to share your experience, to receive help from other facilitators and to also share the connection, the love in the room, the knowledge and the experience. So you're not alone.

Myriam: 52:41

Thank you so much for sharing that. Now it feels like an advertisement break for myself. So the show was not only about the mastermind, how great it was. We talked a lot about FOMO. So if you just woke up, it is worth your time to just take a proximately hour and to learn a lot from MayKingItHappen. Thank you so much for taking the time making. Thank you, lovely to have your here and I hope to see you soon again for more FOMO and more masterminding.

May King: 53:15

Thank you, Myriam. Thank you. Yes,

Myriam: 53:20

Thank you for staying tuned and listening to the show. I appreciate your attention as I know, busy you are. If you enjoyed it, please subscribe and engage by sharing your comments and thoughts and visit workshops. Dot work to download the one page summary. I'm looking forward to seeing you back at the next episode and I wish you a fruitful day. Okay. Okay.