For the past three years, Notts Happening has served as Nottingham’s digital town crier, without the bell or funny hat. Through their TikTok and Instagram accounts, they have informed millions of people of everything Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. I got chatting to Oliver, the founder of Notts Happening, to get a behind-the-scenes look at his journey with the business.
Okay so, for those of us who don’t know – could you introduce yourself and what you do?
Yeah, so my name’s Oliver, I’m the founder of Notts Happening. We’re a Gen Z social-first publishing platform, so we create content all about Nottingham and Nottinghamshire for social media. That’s everything from food and drink to music and sports, local news, arts and crafts – pretty much anything. We’ve been doing that for about three years now; we’re currently at about 230,000 followers, 500 million views. We’ve worked with lots of different businesses in the city, we’ve worked with lots of local organisations. The sole aim of it is to promote Nottingham, create good content about Nottingham and inform people about what’s happening, what’s there, any hidden gems or local history or just cool events that come through. That’s the goal really.
I’ve stalked your LinkedIn thoroughly. You [originally] lived in Newcastle, so what brought you to Nottingham, what made you fall in love when you got here?
The reason why we came here is because my wife is from Nottingham, we had lots of friends in Nottingham as well. When we first got here, she was showing me around different places, different restaurants, and different things to do … I was discovering it for the first time, and that’s what made me fall in love with it. I’ve never loved a city like I have done Nottingham, and I don’t know what it is. I think it’s probably – it’s not too big, it’s not too small, it’s got a lot of history as well which I quite like. It’s also in the middle of the country, so quite often you get loads of things coming through.
“Everything just starts from zero. Myself, going out and filming, on my phone, no mic, in the evenings, on weekends, after work, all completely for free.”
A lot of us love the city, we love being in Nottingham, but what motivated you to take that from just a casual passion, to take the leap, start the account, what was that trigger for you to [think]: this could be something?
To be fair, there’s a few things happening at once. The first thing was that I worked for a company called Nonsensical – basically, they run two different pages about Birmingham and Bristol, so I got a lot of experience doing that. And then at the same time when I moved to Nottingham, I just started falling in love with the city and I started finding out all these cool facts and different places that I never knew existed. So it was kind of a merge of those two things. I thought, I’ve been doing it in Birmingham and Bristol and then also coupled with the fact that I’ve just found this new place that I love, I was like ‘I’ve got to do it’.
What was the setup like in those early days? Was it very in-your-shed energy, what was it like? The people, the equipment, the process, everything.
Yeah, I mean everything just starts from zero. Myself, going out and filming, on my phone, no mic, in the evenings, on weekends, after work, all completely for free. Just as you would imagine: I’m going to this restaurant and I’m just gonna film it, or I’m going to this gig and I’m just gonna film it. And that was it really, that’s exactly how it started. And then, over time, you get a bit of equipment, you get a mic, you start working with different companies as well. So over time it just grows naturally; you start working with other people to help you with stuff as well, it gets to the point where you can’t manage it [on your own] at a certain point.
With that improved setup, what is it like now compared to as you say [when] you were just going to a restaurant, recording it, et cetera? What is the process now from start to finish – from idea to pressing post?
There’s a few different ways we might do that. So, the first way is that we just find something that is interesting or unique, and we think we want to create some content about that. Our only barometer for every piece of content that we do is it’s got to be interesting, engaging or funny – it’s got to hit something, it’s got to have something about it. If it’s an event or something we basically go to it, we film it, and then we come back, edit it. With the amount of content that we post now – we post two, three times a day, every day – usually everything has about a weekly time. Unless it’s something that’s happening in the moment, it’s important to get out there and then, so like a piece of local news or something like that.
If it involves other people, I’ll get some creators, get them to go and do stuff, and then it depends – some people we work with, they want to own that creative process and they want to edit it as well. But some other people, they will just send us the footage and we’ll edit it and do everything like that. We work with lots of different people on an ad-hoc basis.
That’s it basically: we don’t use any DSLR cameras, we don’t use any fancy equipment, other than a mobile phone and a Rhode mic, a little Rhode mic.
How much – obviously it’s different for every post – but, on average, how much time is spent on that one post from start to finish?
It does vary. Some that are really easy to make, that might just be a few images or something, you know, you could do that in an hour. If there’s something which is a lot more in-depth and requires a lot of different footage from lots of different visits to different places – that could be like four days or something.
“Some of the best things we’ve had is messages from people who’ve said: I had to shut my shop for the day because everything sold out,”
Zooming out from one post, how much time would you say just running Notts Happening takes from you? Per day, per week or just kind of a general vibe of like – I don’t know – are you staying up all night, like: “Oh god, I’ve got to…”
It’s full on, I mean it’s at least five days a week, if not probably a bit more to be honest. It’s also not nine to five, Monday to Friday: sometimes it’s in the evening, in the mornings, it’s like a couple of hours here and then the rest of the day off, but the next day it’s more than a normal work day. You know, it’s kind of all over the place to be honest with you. It’s a bit hectic.
Is that challenging as well, obviously like…
Yes.
Managing your personal life and like you say you don’t have this nine to five schedule, how does it affect you?
It’s very challenging. When you first start doing it, it’s very, very challenging and you have to learn how to manage your life and make it so that it doesn’t overwhelm you. So yeah, that’s a process but we’re still – we’re getting better now, we put more boundaries in for [ourselves].
So obviously you put in all this effort, there’s always a reward for that. What are your personal highlights in the account – the places you’ve been, the people you’ve met, maybe interactions with the account? What would you say you’re happiest with, running Notts Happening?
Obviously, apart from the metrics, which are amazing – we continue to grow every year which is really good – some of the best things that we’ve had is just messages from businesses and people who’ve said: ‘I had to shut my shop for the day because I didn’t have enough stock because everything sold out,’ or ‘You really helped me get in with this company,’ or different charities message us and say, ‘We’ve had people come forward from videos that you’ve done, and seek help.’ That’s always the best thing, I think. It sounds cheesy to say but it’s, you know…
It makes total sense.
I mean for me, I know it’s a cliché, but doing something for someone does feel better, you know what I mean?
Yeah, than just like posting reels in your room about…
Yeah exactly, and then obviously as well I get to work in a place that I love, in the city, and we’ve got a whole business off the back of it.
So, it seems like you enjoy what you do, but I think what isn’t clear is – obviously you don’t have to get into great detail – how does Notts Happening run as a business? Where does the revenue come from?
The structure of the business is that 90% of what we post is editorial, meaning that we post what we find interesting or funny or engaging, informative as well. And there is 10% of it which is paid for. We have partnerships with different companies in the city, for example, Nottingham City Transport. We do stuff with UberEATS as well, lots of different companies. All of those posts are marked under ASA1 guidelines as an ad, so in the caption you’ll see the word ‘ad’. That’s how we make some of our money, it’s not really that much to be honest.
Most of [our money] comes from a social media agency in the background. We offer social media services for different companies in and outside of Nottingham – that could be anything from content creation to account management to influencer marketing, to social media seminars and talks. And that’s the bulk of it. Notts Happening is almost the front part of it and we make minimal money from that, and then the back part of it is an agency.
So, Notts Happening is kind of the case study – ‘This is what I can do for you.’
Exactly. Quite often it works as a lead magnet, so you get people who have seen all that content and then say, ‘Can you do that for us?’, that sort of thing.
You said about the impact you have on businesses through the account. How does it feel to wield that attention and influence? You have such an impact – do you feel pressure, do you feel pride, do you feel responsibility?
It’s a good mix. I think there’s definitely a lot of pressure, there’s a lot of pressure to make sure that I’m shouting about the things that deserve to be shouted about. Also, staying true to myself and making sure that I’m shouting about things that I’m actually interested in, because that’s how it started. There’s a lot of pressure to constantly beat the last month and the last month and the last month. There’s also a lot of pressure to keep advertisers happy. There’s pressure all around, but there’s also a lot of pride. There’s a lot of pride in what we’ve built so far and I’m really happy with it and how hard I’ve worked. Also, the actual workload, in terms of doing stuff every day, that’s quite a lot as well, but yeah: it’s all wrapped up in one basically. It’s like a million emotions in one!
Finally, the classic interview question: what advice could you give someone who would want an account like Notts Happening, or build a social media presence in general?
I think the first thing you need to do is, you need to understand that consistency and volume are the two main levers that you can pull.
Consistency means you have to post consistently: whether that’s once a day or twice a week. If it’s once a day or twice a week, it has to be once a day or twice a week – you can’t do one a week, and then the next week do three, and then the next week do one, and then not do any for two weeks, you know what I mean? It has to be consistent. And the reason for that is that you give yourself the best chance, over time. If you do that for six months, as opposed to doing it for a month, obviously the odds are that it’s going to succeed a lot of the time.
And the other thing is volume. Quite often some people say, ‘Well no, you should just do it to work around your schedule,’ which is true, because some people don’t have the ability to do it as often as they would like to. But the fact of the matter is, the platforms reward momentum and iteration over the perfect idea.
So the first bit of advice I would give is: if you want to do something, you’ve got to make sure you’re consistent and you’re doing a lot of it.
Buying as many tickets for the lottery as you can, kind of thing.
Exactly. Numerically, you’re just giving yourself the best odds, right? So that’s the first thing. The second thing is, do something that you’re passionate about. There’s no point doing something about, for example, American Football if you don’t know anything about it, you’re not passionate about it. And you’ll stop if you don’t know enough about it. I would say be open to collaboration as well, understand that the more people you can work with and the more people you can interact with, the better: whether they’re bigger, smaller, whatever.
Check out Notts Happening at @nottshappening on TikTok and Instagram
- Advertising Standards Authority ↩︎
