The Instructor Podcast with Terry Cook talking with leaders, innovators, experts and game changers about what drives them.

Welcome to the Instructor Podcast.

This is a show that helps you become an even more awesome driving instructor.

And as always, I am your mediocre horse, Terry Cook.

And I'm delighted to be even more delighted that you have chosen to listen because today we are wrapping up season nine talking all things tick tock.

And who better to join me than the face and brains behind the first car social media, Keenan LA so if you're looking to grow your driving school social media, this is the episode for you as Keenan explains where to start, how to go viral and how to find the balance between clickbait and useful content.

And I'm delighted to have this technology season sponsored by my Drive Time, the industry's premium award winning business management app.

Find out more@mydrivetime.co.uk and if you're enjoying these episodes, make sure you subscribe to the Instructor podcast email and WhatsApp channel.

You can find links in the show notes or on the website, but for now, let's get stuck into the show.

So I am now joined by Keenan La.

Now, Keenan, welcome to sh, your first time on the Instructor podcast.

Thank you very much, Terry.

Great to be here.

No, delighted to have you on because I, I saw you in person doing a presentation at the Young Driver Focus this year in 2024 and I've seen you previously on, on the social media, TikTok and Reels and all that kind of stuff that I'm not very good at.

And it was when I saw you in person, that Young Driver Focus that I was really impressed because it was hearing you talk about the reasons why you do the things you do was like, ah, right, okay.

Because you don't always see the method behind the madness.

So at that point I decided I need Keenan on the show and it was, where do I fit him in?

And it's during this tech season.

This is, this is technology, it's modern technology.

So.

So, yeah, big thank you for joining us.

But you're, as you say, you're kind of the face almost of first car.

You, you do some of the videos for the honest truth.

But for those that don't know, do you want to just tell us a little bit about you and a little bit about what you do?

Sweet.

Yeah, sure.

So I moved to London when I was 18.

To be an actor has always been the dream.

Still is.

I actually am.

I think I've realized and I'm living the dream.

I'm an actor in London performing.

It then became presenting work.

Actually, instantly I've told this to a lot of people, but very quickly, my first audition ever in London was with first car and it was a presenting gig to present road safety videos for an insurance company.

Uses a black box.

So if they, if they break too harshly, a video of me will pop up going, hey, don't break too harshly.

Try this instead.

And that was the first job.

And then first car just kept coming back.

I must have done really well the first time.

Wanted me back more and more and I loved it.

I earned so much experience and learned so much with them especially.

It was like a small group of people.

And at that time as well, it was given.

They sent me the scripts and I would read the script.

So it wasn't really me going, yeah, road safety.

Yeah, I want to be part of it.

It was when time went on and it was on my 4th, 5th, 6th first car shoot and I was, you know, really making movements and spaces and people would recognize me, I'll get invited to events, all that sort of stuff.

Realized, hey, this is really cool.

Especially it happened at the same time where I passed my driving test and got my own car and was driving to London from Coventry, where I grew up and doing all these things at the same time.

I was learning all these road safety tips and it was a nice.

In the space of like six, seven months, I went from living in Coventry wondering what to do.

Know what I'm going to do with no job to go, oh, I'm in London driving with my brand new car and I'm acting and doing everything.

So as you said, as I like to tell people, learning to drive, which is presume for yourself as you do as an adi, learning to drive is like that proper next step into adulthood.

It's the first test you take where if you don't pass, you might actually hurt people.

You can fail your maths test and you're going to be all right, you can retake it, you can fail your English test, you'll be all right, you can retake it.

No one's going to get hurt.

Maybe your future, maybe.

But, you know, also whatever.

But with driving, you know, it's the first time ever you've been an actual adult and you have to put other people's lives in perspective and in your hands, both people in your car or the people on the roads and, you know, vulnerable road users.

So I think it was at that time where I was learning all that at the same time as doing it.

And the passion started to grow from there to the point where in Covid where all my other work, all acting work was stopped, all First Car work had stopped.

I was sitting going, I need to do something, you know, self employed life, I can't just not have money.

Everyone had furlough for a good bit, but you know, for a lot of self employed it was like what?

That's it?

No money and rent was still coming.

Then I thought, well I'm chronically online, the Gen Z and me, I'm always on TikTok, I'm always scrolling.

How about I use my media training, which I didn't a level and make TikToks road safety TikToks for first car.

Whoa, whoa, whoa.

So I made this massive plan.

I wrote like about 3,4000 words explaining what TikTok is to James, James a from first car which, you know, one of the smartest guys I've ever worked with.

Love him to bits.

You know, I owe a lot to him for being in this space but you know, the one, his one caveat is he's not Gen Z.

So I was like, look, I know what TikTok is, let me help you.

And I wrote loads of scripts as well, all in the back, all of me just basically going on, please let me do this.

And naturally First Car was like, oh yes, please let's do this.

And it started to grow from there.

It was more of a passion project, sort of helping me out and it's getting bigger and bigger and bigger to the point where James like First Car altogether was like, this is great, let's make road safety TikToks especially in a space where TikTok, you know, there's just so many con, so much content, so many content creators, so much is going on.

It is a ever flowing river of everything.

Well, there's loads of stuff on back on there.

But there's more interesting point.

You said like you started that initial work with First Car sort of around the time you passed your driving test.

And I'm keen to ask you this because I know as driving instructors, most of us, when we become instructors, we don't necessarily become instructors to make the road a safer place.

Road safety isn't the forefront of his brain, it's the other stuff and then that evolves as we go along.

So I'm wondering that initial work with First Car, did that change your approach to driving?

Nice.

Yeah, definitely, for sure.

I think when we first started it was like in the scripts I would learn a fact or a statistic and I Thought, that's interesting.

Just naturally probably go subconsciously where now I'm not even thinking about it.

I just know not to do these things because of what I said back when I know the severity of it.

And then as time went on, definitely for sure, I found myself going, always my.

It's sort of my brand now, you know, as much as it should be everyone's thing anyway, but definitely much more emboldened and strengthened at the foundations of like, look, I am teaching people or helping people to become safer on the roads.

Of course I'm going to follow everything I'm doing and actually enjoy, have this nice pride about it as well and really enjoy the idea that I'm the safest on the road or like I'm not doing that or I'm keeping to the speed limit and it feels a lot better and safer.

I enjoy it a lot more because of that, because I know that I'm doing everything.

I hopefully, you know, I am doing everything I can to stay safe on the road.

But yeah, for sure.

Working first cars open my eyes to a lot of things.

I have the benefit of knowing how severe collisions are or KSIS or anything like that without ever having to be in one because it's usually like, you know, the bad boy racers and all those, whoever they are, the demographic people, you know, the younger drivers basically are a lot more.

Yeah, it doesn't matter.

As soon as something really bad happens, then it matters the most to them and at that point, obviously it's too late.

That's what I try and teach people.

I'm always the guy, I'm always helping my friends.

When I see me, you, you know, I'm the guy.

Like, seat belts on, make sure we're not moving.

No, what's that?

What are you doing?

I like it, but I mean, look, that first car account is one of the few that I recommend to learners because I do think it's done well and we'll maybe come back sort of that in more detail later.

But I want to ask you around the content you said before that was that social media aspect was kind of your baby, if you like.

Is.

Is that your, is that the thing you're in charge of?

Do you make the bulk of the content?

Is it a collaboration?

Do you get ideas from elsewhere?

Nice.

So for the longest time it was.

I would.

All the ideas would come to me, I'd figure them out, write loads of scripts or loads of headlines, excuse me, video title, shall we say, and then I'd write the scripts after and for the Soul still pretty much for that, it's still me.

And then the first two years it was just completely me.

I'd write it all, edit it all, produce it all, film it all, act it, all of the above all together.

And then I'd send it to first car to be confirmed.

They'd be like, can you change this especially in the scripts, like could you maybe.

Can't say that or there's probably a better way to say this.

Of course got a bit of regulation.

And then now as time's gone on, we're getting a lot more people involved and it's getting a lot bigger.

We're trying to push it a bit more and get another road safety partnerships in.

And with that comes a lot more bureaucracy.

I chose the term.

We've got a lot more people checking, which is sweet.

It's keeping me on my toes.

I'll write a whole script going, that's wicked, I'll love that.

And they go, well actually no, we can't say that because of this and make sure we can we say it like this.

I'm like, oh, do you know what?

Yeah, you're absolutely right.

And so now the process is first car.

I call it the science.

There's so much that I can't act like I definitely know about.

There's like ways you can teach people or help people or guide people, especially in road safety, to make them come to their own conclusions.

However, it is all the science behind it.

So first cloud now implemented a lot more heavy science backed, research backed ways or topics or you know, ways to help teach people things.

And I implement that in my scripts because as that's the whole, there's the whole ballpark of making the content and then there's the other ballpark of making content that will hopefully go viral and is more engaging, especially with road safety, that those two things don't really, really combine.

You know, there's not like, oh, who's the most famous road safety, what's the term road safety content creator influencer in the world.

It's not really a thing that people are going, oh yeah, sweet.

Did you see the way he stocks and used his brakes?

Ah, so it's a, it's a tough, it's a tough mountain to climb, but people still do it.

I commend, especially in the driving instructor space for sure they've figured out, you know, ways to create content, make it engage in hooking and you know, viral.

I love that.

And again, a couple of things I want to touch back on because it interested me that the difference in expertise, like one of the things you said there was you're not the expert in the science, but you know how to make things go viral.

You know, the social media side.

And I don't think, and I'll be interested in your thoughts on this because I don't think enough people put those things together.

I think that a lot of people see that.

We'll use instructors as example.

Use me as example.

I'm a driving instructor.

Therefore I can now go and do social media.

I don't need any help from anyone.

I, I, because I can go and talk about how to change gear, but it don't work like that because I'm not an expert in how to create social media.

Do you see that problem occurring where an experts think that because they're an expert in one thing, they're an expert.

In everything, not necessarily a problem or an issue.

It's a case of anyone who wants to be a content creator, whatever your expertise, and you don't even necessarily have to be an expert in it.

A lot of these people are the most famous people in the world were anything they were, literally I want to be a streamer and then they become the expert because they've been doing it for so long, it'd be the case for anyone.

My position, your position, you just keep going.

And because it's an ever flowing river of content now on these scrolling reels and social TikTok and stuff, it's a case of just keep going, keep pushing, keep putting your own little pebble in the river and hopefully it floats.

Hopefully it gets engaged viral.

And slowly but surely you'll start getting a bit more views, a bit more traction.

You'll have that random one video that goes really viral.

Like what this video out of all the videos, the one I didn't really, you know, think that much about is, oh yeah, that'll be all right.

It's now my most viral video of the month.

Okay, crazy.

And you want it.

And then it's a case of do you learn?

How do you learn the lessons from that video?

What made it viral?

Was it the title, was it the content, was it the person, was it just.

Again, I think a lot of it's based on luck.

You've got to have the decent content of something that's engaging.

But with the way TikTok works it, you know, it batch releases to a certain set of people and depending on how many people have that, that batch, like it, or engage with it or view it, it will then send it to a Bigger batch or maybe a smaller batch.

You can get a batch of hundred people that love or learning to drive just by chance.

And just like that, you know that that video became viral.

It could be.

Look, there's a lot of stuff adds into it.

So the idea of being an expert before or like the, you know, being an expert before you start posting is sweet.

Amazing post about that thing you're an expert in.

But you'll only learn how to be better at social media by doing it.

And keep going and keep going.

There's probably stuff that someone could post something today that I've never done and I could learn from it just because that's what they managed to figure out.

It's a.

It's a, you know, very malleable, very nuanced.

I think I'm more thinking of the help we can get, the learning we can have.

Because you spoke before about your media training that you did at university.

And when I started this podcast, I went and spoke to some people that I knew was kind of fairly prominent podcasters and in this industry.

Okay, how can I get the best possible start with this?

And there's nothing wrong, in my opinion at least of just going and making a start.

Not asking for any help, just going and doing your thing.

But I think that learners come to us to help them learn to drive.

You know, I could come to you to help me create this content.

Essentially, that's what I'm doing today.

You know, listeners, even if they just listen to this episode, hopefully they'll get some good ideas on how to start.

But just kind of from a pure, purely personal curiosity perspective.

I want to check on some of you said because it amused me slightly.

Did you say you often will get the title for something and then create the script following You've got the title?

Yes, absolutely.

So I will have a title writing session where all I would do is hopefully the ideas are floating the in the whatever space, either dimension and they'll come into my mind.

Oh, that's a good one.

Top three tips to draw to learning to drive in the city center.

Or next video like, oh, a funny one where it's.

What is this?

It's a seat belt.

And then that's the video.

You know, one of those silly things like that.

And then something else will come in.

It's like, oh, what to do an anxiety with roundabouts.

How to overcome that.

And I just keep doing just titles, not scripts, just titles, ideas.

Next, you know, you have like 50, 100 video titles and then it's a case of when it's time to write a script.

Look, go back to that.

Be like, oh, what?

What can I take from here?

Oh, I like that one.

Let's write that title.

Let's write that script.

Excuse me.

And then it's a case of you can even combine two, three different videos into one or video titles.

That's just one creative process of it.

Another one I loved, I used to do a lot was when I was driving was like, just make notes of something that happens that's relatable.

Back when I was doing a lot more relatable content and, you know, the more funny stuff probably more likely to go a bit engage a bit more viral.

It's like when you drive and there's a, you know, police car drives past you and it's, oh, oh, now suddenly got a driving instructor in the car and I'm doing all my checks and doing everything that sort of funny things like why, why, you know, you were driving fine before.

But our brain goes into, oh, just in case they're watching me again.

So relatable stuff like that, that would happen usually when I'm driving.

So what I'd have to do is call a friend or if I'd stop or pause.

There's those different ways they quickly, like soon, like repeat the video idea in my mind.

Okay, I'm going to be stopping in five minutes.

Just remember this, remember this, remember this.

When I park up and be like, quit my notes.

So I have like a note to my phone from like after driving, like writing down video ideas.

Quick, quick, quick, quick.

There are so many that I've forgotten.

And I'll park my.

Oh, my.

I remember I had a really good idea.

I have no idea what the idea was.

So it's a case of just keeping your mind open no matter where you are.

Hey, this would be good content.

Potentially.

This might be a good video, potentially.

Your creative process sounds remarkably similar to mine.

I've got to a point now where I'm putting 90 minutes between my driving lessons because of the number of times I need to pull up and Joel's ideas.

But can you touch on there about the more relatable content and the road safety content, if you like.

And I think this is quite a big question, but I'm really interested in your thoughts on it.

And it's how do we create?

I've even wrote this one down so I'll say it proper.

How do we create engaging content that gets eyeballs but isn't either clickbait or misinformation?

Nice.

It's usually the first milliseconds of a video on TikTok Instagram reels the ever flown river the scrolling type ones it's you've got to hook them straight away and have their eyes see something they've not really seen before.

That's always what I always every single video I do I will make sure look what has this got that I've never seen in a video before?

Try and be push myself I think too much of anything is bad and probably at times where I'm really trying to push the envelope it might be like bring it back to its basics which I've started to do recently I've had some advice and tips from friends comments was like yeah just so much is going on in the screen and in my head it's like yeah because no one's ever done this before.

Yeah maybe for a reason and I've done it before but it's always do more and then figure out what that works and take a bit off each time don't have massive subtitles, maybe smaller subtitles because people can see the content.

It's about trying new things each time figure out what works and as soon as something works and goes viral what can you learn from that?

What can you take from that?

Oh so for example our most viral view video this year I had the title come on and screen covering my face completely as I was saying it something I've not done before something that you would argue that previously my rules were don't cover your face.

Don't cover the person's face as they're speaking.

They want you know people like to see someone's eyes when they're speaking but by doing that for some reason it came viral and it worked for that moment Then my lesson learned from that was oh cover my face every time when I speak and then after a while when that didn't work it's like okay, back to the drawing board.

What else works?

Figure it out.

Just something new.

It's called the something I mentioned in the young drivers forum the Kaizen approach which is what the company Toyota I think implements some others as well the idea of small very small implemental changes to your company, your business in this idea, our content just to see what works and learn from it that little bit that worked or a longer video worked this time so maybe we'll try a bit longer videos for the next month or this color the green colors for the subtitles work.

Maybe that was the thing the content over breaking harshly that was really nice this time these small Little things just take like a little step in ladder, just grow.

You don't want to make.

You want to spend all your time on one big video and it's a minute long and you've put so much time and effort and energy in it and you love it and it's your passion.

Like this is the video that's going to make me.

I'm going to get 100,000 followers from this and you post it and 300 people see it.

You get four likes and you're like, why does everybody hate me?

It's okay, I'm fine about.

You've got to not get your hopes up in this game for sure because it is similar to acting.

In my acting life, it's rejection all the time.

I.

People apply for jobs once a year maybe you know, if you lose, if you get a job once a year.

But for acting, it's applying for jobs a week, every week, getting said no, getting rejected for a job every week.

And that's not.

People have to.

You have to develop a thick skin for that.

And it's the same for content creation.

Post what you love, make sure you love it, of course, and it's great video of great content.

But do not worry, do not care.

It's weird.

But don't care if it doesn't go viral because it's okay because you can try again.

It could be the same video.

I've had videos where I just changed the first five seconds, reposted in a couple of months, boom.

The most viral video of that week.

And it's the same video that got nothing before.

And it's again that small little change.

It came to my mind, I wonder if I changed that video this way.

The video I did ages ago and it works.

It's a very strange process.

You gotta have thick skin.

Enjoy the process.

You know, that's what it is.

The, the one that amuses me personally is, is like these podcasts, you know, we'll spend an hour recording, I'll do all the editing, I'll do everything that goes around it, I'll release it and then I'll put a 30 second blooper video out.

That'll do like four times the amount of the, the actual work of the podcast.

But yeah, I want to touch back on that question though because I want to dig into the negative aspect of this just a little bit.

I don't want to make it a negative episode, but one of the things that I see a lot online, I'm on a slight social, social media detox at the minute.

So.

But one of the things I did see online a lot was clickbait and misinformation.

And it.

Little things.

Sometimes little things like that you'll get a video on.

Someone will say, learner fails a driving test.

And it's like, it's not a driving test.

You're not allowed to film the driving test, the mock test.

I get why you put in that, but it's misleading learners because I'll have learners coming to me and saying, I've seen this driving test and you know, this kind of stuff.

And then there'll be the misinformation out there on videos and it could be a misinformation around, you will fail if you do this on your test.

You know, that kind of stuff.

I'm wondering how we find the balance of that, because that is often going to go viral because of the nature of it.

People like that type of stuff.

So I suppose my question there is, how do we make sure we're not veering into that territory?

Is it just the idea of making sure we're sticking to the positive side?

Nice.

Yeah, for sure.

There's a lot of different ways you could try and circumnavigate the idea of the clickbait.

If it's not the fake title, as you said, like the driving test.

That's not a driving test.

I suppose it's a case of each individual person questioning themselves.

They look at what they've written and, like, how much of this is true?

Is the entire thing 100% truth?

Is it 95% truth?

For example, if I do like a funny comedy skit where I'm driving and I break a little bit, and then me as my mom go, oh, Jesus, you know, that's like fake things, not really real.

We make jokes.

Your mom's moms are usually a bit over the top with, you know, if you're driving your speed, which again, it's technically not real, but it's not clickbait either.

It's.

It's a tough one.

We're in a day and age right now, especially of AI and everything that's going on social media.

There's just so many people, so many content creators.

I can.

I remember counting on one hand the amount of YouTubers that had over 5 million subscribers, and now there are hundreds of people with 50 million subscribers I've never heard of before.

Like, what.

Who is this person?

Is the most subscribed person this year.

Never even seen a single video.

So it's just so saturated right now.

So that's why people usually will try these, implement these ideas that will be a bit more clickbaity, try and get them viral.

Probably in other spaces where it's not as damaging as something as road safety or as learning to drive, you know, being safe on the roads and create.

What's the right term?

Having the base foundation knowledge of how to drive, how to hold your steering wheel, all these different things.

This is where it starts to affect other people.

Probably where other topics don't.

But altogether I suppose as we're all born, we're all in society, we're all humans, we're all connected.

Yeah, that's probably all interlining.

Oh God.

I'm trying to.

I'm trying to figure out the right way to answer it.

What do you do in this situation?

Gotta be true to yourself and make sure you're posting content that you would love to see if you were scrolling yourself and you would, you wouldn't be upset at the idea if you've been misled or you know, it's not really true if you did some research.

It doesn't take that long to realize that this person I've just watched is not true, it's not real.

A lot of people will post advice, for example like you'll see a TikTok, you'll scroll up or a video and it'll be some random person, guy or girl going look, this is what you should do when you've got a bad friend friendship it's like who is this person?

Like they have no credentials, they have no exact same for me as well with first.

I suppose I've got help with first car and the people behind mind but again even then how do the people know that the person that you're listening to is an expert in it is it has, you know, has the right to say these things is correcting their research or if they've not just written something, you know, I could write, I could start a page right now about how to handle housemates, you know, because I've lived with loads of them in my life.

They might not be the true tips, just what people post either.

It's for the viewer to look within and go discern from it and go, I'll take 50% of that as truth.

50% is false.

I think a lot of people take everything as 100 truth when really right now in our day and age we should be falling the opposite.

Where you shouldn't really be trusting anything fully with your heart.

What you see online just because of all those different factors as I've just said.

However, with ADIs it's a different story.

You have literally trained for years to be in the position when you're in, to have the area of expertise that you're now in and have that knowledge where you can post a video, you know, a TikTok content, whatever it is.

But hey, this is what you should do when you're driving and it's, I'm pretty sure 100% of it will be truthful.

You've been trained in that process.

You know what you're talking about.

You are an expert.

If a doctor comes up on a tick tock, you're probably more likely to believe them.

But even then it's, it's all by, it's all a bit bonkers and I think I've got, you know, a proper long answer to answer your question of basically, I suppose for ADIs and people listening, whoever's listening your podcast, be true to yourself, do your own re, you know, get it down, make sure what you're saying is correct and truthful and there are ways to be catching and engaging without having to lie or lie is a very strong term.

Be a clickbait, shall we say.

There are ways to do it especially for ADIs if the content is then driving, you know, there's always, there's infinite ways things can happen on infinite things that can happen once you're learning to drive or when you're on the road.

If you set a GoPro up and you're filming it, which is a lot of ADI is what they do.

There'll be instant, it'll just be, you know, unique content every single time.

There's always a different meet, there's always a different situation on a road that you could never learn.

As I presume you tell people you learn so much more after you pass your driving test.

Passing your driving test is like near, it's the foundation and nearly every, like you probably didn't learn how to drive in snow, in heavy, heavy rain, in the winds we've just had in Sondera, you know, all that sort of stuff.

You don't learn that until you're actually driving and you haven't got an instructor with you.

So it's about, you know, keeping on top a little.

I think that answers your question.

That was ages ago.

Sorry about that.

No, I love the answer and I also love seeing how you worked out and I think the key thing there was the idea of being true to yourself.

You know, I'll hold my hands up here and I'll be honest that I recently went back through my entire podcast archive and changed some of the titles of the episodes because looking back now, I'm like, oh, that doesn't sit well.

I mean, I want that one, I'm going to change that one.

And some of them were just.

Because they were really bad, just not very good.

And others were like, yeah, that's, that's a bit clickbaity.

But you know, even just what you kind of said at the end there, I like the way you phrase that because one of my pet peeves, if someone's saying you learn stripe when you pass a test, and you said that slide differently.

You said you learn more about driving, so you said something like that.

More about driving money.

Of course you do, because you're getting more experience, you're going to come across more scenarios and I love that phrasing.

I'm going to steal that.

I'm going to mention that somewhere before I put this episode out.

But let's move on to the social media then, because if ADIs in 2025 had the goal of sort of really diving into social media, where should they be going?

If they've got that kind of target demographic of maybe 17 to 24 year.

Olds, sure, TikTok for me would be number one UK right now, at least, last time I checked, hold the record for the most monthly use users.

We are number one in terms of most monthly users across the whole world.

That includes USA and Russia as well.

Russia is a major big user of TikTok, which is crazy to think about in terms of we have 60 million people here, give or take, in the UK, whereas America has 360 and Russia has, you know, loads.

And we're still using it monthly on average, you know, of all the ratios.

So with that stat instantly, like, your best bet is TikTok.

And then of course, if you're making short form content that is vertical, that can be also implemented into Instagram, which I've learned over the years, or at least what I necessarily learn.

What I've seen is that it's so much harder now to grow on Instagram because it's so established and the hashtags and the way the system works, you have to get very lucky.

I could argue that with TikTok, as much as I'm saying TikTok, it is a brutal game for social media content creators.

There's just so much.

If there's so many people now before, there's only, as I say, there's a hundred content creators, that was it.

And they're all on YouTube now there's hundreds of thousands and they're everywhere.

And there's also streamers who are making content and then people will make content of that content and steal it and reaction clips and it is.

There's just so much.

So for an ADI right now, if they're thinking about it, which they absolutely should, and it's wicked.

I'd say TikTok, Instagram.

And the main, your main goal shouldn't be to create viral content in my eyes, it's to be.

Create lots of content that you enjoy, that you would like people to see and put it out there and just hope it.

And obviously you like to hope that it gets viral and you get more people and more views and more followers and all that jazz.

But just enjoy that process.

Keep going, keep posting.

It didn't work.

So be it.

I've got all year to post even more and just keep going and going and going.

There's no deadline.

And a lot of the biggest streamers now, YouTubers, content creators started with like everyone else, zero views and they get 5 and they get 10 and it's that same story.

But they all started with posting so much and putting so much effort into knowing that they probably won't get viral.

Which I've had to learn.

You know, I always learn.

I've learned the hard way a lot of times.

I've made some real.

I spent so long, I spent 10 hours on like a 45 second video just because I want to get it right and perfect and that doesn't work.

Classic story.

Post it.

No views.

Ha ha.

Why do I do this?

Why?

And yeah, so it's one of those.

But for sure, TikTok, as I said, UK smashes so many records for TikTok right now.

It's quite interesting.

It shouldn't really statistically what it does.

And then Instagram as well.

And yeah, Facebook's not really the one For Gen Z.

16, 17 at that age now don't really use it as much.

I know that maybe for families and stuff like that, but not to like scroll per se.

I know I've got some friends that sort of do it and it's more of like a.

They're an outlier like scrolling on Facebook.

Oh, okay, Fair.

All right.

If you want to do that for sure.

And now they're having this weird game.

Just bring it to a close.

Weird game where before I could send anyone a TikTok link and it'd be fine.

Oh, I could view it.

That's funny video.

Now you have to have a TikTok account.

Same for X Twitter.

Same for, I don't know, same for Inst.

Actually, yeah.

Same for Instagram.

But I think nearly everyone has an Instagram.

I have a couple of friends that own Instagram.

Fair play.

I'm very jealous.

And I'll send them a link.

I can't see it.

Can you screen grab it for me?

I'm like, send you a video.

It's a whole mission now.

It's.

I'll tell you what, before we move on, I think I want to clarify one thing because we both use the word viral a couple of times.

So there will be people out there that don't necessarily know what that means.

You want to explain what you mean when you say something going viral?

Sure.

So there's a lot of different sections of a video.

Videos, views, engagements.

Excuse me, videos.

The video's views, the video's comments and the video's likes and the video shares and the video's bookmarks.

There's all those different things.

You know, if you scroll on it, you can do any of those things.

You could argue there's no like guarantee, there's no set standards.

But with 10,000 views, you could call that viral.

For someone, for someone who only gets a hundred views.

If you get 10,000 views for that person, that, that is your viral hit.

And then you might only get, you might start getting 200 views per video and it's just bumped you up a little bit.

The algorithm will then trust you and your content.

Like, oh, if these people liked it, then probably they'll like your other content.

It'll push it a bit more and it's like a, like exponential the term, like a snowball effect where the more videos you get on a video, the next time more likely, even though it's still like zero point, however much percent more likely that your video get a little bit more viral next time, get a little bit more views.

So in my head, if I see video that gets 10,000 views, I will call that viral.

Nowhere near like the Mr.

Beast level that is the worst performing video of his life ever.

What's happened?

But for me, I'm like, sweet, that's our most viral video of the week.

Love that.

And it's a case of naturally as humans, you know, as anything that goes on your, your standards will just get a little bit bigger each time.

If you, you know, start getting, if you get a hundred thousand views, ten thousand views will still be wicked.

But like, oh yeah, it's not.

Now that's small viral and there's medium viral and then there's major viral, which is, it's always, it's always changing for whichever person my viral might not be.

Your viral, your viral might not be, you know, As I say, PewDiePie's viral, whoever it is, whichever content creator is.

So it's a, it's basically checking it in between with all your other videos and noticing, oh, this one got 10 more comments than any other video this week.

This month.

Okay, that's my viral video of the week.

And this is a part of the show where I usually give a shout out to the new signups to the Instructor Premium.

However, there haven't been any of this last week.

So instead I'd like to thank you for listening.

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But for now, let's get stuck back into the show.

It's.

It's interesting because it's only some.

I kind of learned recently was that when we talk about something going viral, it's.

It's for the individual.

It's not like you said, Mr.

Beast, that you.

I've never seen him, by the way, but the YouTube dude, nothing I do will compare to anything he does in terms of numbers.

But it's still viral to me and I think that we have to celebrate that.

But absolutely, yeah, take your wins.

It's again, because it's such a long process to get to the point where you want to be.

I presume everyone who wants to create content wants to get to that point where they're getting Hundreds of views, hundreds of thousands.

That's called not even millions.

Hundreds of thousands views, hundreds of thousand comments likes.

But to get to that point, you just enjoy the process.

Keep saying that it's in the process because you won't get there straight away.

If you go in there wanting it straight away, you will not get it for a considerable amount of time and it will start degrading you, making feel a bit worse and it will challenge your yourself, your resilience a bit.

It will be like, what?

What's wrong with me?

Why doesn't I really like this video?

And really it's nothing about that.

It's about just that time you were unlocking and the video does not work.

It's not that your content's bad, it just did not work that time.

And then those small steps, as I said that Kaizen approach small implemental steps just a little bit better, enjoy it a little bit more.

And all that time like you look and look at your catalog and you've made 300 videos in the past two years, whatever it is, and you go, sweet.

I love that.

Not one time did I make a video I didn't want to make or a video I didn't like that I had, but I just posted anyway.

I think that I want to ask you though, like, and I'm trying to word this right, do you think there's a difference between a driving instructor who creates a bit of social media and a content creator?

Oh, for sure.

I think if you're a driving instructor who creates a bit of social media content, you're, I presume you don't really have hold that much weight to the idea of becoming viral and having, having a big following, getting lots of followers or maybe creating revenue from that.

And it's usually a big thing.

We're all, you know, we're all paying rent or you know, mortgage, whatever it is you're trying to get some sort of way to help revenue get a bump up the revenue.

So as a driving instructor, I presume some people's intentions would be to hopefully get more bookings from your videos.

So if you're a driving instructor who posts on social media, you probably don't really necessarily care about that.

You just want videos out there.

It could be more of like a memory bank.

Just call videos that could send to your family or to your own students per se.

And I just check my page out, I'm just posting videos there.

But if you are, then to answer your question to a content creator, drive an instructor who posts content to a Content creator who happens to be a drive instructor.

That's when you're in the thick of it, as KSI would say to every viewer that know that in the thick of it.

But you are constantly checking your views, constantly checking your comments and engaging a lot more and thinking about what your next video will be.

How are you going to push yourself and what will be created this time?

What content can I do this time?

If you start properly thinking about it in that sort of way, that's where you start becoming more of a, you know, that's that content creator aspect of it where it's trying to push yourself and be better again.

Mr.

Beast is a great example of that because I think too much of anything is bad.

And Mr.

Beast, he says in his own podcast, his own stuff, he likes to put a lot of information about how he became the biggest, most subscribed, most viewed, most followed video person ever.

He has an incessant need to better himself.

He wants to check everything and make sure everything could.

If it could be the best, let's make sure it's the best.

And it's that sort of level, it's like a passion sort of thing, you know, level as well.

If you're in a drive instructor who likes to post social media, clearly your passion is in being a drive instructor.

But if you want to be a content creator and get viral, then slowly but surely your passion will be into that, the creative aspect of it all to obviously in the day to get more engagement, be more viral, get more followers.

I want, I want to touch back as well because you spoke a little bit about Instagram and YouTube and stuff there and.

But obviously TikTok, you said, would be the main go to.

Do you think that anyone that's starting off on TikTok should be looking to repurpose stuff?

So you make a video for TikTok, then you just chuck it on Instagram as well.

Then you just chuck it on YouTube, shorts or whatever.

Or should it just be the sole focus TikTok to begin with and then maybe expand as you go?

It depends on how far you want to go into the space.

To relate back to your last question.

If you want to be a drive instructor that posts a bit on social media, it would be much, much more easier, less stress if you're just focusing on one channel.

When you start implementing other channels, which I easily recommend.

If you want to boost your chances of being viral, the biggest way to increase your chances of being viral is posting more content.

A lot of people will always advise you should be posting three to five times a day on TikTok.

That's what they would say.

Because you just gotta keep posting because otherwise, if you post once a week, that's only one chance you'll get that week to become viral.

And most likely you won't, because that's just the way it works.

So if you're posting, let's say you've made one video, you've created it, you've got the file, you load it to TikTok and then upload it to YouTube and then upload it to Instagram.

Snapchat's another one is, wow, that I used to be on Snapchat all the time.

I was part of that big growth, that big time.

When he became made the world's youngest billionaire at that point, the guy who created it, I was part of that wave.

They created one update which turned me off it completely.

Didn't start it, just never used it since.

But I think a lot of people, including my younger sisters and all their friends, they still use Snapchat a lot and they love streaks a lot.

So something I forget to mention, maybe now I get to mention your podcast.

Snapchat might be a little.

A dark horse in the.

In the social media space.

There's a lot of stuff going on in Snapchat I'm not really aware of.

And I'll go on it now and then.

Excuse me, now and then.

And it'll be stories of companies I don't even follow.

But instead of like scrolling how you scroll on TikTok, it's tapping.

Like, you know how you tap on stories, you tap to go into the next bit.

And that's how I.

That's how you sort of review content on Snapchat.

You're more of a tapper.

Like it's people's stories.

That's a potential.

Another place that you know might be an open market there.

How do you work that?

How do you get into other people's pages?

I don't necessarily know how that works, but yeah, if you want to get really big and create a massive following and have a online presence for sure, posting everywhere will only help your chances.

And then you could switch up and have different captions as well.

Again, that little Kaizen approach, I'll bring it back to small implements.

Maybe it was the hashtags I used for that video that needs to be changed at this time.

There's just so many different aspects for one particular piece of content that could change it to make it either the most engaging video ever or just not Hit anything.

And so how important are hashtags?

Here we go.

At the start, as much as I have got, found fair success from TikTok and creating road safety videos, I cannot tell you why particular video goes viral.

I could give you reasons potentially why my most viral video this year has zero hashtags.

What?

That just breaks all that for me.

My own rules, I just breaks everything.

When that happened, I think that might have been, again, a potential detriment because now I post a lot of videos where they don't have any hashtags, but then they don't go viral.

So it's like.

But it went viral before, so it has to go viral now.

It's the only way it works, right?

It's a.

As I said before, it's a tough game.

You'll learn lessons that aren't necessarily lessons.

And then it boils down to look and engaging content and just be in the right place at right time.

Hashtags probably do matter.

And then another time, as I said, you know, my most viral video, it didn't matter.

So it must be the content, it must have been the title, it must have been something else.

So it all depends which is wicked in terms of.

If you wait however many months, six months, even longer, you'll have all those videos you posted ages ago, you can now repost, probably put a different filter on it if the.

The algorithm sometimes checks if it's the same video we posted before.

But if you then change the caption or change just the title or change just the hashtags of that video that you posted six, seven, eight months ago, boom.

That's happened to me a couple of times.

Video I posted nothing.

Same exact video, not even changing the filter.

Just different capture, different time.

More of like a.

I need to upload something.

Let me just post this one.

My other videos took too long to edit and then boom, it gets so viral, like.

But I've already posted you again that whole story of like, this is the video that's gone viral this time.

Okay, sweet.

Thank you.

I know when I dabbled in TikTok a little bit, and I'm not anymore, but I.

There was a video up where I'd Murder joke.

I think it was about Shrek and I'd put it out as like a bit of a blooper video and I put the Shrek hashtag and it did well.

And I suddenly realized I think I've got loads of people that sent it by because of Shrek and nothing to do with driving.

Oh, crap.

Now I've Got this whole different audience that are now looking at a driving truck.

There's videos, but I want to come back to the length, a little bit of the videos because I know TikTok you can now post longer videos as well.

Yeah.

What sort of length do you think we should be aiming for?

Does it matter?

TikTok like to say it matters.

They've recently just pushed.

They want.

They'll push your.

They literally put.

They'll push your video more if it's one minute and vert and landscape.

So not even vertical.

They're pushing for one minute.

Videos longer than that are like, you know, like YouTube videos basically where a little full screen button will come up at the bottom and they want to engage viewers enough where they press that full screen and then they watch the video.

I want more than.

Basically, as I said, it's not really a tick tock at that point.

What is a tick tock?

It used to be just like how vine was.

I remember vine back in the day, it was seven seconds only and because of that it forced people to be as funny or as engaging as they possibly can in seven seconds.

TikTok obviously has overpassed that by an incredible amount.

And then they.

It used to be, you know, they used to have a limit of 15.

I don't know what their limits were actually.

They've been progressing longer and longer and longer.

And they changed the meta, the algorithm as they'd call it, to boost particular videos for a certain reason.

Recently it's been make your videos one minute long plus and also landscape at the same time as well.

But I tried that a couple of times, didn't work for me.

So it's tough, it's hard.

There's no definite answer.

TikTok themselves will give you an answer and it just won't be the case.

YouTubers online will give you lots.

It's about for me, being here in the space long enough now, taking as much information as you can, try and retain it all and then implement all those different pieces for all these different contents just to see if it works.

The same video that you've just made, that's 30 seconds, that's vertical only.

You could make it again later on down the line.

That's one minute long and landscape.

It's the same video, the same content, maybe obviously double in length and either of one of those could go viral.

As I say, it's a lot of.

It's based in lock and getting the right people at the right time.

There is no guaranteed like sweet spot.

Some of the Most viral videos I've seen are 10 seconds on TikTok.

Some of them I've been caught hooked on a three minute video on TikTok.

You know, it all depends.

It's just that content work for that right person, that right time.

It's a pet, for example, for an adi.

Maybe if your topic is so broad and so many underlying features of it, maybe a longer video does work.

If you want to focus on just the right time to check your blind spots, you could make that, you could make that video both long and short form.

It could be just here, these moments, these moments like a list, like when to check your blind spots, when you're turning, when you do this, da da da da.

30 seconds, not even.

Or you could give them proper examples of when I'm in this space.

Make sure you do it like this.

And the video is just a bit longer now.

Maybe you could add a bit more jokes into it in between or stories.

And as I said before, so many different little creative switches that can make or break a video.

And yes, there's a sweet spot point.

I'm not a massive expert in that.

I wish I was bloody.

Don't we all, don't we all just wish I could tell you right now it's 33 seconds, don't go over.

And then boom.

It'll be viral definitely for sure.

No one really knows until you get to a point.

I mentioned that snowball before where you get so big, the algorithm knows, TikTok knows that your content is safe enough to be pushed lots and you'll get a lot more comments, a lot more engagement where just like that, you don't really have to properly think about it and you know you're going to become, you know, viral to the point as I said before, people will get a hundred thousand views for them at one point if they're so successful, that might not be that viral for them anymore, which is crazy to think about again, like more money, more problems, more views, more problems where Mr.

Beast got like 10 million views in the first 12 hours of one of these videos or something like this.

I remember reading this and for him it was way too.

It was like what?

This is underperforming so much.

10 million views in a certain amount of time was, was like a red flag for them.

Like what's this?

Why is this video doing so poorly where we would, you know, not kill for it, but we would kill for that.

We would love that.

10 million views.

Go on.

I'm, I'm still talking about more money, more Problems.

I saw the episode of the Office today with that line in it, so.

Wicked.

Flick it.

All right.

So I come to you as a driving instructor who has Never created a TikTok account video anything before.

Yeah.

And I say to you, Keenum, where do I start?

What do you say to me?

Nice.

It would be case of, you need some.

You've got your phone, so you've already got a camera.

I've used every single one of my TikToks that I've ever made.

It's been on the same phone that I've got.

I've got Pixel 5 and it's, you know, it's quite an old phone now.

I'm thinking about upgrading it because the new Pixel 9 has, for the back camera or the front camera has got more megapixels than my back camera now.

So I saw that, I was like, yeah, what am I doing?

But again, doesn't necessarily matter.

Some of the most viral videos ever have been on the worst quality cameras.

So you'll need a camera, you'll need to decide what you want to film.

Are you comfortable on camera?

Do you like being on camera?

Do you like to present?

I suppose as an adi, most likely you're okay with your public speaking, even if it's just one person in your car, but it doesn't necessarily have to be that as well.

You could film all your content in your room and then just have footage that you filmed from your car, you know, separately, or footage that you find online.

So it'd be case of asking yourself, what sort of content creator do you want to be?

Definitely.

Oh, here you go.

Let me answer your question, actually.

How about that?

Let me try that.

Download the app.

There you go.

We'll start with that.

Create an account, make it your own.

Like if it would be your own account.

So if it's your drive instructor company, or if it's your name, ADI at the end, or however you want to do it, make it already, brand it a bit.

You can add Official or something like that, something cool, something that people can remember.

You have to upload your profile pic and that sort of stuff.

And then don't post anything first.

Just use scroll on TikTok.

Get an idea of what TikTok is.

Because most likely if you're an ADI, you're a certain age, maybe you've never, as you said, you haven't got TikTok, you have no idea how it works.

You can't post on something, you don't really know how it works.

So scroll.

Let that algorithm Know what you like.

What I've learned, at least what I learned back when I first started, is that you want to let the algorithm know what content you like, which will be the content that you'll post.

So I only liked for the longest time.

I only liked driving, road safety content, anything to do with cars, anything to do with mechanics, anything to do with that sort of space for the longest time.

Talking about like two and a half years, that's all the content I liked.

Recently I started to subvert that and start liking content that I think my audience likes as well, like funny memes and news and British stuff, like, you know, stuff like that.

Because I'm, you know, trying to get the demographic and if they're liking those videos and I like them, I think the idea was the algorithm would put them together.

Is that the case now?

No, the algorithms had like 3, 4 updates at this point.

So that's a whole other aspect that you could start researching in is what's the, what's this new YouTube, excuse me, this new TikTok algorithm that's going on because they'll update it after a certain period of time and it'll be something different.

As I said, they now push one minute landscape videos, whereas before you couldn't even do one minute videos.

So it's all a bit different.

So, yeah, scroll initially when you use TikTok, you won't like it.

I think it'll be like, what is this?

People dancing, maybe a funny animal video here or there.

But the algorithm is learning so much about you, it's crazy.

We're in that future now where it will know how long you looked at a video.

When you score past it, it will remember that if you liked it.

If you can't, if you open the comments as some sort of engagement, didn't comment anything, but they'll, oh, you open the comments.

You want to see what people thinking about this topic.

And the algorithm is learning so much for you that you give it an hour or two over a course of how many days, and all of a sudden you'll scroll an hour or two instantly without even realizing it.

There's a nice little, nice little period of TikTok usage where you'll be like, oh my God, it is.

I went on this at 5:00pm, it is now 7.

Whoa, whoa.

Everybody calm down.

And that's what the algorithm is designed for.

It's really good to just make your brain go, oh, content, oh, piece of content.

Oh, piece of content.

So use it.

Understand what people are doing, start searching for adis There's a lot of good people, you know, I don't want to name someone, not all of them.

There are so many really great content creators for ADIs for driving instructors.

A bit jealous of them because they create some really good stuff I want.

They've got the GoPros, they film their cars and it's, you know, it's natural content.

Whereas for me in road safety, it's more of presentry.

I'm making the scene myself as words that come on the screens example.

That's another way as well.

Think about what your content, what you want it to be.

My biggest advice is try and do stuff that you're not seeing in the space.

You can look at all the driving instructors on TikTok, see what they're posting, ask yourself, what can I do that will be with that Kaizen approach just a little bit different.

Why can I do that?

What can I bring to the table that none of the other driving structures can?

Have you got talents in other places, other areas.

Is this your first job?

Are you also really good with.

I don't know, you're a comedian.

You're really funny when you add some jokes into it.

Are you creative?

Can you draw things?

Maybe it's a case of you draw the scenarios that you could potentially be in if you're.

That if it's.

I don't know, it could be do with money.

You could do a lot of stats based on, you know, driving.

It's all these different things.

How can you include your hobby into your work?

For example, as an actor, I made a lot of skits where I could act as these certain people to implement road safety things or what should you do in this?

And they'll give an example of me like driving silly because I can act.

So I'd like to do that.

That was the way I could do it.

So again, yeah, figuring out what you enjoy doing, figuring out what you could do that other people don't try and push that a little bit.

You want to be.

You want to separate yourself because as I said, there's so many people, so much content.

You know, make it a bit more special for you and enjoy that aspect of it as well.

Be like, oh yeah, I'm doing it this way, but people haven't done before, you know, maybe you could speak two languages and you start making videos in a different language or whatever it is.

And after a while of scrolling TikTok, understanding how the algorithm works, realizing that, you know, how you scroll like something, get into that, get in scripts with that Then it's a case of okay, what content do I want to create?

Find a topic, do that.

You can either do that thing where spend half an hour, an hour just writing video topics that you enjoy or write copying video titles or topics at least not just what they were from what you've just scrolled on from these.

Oh, they made a topic on this.

You probably have as an adi loads of folders or books or research that you've had to take on to become one that just sitting there in your house.

I don't necessarily know.

You can answer that for me and say you probably have loads of resources already at your home, which I didn't even have when I started.

Where you can be like if I read this book, you could pick that paragraph, any paragraph.

Oh, can I make that into video content?

If it is, you know how to, you know, reverse park it into a bay park.

And just like that, you can have so many different ways you can make that content.

You just have the video topic there.

And then asking yourself, as I said before, how am I going to implement this differently?

Is it a camera in my room?

Is it a camera in the car?

Is it a bit of both?

You probably want to get a tripod, something to hold your camera in place.

That's where you start investing a bit as well.

Classic any business you have to spend money, you know to make it to make some.

That's what it's going to be.

You probably have to put a bit more money in.

You can ask yourself need to start thinking about lighting and microphones.

You can just Google online like best things to do.

You can case of Googling Classic Google.

What is the best content creator startup?

Set up gear that I need and I'll give you lists.

You can find the cheapest ones if you want to spend a bit more.

It's always important to have good audio.

Visuals is not as bad like you can have a bad camera, but if you have bad audio, that's when it starts to get a bit, you know, because people, you know, if they can't really hear you or understand you, I have issues with speaking way too quick, which maybe your listeners have understood.

During this podcast where I go and I'll watch my content video back like what?

What am I saying?

I even said it.

I don't know what I'm saying.

This was about, you know, being slow in your speech so people can understand you.

Be clear and concise.

Not necessarily matter if you're 4 ATP in some ways that might be.

There you go.

Isn't Idea.

You know how that used to say the meme of like it's been filmed on a potato where the con.

The quality was so bad.

It's like, what is this going on?

Maybe there's a way where you all your.

All your visual.

It should really poor quality.

It still sounds great and it'll be, that's that eye engaging thing.

But what's this guy.

What we're learning how to drive back in 2003.

Just like that.

It could be your.

That your thing.

That could be your little funny thing.

You've got a really bad camera recorder.

You never know.

There's so many different aspects that you could change and switch up.

But yeah, it would be that.

Download the app, figure out how it works, start asking yourself what content you'd like to create.

Do you like to be on camera?

If you don't, that's absolutely fine.

Some of the biggest content creators don't.

You don't even never see their face.

Super nice voice.

You could potentially pay for someone as well.

It depends how much far you want to go to be a narrator without getting to proper content creator level, not just a drive instructor who wants to make content.

And definitely for your first 10, 15 videos, do not care when they don't if they go viral or not.

Don't even think they will.

Don't even go on potential.

I know you will.

Naturally.

Even if I say that naturally, I still have that where I'm like, oh, this might be the one and it won't.

I'll go, oh, but definitely before it'd be, oh my God, this is definitely the one.

And it won't.

I'm in my bed like everything's wrong.

You know, it's about managing expectations.

Enjoy that process because you've went from never posting a video to posting 10.

Now you have a page where you have 10 videos.

And just like that, you've learned so much.

Just like how you learn to drive.

The first lesson you're in a car driving.

People ask me that, like, what you doing your first lesson?

Like you will drive a car.

What?

I've never, never sat in the driver's seat.

Just like posting content.

All of a sudden you're posting videos.

Usually TikTok will boost your first one.

That's what they did for us, which really helped us gain traction for our next couple.

I've realized recently that that might not be the case, which is so.

It's jarring, I'd say, because it was that nice boost at the start, which would, which is what they would do they'd make you feel good about the app, which then would keep you in.

It's a bit one of those subconscious, oh, wow.

The first video did well and it's chasing that first engagement and it does work for a lot of people.

But recently I've realized that might not be the case, which is just.

It's a tough one.

So it's even a case just managing expectations from day one.

Post the content.

It might not work.

Ask, send it to your other friends.

Check what other ADIs are saying.

Change people up.

What do you think?

We have to start getting tough skin.

If you're creating content and it's open to the public, people can comment anything and you have to be ready for that.

I made a really good video that I enjoyed.

Got really viral.

So many comments about my hair and how much hair gel I used that day.

I was like, okay, don't even think about it.

And I said, I think for some people that I have thick skin.

That could really be like, I'm never posting a video ever again.

Then I'm always going to wear a hat.

How dare.

Why they comment on my hair again.

5 comments out of 100.

Because there's 5 there.

I mentioned it to you now on an instructor's podcast.

I'm like, yeah, this back when three years ago.

I'm still not over it.

Got that thick skin to be okay that you might make content.

Most likely make content.

Doesn't get viral initially and that's okay.

What do you learn from that?

Growth from it?

Well, what I will say is that I think this is the least I've ever spoken on a podcast and I've interviewed Bob Martin and Ray Seagrave, so there you go.

But this is the most I've spoken on podcast as well.

I.

I'm glad you mentioned that about the comments, so, because I was going to ask you about that because I get a lot of stick sometimes not as much.

I used to admit, Liberty.

I get a lot of stick.

One my favorite ones were actually before I did all the podcast stuff, someone commented on a picture once saying, look at the size of his forehead.

I'm like, I ain't got a big forehead.

I'm just bald.

It's.

That's my head.

That's where it goes.

Yeah.

You're not even insulting me, right.

I'm more insulted that you thought you could insult me like that.

But how would you advise people manage that?

Because it can be a really toxic environment.

Especially if you say some.

Not necessarily controversial, but goes against the norm.

Shall we Say yeah, how do you manage it?

It's a case of living through it and coping with it and realizing it's going to happen maybe before it does, maybe if it can catch you off guard again, the head, you know, thing again.

This is a video so long ago, doesn't even really matter.

But I just remember it coming up and go, my first proper experience of like not hates but trolling something about my character.

It's like, oh wow, this is it.

This is what people who are in the space.

You'll get so many comments, probably get on the regular regular and hear people comment about it.

And it was one of those like haha, okay, funny.

Got a laugh at it.

It was one of those.

Luckily now with TikTok, a lot of the I presume Instagram as well, you can highlight comments, you can delete them.

You can if it comes to that point.

But to be honest with you, here's another thing as well.

To answer your question, what should you do any engagement if it's any comment, even if it's at the detriment to the video, especially in road safety, the amount of times I've had your bet your thunder parties, it's just a video, how many more to be safe on the roads.

And you just these people that have enough energy to only score on a video, not like it.

But then go, I need to comment.

I need to comment that I don't like it.

And not only that I don't like it, but come for the person that's done it.

I can make a video like hey look, it's make sure you stay safe with the people on their own.

And so I'll go, what are you wearing, bro?

Why?

It's got nothing to do with the video.

It's.

It's a case of I will still reply to those comments, I will still keep them on, I'll still engage and at that point if I ask them a question, they might comment again and engage again.

And for TikTok and the algorithm, that's another comment.

The algorithm doesn't necessarily know if the comment's good or bad.

Obviously if there's certain words that are banned, it will know it or delete or ask you if you want to approve it or not.

But even those comments that might be a bit negative on your content keep.

If it's not brutal, you'll ask yourself, you'll know if you want to delete it or not, but if you can handle it and you can reply to a comment, hey, what do you mean by that?

Or sort of go like, how did you get that from this video?

Or like, oh, at least you drive safely though, right?

Something like that.

Engage that content.

Make that person who already wanted to comment on your video again, that's engagement.

Get them to comment again, get them to start that convo.

Usually as well, people come to.

At least when people are chatting rubbish now and then people come to my defense and what actually is what he's talking about is really true.

Like, my dad had a car crash because of this.

It's actually really important.

And then those two will start having a conversation and the next thing you know, there's other engagement, other content.

Try your best to reply to every comment.

There is a big tip for you there.

Reply to as many comments as you possibly can.

Keep that engagement going.

Start conversations with these, with your following, which is another aspect actually.

God, another thing.

We have 50000 followers.

My videos won't get 50, 000 views.

Like it's.

It's a weird case of everyone uses the for you page or an Instagram is, you know, if you're scrolling, next thing you know you'll just be scrolling for people you don't even follow.

So it's a case if you want to build a following, but you won't have like necessarily the same followers, the same view as each video.

Not even necessarily.

Most guaranteed you won't.

Most guaranteed the people who view this video today were not the people who viewed your video last time.

So it's just engaging with people and being friends with each individual comment on the day on the video, whatever it is.

I want to finish by asking you about your algorithm because I think you've touched on it before, but I'm going to kind of explain mine now.

Being on a little bit of a social detox, I'm slightly nervous about going back, but I managed to really curate my TikTok algorithm so that my feed is basically dogs, WWE wrestling and the Tom Holland Lip Sync Battle video.

That's the three things I get said.

The Rihanna in the micro.

Yes.

Which just.

It does so much my brain.

That's all I'll say.

What's your feed like?

My feed question.

So, you know, I'll go through.

I'll do a quick go through now, see if anything interesting.

I think I'm getting a lot more memes than I used to.

It'd be every third, fourth video.

It'd be something to do with roads or cars.

So currently it's like a trend that's going on here.

We've got someone on the road with the bike.

Here we got again, no one that I follow, none of these people that I follow, all the few page nobody that I follow as an AD classic, as a live classic software Christmas right now.

So obviously there's obviously reoccurring trends that happen if you're really on it and you want to be a proper content creator.

It's as I said at the start, scroll, tick tock, see what trends are going on and see if you can implement those trends with driving.

There's one right now where it's a picture of a Muppet.

As in the Muppets, you know this random Muppet.

No.

And it's literally the same picture but it's a slideshow and each and each picture has like a sentence about like this really horrific story that's going on.

This meme right now.

This trend has got me hot so much.

It's just one song.

It's from the Deadpool and Wolverine film again it's using think it's a trending song with a trending topic.

All of a sudden people realize that works and you're just watching.

You're just basically reading someone's story and how horrific it gets, how horrible and horrible it gets.

Instinct like that.

If you're an ADI or as a road safety person, I suppose actually more likely for an adi, you probably have a horrific story of like teaching someone to drive or this crash happened or when you were learning something like that, you could make the content based on that meme where it's the same picture.

You just write a bit, oh, I'll tell you this story about this one person zone to drive next slide.

And just like that, you've now created a trending piece of content for stuff that's going on.

There's trending sounds as trending hashtags, there's trending memes in general.

It's about.

You can even combine all of those together to make as I say implement in a potential video that you're already thinking about as well.

So it's a lot.

As I say, I keep saying, I keep repeating myself.

So many different aspects should be taken from.

You could make all your content based on just means trending means that going on right now.

I've got never see your face.

It's just what's going viral.

You could do a combination of both.

I find myself very rarely following trends and wanted to make sort of make my own.

That's really work.

I'm not really making anything that's trend that can go viral trendy like that.

But try and make my.

Make mine original as possible.

But usually the content that gets really.

Virus content, that's sort of writing the coattails.

Coattails, coattails of what's being viral already and copying it and make it.

Put in your own twist on it.

I've loved this conversation.

You want to take a second to remind or tell people where they can find you if they want more.

Keenan.

Goodness.

Absolutely.

Thank you very much.

So, yeah, I'm on TikTok, it's at first car UK we make loads of road safety content, as I've said.

Take all my advice with a grain of salt as well.

I give you all that stuff, you could follow it, you could easily not follow it and create a viral video as well.

It is all up in the air.

It is a bonkers game.

It's a lot of fun, especially when you start getting that engagement you want to do and you're speaking to people and you're in that space.

Yeah.

So TikTok first car UK, give it as a follow.

Give us a comment, let us know that you listen to the podcast.

That would be cool if we see one of those.

And yeah, enjoy the time.

Don't.

Don't hold too much pressure on yourself when it doesn't go by, because it won't.

I'll say that to everyone.

Just most, most definitely won't initially.

And it's, keep going, keep going, have fun, enjoy the ride.

And yeah, it is.

It's a great.

It's a great game, it's fun, it's lovely, It's a lovely time.

I'm not quite sure I got your enthusiasm for it, but I'm close, I'm close, but no, I do just want to finish just by saying, you know, big thank you for joining me today.

It's been an absolute pleasure.

Thank you so much.

I really appreciate it.

Lots of fun.

I didn't ask you as many questions I thought I would, actually.

I was like.

I remember.

I kept going, I'll ask you that in a second.

And I went on my own tangent.

I wanted to ask you about your.

Some of your content, but no, I've had a great time.

Thank you very much.

I appreciate it.

Hopefully someone gets something from this.

Yourself as well.

But, yeah, it's really cool, actually.

I appreciate it loads.

So, a big thank you for Keenan for joining me today.

I loved this episode and I don't normally say this, I.

I usually keep photos like this to myself, but that's one of the episodes I.

I most joyed, enjoyed recording ever.

And I think the reason why, when I listen back, was the passion in Keenan's voice.

You can hear that he loves what he does and that doesn't always come across.

I think sometimes, and I mean no disrespect to anyone when I say this, but we speak to the, the educators, we speak to the academics.

It's very formal and I like that, I really do.

But you can see Keenan just cares.

He gets it.

He knows what he wants and he knows what to do and he loves talking about it.

So I really enjoyed this.

And there's a wealth of tips in there, an absolute wealth of tips.

I talk about this a lot.

But listen and listen again.

You definitely need to listen to this episode again.

So if you're listening in a car, get a pen and paper out when you get home and make some notes.

But I also want to take a moment to thank all the other guests from this season.

That's Dan Hill, Nick Smith, Pascal Poppins, Josh Holleran, Vicky Holland and Dr.

Nick Reed, as well as the seven train trainers that appeared on that special episode I did.

Talking about who should you take on the standards check?

I've really enjoyed creating this technology season.

It's a bit out of my comfort zone.

It's something that I'm not always great talking about, but maybe that's made it better because I'm coming from a bit more of a.

A blank canvas perspective.

So I hope you've enjoyed it too.

Feedback is always welcome.

And I will just say that we are going to be back in the new year.

We're back in 2025, a brand new season, but until then we'll be releasing some bonus content as well as the green rooms.

And we've got another very special green room coming up at the end of December.

We'll be reviewing the year with Chris Benstead, Stuart Lockeri and Tom Stenson.

I also want to take a moment to thank my drive time.

You'll have heard me banging on about my drive time over the last couple of months because they are sponsoring season nine and whilst they produce an amazing product and ridiculously reliable product, I should add on to that with some great features.

I'm also just chuffed that they they've sponsored the show.

I've spoke about this quite a lot and we, we have bright culture in sponsored season eight.

We've got my drive time sponsoring this season nine and it makes it so much easier for me.

It makes my life easier.

It makes me able to create better content for you guys and better shows for you guys.

So I'm eternally grateful for them.

So if I leave you with one favor at the end of season nine, it's go and check out mydrivetime.co.uk I'm not asking you to sign up, that's your choice.

I'm asking you to have a look.

Do that as a favor for me.

But of course I'm going to ask you for one more favor and that's go and check out the Instructor Podcast Premium.

We have got a wealth of content with some amazing stuff and some amazing stuff come up.

We're already getting well planned into the new year.

I don't need to tell you what it is.

You can go find out yourself.

There's links in the show notes or you can head to the website.

The instructorpodcast.com when you go over there, you'll see details for the 10 pound tier and the 22 pound tier.

Go and see which one takes you fancy.

There's currently a 33% discount on both, or you can get a week's free trial on the 10 pounds tier.

Or you can get a 16% discount off an annual membership.

So there's loads of choices either probably too many.

Maybe that's what I need to change.

But either way, the instructorpodcast.com all that's left for me is to say thank you for listening.

Whether this is your first time or you've been listening for day one, thank you for listening and I hope you all have a cracking end to the year and I hope you have a smash in 2025.

But for now, let's just keep raising standards.

The Instructor Podcast with Terry Cook, talking with leaders, innovators, experts and game changers about what drives them.