Social Media Marketer Luan Wise

Hello, I'm Luan and I'm a marketer. I've been a marketer for 25 years. I started off working in advertising agencies, then client side, and then running my own business for nearly 15 years now. I also do a mixture of consultancy and training.

If you could go back and give yourself one piece of advice, what would it be? 

This is a really hard question because I was trying to think, would I do anything differently? And I don't think I would. But the biggest piece of advice would be to work with people who value and appreciate what you do.

What do you find the most challenging thing about working for yourself? 

I think it's about switching off because you are running your own business, so you're always on. And I think the challenge that comes with that is being in the moment and enjoying what you're doing and appreciating where you are right now, because you have a tendency to worry about what's next or what's not happening.

What made you decide to be self-employed?

I've been self-employed almost 15 years now, and it was never part of my plan to set up my own business. It was never part of a career path that I thought I would have. But in my last corporate role, after I'd been there for six years, it turned into a discussion, you know, 'where are you going?' etc. There were some internal restructures of the organisation and for six months, it was decided that I would actually go and work for one of the shareholder's other businesses to do what I'd been doing, because I'd been there for six years.

It was a fast growing company. We'd grown from 3 million to 60 million turnover from kind of 15 people to 60 people. So it had been a huge journey and I kept wanting to do more and to keep growing. So the decision to work for six months for another business and the business, worked really well.

Then we had a review meeting, sat around the table and kind of said, you know, what's next? Well, I said, yeah, but I'm now kind of doing two jobs and the directors were amazing and said, well, if you wanted to set up your own business, we could be your clients and you would then be free to go and work with other clients as well.

So it was kind of an opportunity that was presented to me with clients from like minus day one. So I, you know, kind of thought, why not? 

How did Lighthouse come about and why did you originally use your full name as your brand?

Fifteen years ago when I set up, I don't think there were as many people being independent freelancer. You kind of felt like you had to say we or, or position yourself as an agency that just, you know, one person wasn't what people were looking for, but I did know from that point and from working in corporates that I didn't want to build an agency, and I wanted my business to just be me.

I also have a quite unique name. So I had spoken with some friends at the time and was like, what are you going to call your business? And I realised that, even when I was making phone calls as an insider corporate, I would just say, 'hi it's Luan'. I didn't really say the company name. So I just decided that I was going to use my name as my brand. And go from there.  

Lighthouse, which is a dedicated website resource, was one of those Covid projects when you're reevaluating what you're doing. But what I'd started doing was like a weekly email newsletter around social media updates, and realised that I was sending people off to lots of other websites to find the full story, and that actually the email just existed on a Monday morning and there was no archive for it, no place to kind of go back and look unless you had, you know, subscribe to all the emails. So I started putting the news stories that I was sharing in an email onto a single source website. 

You are also an author, congratulations! Tell us more about your books.

Initially a bucket list goal, my first book Relax. It's only Social Media emerged from my extensive talks and presentations. I decided to compile my content into a book with guidance from a book writing coach, Kim, and I completed it in six months.

I was then encouraged by a professor at Warwick Business School to make a second edition. I conducted research in collaboration with the university to inform my second edition. Despite delays due to COVID-19, the project evolved into Planning for Success, which was published after updating research in 2022.

Meanwhile, Bloomsbury approached me to write a short book, Social Media at Work, which I completed in just four weeks. Impressed, they invited me to write another book. This led me to split my ideas into two books: Planning for Success, focused on marketing fundamentals, and Smart Social Media, a guide to growing businesses using social media.

Are there any other books in the pipeline?

My next book, will be released in 2025. So we're kind of halfway through. And I say we because I'm co-writing it with an academic. So it's going to be an academic practitioner combined book where we're going to be explaining marketing theory, and then bringing it to life with examples. So it's a really lovely partnership so far; one person wrote the academic theory, so we know who's writing which bits, but then kind of debating where an example needs to go and is it a an up to date example, or do we need to tweak it.

How would you advise someone, just starting out in self-employment, to start with social media?

I'd say take a step back and think about who do you want to be working with? Who's your ideal customer and what are you selling to them? What's your product or service? You know, what's that pain point? You need to get that bit right before you try and start marketing.

Then pick the social media platform where you're most likely to find them. And that is also, I would say, your comfort zone for communicating. So unless you are really visually lead with photos and videos, don't go down the route of Instagram and TikTok because it will be really difficult for you.

If you've got a B2B audience and you're happy with text, with maybe, you know, using some royalty free images to support it, go for LinkedIn. Don't overthink it and make it a big challenge for yourself. Do what comes naturally and use it as a networking tool.