21 JanEpisode 38 | Our Student Lola Barksdale: A Floofdragon’s Guide to Instagram Stardom
When we first met Lola Barksdale, she was a tiny Frenchie puppy in our Kindergarten classes. We had no idea that she would become an Instagram star, or that she was secretly obsessed with unicorns and alpacas, loved purple fruit loops and waffles (which she calls "woofles,"), considered herself a "floofdragon" and had hobbies including interior decorating and counting her own feet. The genius behind her account is her human, Rachel Rednor. Rachel works in finance, but during her bathroom breaks at the office, she has developed an entire character for her little dog, built through photos and captions. Annie talked to Rachel about creating, and managing, her dog's Internet celebrity.
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Transcript:
Annie:
I am here with Rachel Redner. I met Rachel and her husband, Matt about six years ago when they did a lesson with me with their brand new puppy. Lola, who is this tiny, fawn colored, would you say?
Rachel:
I, we call her cream.
Annie:
Cream French bulldog, who was just, just the cutest little like potato of a dog. [laughing] She has like no neck, which adds to her adorableness, I think. And, they actually started doing classes when School for the Dogs was located in my apartment, which is where we are right now. In a previous iteration, it was the School for the Dogs classroom. And I wanted to talk to Rachel for this episode because, I think even before dogs on Instagram were sort of a thing, she had an account for Lola on Instagram. And I started following it and just sort of became obsessed with Lola's Instagram and was like, who is this person writing it? I mean, I knew it was Rachel, but it wasn't, it wasn't the voice of the woman who works in finance, who I had met in her apartment. It was the voice of this hilarious, um, tiny French bulldog. And I think a lot of people kind of develop a voice for their dogs, but I think, you do it better than most. So why don't we talk quickly? Just tell me about how Lola came into your life.
Rachel:
Sure. So my husband and I had different views on a dog in general. I had grown up with a dog and he grew up in a very animal free house and was not that interested in the idea of a dog, but I was very persistent. And when we moved to Manhattan, there were Frenchies. That started to be everywhere. They weren't as kind of everywhere as they are now, but they were–
Annie:
Where did you move from?
Rachel:
We moved from college. We met in Syracuse and then we moved to the city. Uh, we were local. We grew up here, but not really in Manhattan. You know, so you don't get that much exposure to all the different breeds of dogs when you're living in the suburbs. So we moved to Manhattan and we started seeing Frenchies and I had thought I wanted a beagle. And then I read somewhere one time and it was, this was all, it took me that beagles are terrible in the city because they just have their nose to the ground. And it's really, really hard to manage that. So I said, okay, let's forget.
But we started seeing Frenchies everywhere. And I don't remember if we looked it up or we just talked about it, but we started this obsession that just kind of grew. And the worst of it was we would follow people with Frenchies around the city. And it's funny because people do that to me now. And it's very, very clear that they're doing it. And we legitimately thought that people did not know that we were doing it. We would send videos to each other. And then at some point we discovered Frenchies on Instagram and there were a couple that we really fell in love with. We thought we had to have that exact Frenchie from that exact breeder. And a few of them are very close friends now, which is always–
Annie:
Who are some of the ones who were following on Instagram?
Rachel:
So, the daily Walter was one of the first Frenchies we followed, and Walter's parents are now some of my best friends in real life. So it's just, I remember the first time we met, we were so starstruck and now it seems so silly, but there were a couple of dogs that were just so early on Instagram. So for Frenchies it was Manny, the Frenchie who we don't know personally, but, you know, they were very big and Barkley out in Seattle was very big, very early. And I think that those people that were early movers just still have a naturally way bigger fan base because it was before the concept of a dog account was everywhere.
But Walter was really the biggest one that we followed and we talked about and every post we fawned over and, you know, we tried to figure out what breeder he was from. And we said, okay, we, you know, we have to have a dog from that breeder. And you know, that evolved over time. And then what ended up happening is, uh, I put a deposit down for Lola without telling Matt. Because I was scared, he would say no, and I just, you know, he was into it, but I didn't think he would want to pull the trigger. So I just, I just put a deposit down and I said, we're getting a dog. Sorry. And that was it!
Annie:
It worked out in the end. Still happily married.
Rachel:
Yeah! Still happily married. You know, he grew up in a house without animals. And I think the biggest thing for him was the dog is outside on the sidewalk. And then the dog is inside on my couch, and it was hard for him to reconcile that and growing up with a dog, I didn't even think twice about it, but I can understand where when you don't grow up with a dog, it's like you wouldn't crawl on the sidewalk and then crawl in your bed without washing your hands.
Annie:
It does require a certain barrier in your mind. [laughs] To get past that!
Rachel:
Yeah, totally, absolutely.
Annie:
So you got Lola then from the same breeder as–
Rachel:
No we didn't. We ended up looking online and, you know, there's tons of breeders out there online. You can pretty quickly tell who's reputable and who's not just based on, you know, kind of basic search and honestly common sense. And then it takes awhile, you know, if you're using a reputable breeder to wait for a litter that you want, or wait for a spot that you want, or if, you know, you want a male or a female, which we know or care about the gender, but we did know we wanted cream just because we liked the look of it.
So we ended up waiting and we wanted, you know, the right time of year for whatever was going on in our lives at that time. So we ended up waiting a couple months, but we found a breeder that was random to us. It didn't come recommended. I think we felt a little desperate at the end. So we just sort of picked something that worked without, you know, maybe waiting till the exact right time. But obviously, it ended up working out for us and Lola was the only dog in her litter. So we ended up having no choice, which was kind of nice in the end because I can imagine, you know, the choices I know. Yeah. So that's how she came to me.
Annie:
So tell me about first meeting her, did you–I remember when I first got my, my dog Amos as a puppy thinking like, what if I don't like his personality? [laughs]
Rachel:
So I, in the weeks before we got Lola, was so afraid that she was going to be a full grown dog by the time we picked her up. It felt like every day that went by, we were missing her growing up. You know, the breeder would take us to take pictures and send them to us. And every picture she looked older and older. And I remember saying to my husband, Oh my God, she's going to be 10 pounds. She can be 15 pounds. She's going to be huge. We're missing her puppyhood.
Annie
She was just a tiny dumpling!
Rachel:
So we, we drive to this breeder who is in the middle of nowhere in Pennsylvania. Our Google maps shut off. We just basically find this house. And this tiny little four pound potato greets us at the door. And I just remember like everything melted away, I couldn't believe that this tiny little thing would be ours. And, you know, the breeder was kind of, matter of fact, she showed us how to clip her nails, which we have never been able to do on our own. And, you know, gave us a bunch of sheets and we signed the papers, and she kind of sent us on our way. And we were terrified.
Annie:
[laughs] Now you’re dog parents.
Rachel:
Now we’re dog parents. And we think we're pretty good at it. But I mean, those first couple of days were, you know, they're hard. It's, I think it's like bringing home an infant and we don't have kids, but my friends with infants will fight that comparison. But I mean, it's eat, sleep, poop, be terrified, have no idea what you're doing. You know, it's completely around the clock. There was no time off. And it felt like that for a while.
Annie:
Sure. Yeah. Well, and I think, I mean, I wouldn't it's harder to have a dog than a kid, or it's harder to have a kid than a dog. I think, frankly it depends on the kid and depends on the dog and the situation.
Rachel:
That’s a good point. Yeah.
Annie:
I mean, I definitely know people who've had harder times having dogs and people, not having kids. Only because you know, a dog can seriously injure you and if something goes wrong, you actually have to consider putting them down. Which is never a choice that parents, have to consider fortunately or unfortunately [laughs] But tell me then about how her, her social media presence then began to develop.
Rachel:
Sure. So since we knew about the dog community on Instagram before we got her, and we knew that we liked the concept of it, we started an account before we got her.
Annie:
Oh, wow.
Rachel:
And we actually chose the name Lola Barksdale because some of the dog accounts that we liked on Instagram had two names and it was the daily Walter. Carrie's going to laugh at me when she hears this, who was Walter Cronkite. And we just liked the idea of, yeah. It just, for whatever reason, it just really clicked with us. And we thought it was this cool thing.
Annie:
And Barksdale, is that after The Wire?
Rachel:
It is after The Wire. So at that point in time, we had probably just finished our first full viewing of The Wire. We really, really liked it. Matt fought for the name Stringer Bello, which to me was a nonstarter. I thought that was really silly. I didn't want something that was kitschy. I want something, I wanted something that really made sense. And that was a plausible, actual last name. So there's a couple of players in the NFL right now who are named Barksdale. So whenever we see them on TV with the jersey we were like–
Annie:
It’s your uncle!
Rachel:
Exactly. So we knew we wanted a last name and that just made perfect sense because obviously the bark part made it funny for a dog. And then Lola, we had a couple short names, uh, short listed names. We practice saying them, we shouted them across to each other in the apartment. One of them was Olive we'd say, “Hey, Olive!” and you know, just kind of felt what was right. And we just felt like Lola was right. Uh, so we named the account, Lola Barksdale, we posted a couple pictures, really bad Blackberry pictures before we got her. And then we started it right away and I did not have a plan.
We didn't have a plan that I would be kind of the main photographer, copywriter, community manager, editor, everything. It just sort of evolved that way. And we started,
Annie:
Is it now like a hundred percent you, or like is it like 90/10 you and Matt?
Rachel:
It is 95% me. And it's just, it's, it's been okay that way. Matt takes some really good photos, but we've actually, I'm sure we'll get into this later. Sometimes the best photos don't do the best. But we started it right away. And I don't think, I think if I went back to those early posts, it probably did not have the same consistent voice that it does now. I'd probably not want to go back to those early posts because of the photo quality and the inconsistency. But what we tried to do at first was just get people to follow us. That was the goal at first, and to meet people, both in real life and on Instagram.
So I sort of just played the hashtag game. I didn't really know what I was doing. And I will say that so many people ask me, how did she get it following? What did you do? And what I have to say is that when we were doing this, it was late 2013. Instagram was really different. So it's not possible, I think, to replicate what we did now, because it was completely chronological. There was no concept of sponsored posts. There was no selling, there was no stories, you know, it was incredibly different. And the thing about the chronological feed is that it made it really easy to understand what did well and what didn't. And so we could see the impact of a post right away. And we could, we can sort of follow it through the timeline, even without any insights or analytics, you know, you just get a better feel for it.
Annie:
To the uninitiated, at some point, from what I understand, Instagram went from showing things chronologically to showing users things based on popularity or interest, right?
Rachel:
Based on popularity and interest, and also what Instagram thinks that you want to see.
Annie:
So it’s possible now I might see a post that you did two weeks ago.
Rachel:
I don't, I don't think it goes that far back, but you could certainly see as the top post in your feed a photo that I posted 12 hours ago, or I might post three photos that you never see, even if you scroll really far back. And I think that the methodology behind that is that Instagram, and now Facebook who owns Instagram, thinks that the average person can only consume, it's something like 300 pieces of content a day. So depending on your scrolling habits and how often you open the app, they show you, you know, don't quote me on this, 300 pieces of content a day. And they decide for you what you want to see.
Annie:
What you want to see. And so how many followers does she have?
Rachel:
So Lola has, I think 158,000 followers. And what was always the most frustrating thing to me when we moved from chronological to the current setup is that I felt like if somebody explicitly hit follow and wanted to follow Lola, they should see her posts. And it was kind of this like thing that I was like, that's not fair. They chose to follow her. It's not fair that they can't see her posting, you know, it is what it is. And you sort of learned to deal with it.
One of the most interesting stats I saw, I went through a phase of like really trying to dig into the algorithm and understand it. I'm sort of over that now because it is what it is. But one of the interesting stats I saw was that over half of Lola's followers follow like 2 or 3000 other accounts, which was not something I thought about. So then I said, Oh, even if it was chronological, I mean, they're following thousands of accounts. Who knows how active those accounts are, but we're just this tiny thing in their whole big social media universe.
Annie:
What would you say has driven you? Is it just sort of like a hobby? Is it, is there a goal? Is it just, I mean, fun? How would you describe it?
Rachel:
So we get that question a lot. And I think in the early days, the goal was some sort of round number of followers. It was a thousand, it was 10,000. It was a hundred thousand. Now that things are harder, and it's harder to grow followers, and it's harder to figure out what drives engagement. I think that the goal for me is still getting Lola out there.
Annie:
But is it like, I mean, are those milestone numbers? Is it because it's just sort of fun to feel like there's a goal?
Rachel:
Yeah, it's totally fun. It's fun to have a dog who's famous.
[laughing]
It's really fun. It's been great at work. It's a great conversation starter. The most fun thing is when we meet someone and I try not to outwardly say it, I don't just say, Hey, my dog's famous! and they're like, what do you mean your dog’s famous? Or like, Hey, my dog's an Instagram. I try to only say it if it comes naturally. But the best thing is to meet somebody or talk to somebody and say, Hey, you know my dogs on Instagram, they say, Oh, you know, I follow this dog Lola. And they're like, Oh my God, you're Lola’s owner! Meeting someone who's a fan who doesn't know that I'm Lola’s owner.
Annie:
Do you ever get stopped on the street?
Rachel:
All the time.
Annie:
Wow.
Rachel:
We get stopped on the street all the time, especially because where we live in Dumbo in Brooklyn is a very specific kind of small area. It's very touristy. So we've heard very often. I don't know if this is true or not that a lot of tourists who come kind of roam around looking for Lola. But we've run into people very often who are tourists and they're just hanging out in the neighborhood. But there's a decent likelihood you're going to run into Lola, if you're there the whole day.
Annie:
Right [laughs]
Rachel:
She's out in the neighborhood four or five times a day for a half hour at a time.
Annie:
So tell me about Lola's online persona and how that developed, I guess for someone who's never seen her account, doesn't know you like, what would be your, you know, elevator pitch description of who she is on Instagram?
Rachel:
That's a good question. So Lola is–Lola discovered unicorns before the rest of the world did. And I think that the concept of that is really apt for her, even though we've tried to evolve it as unicorns have kind of come and gone. And, you know, in the zeitgeist. She is super needy, but not in an obnoxious way, kind of in a funny way. She has no idea that she's a dog, but doesn't think she's a human. Like she just, she has this air about herself where she really likes what she likes and she doesn't understand why anything else would be that way. And so we have a couple of very specific things. Like she loves the color purple, uh, wherever she's living at the time. So we used to have a tent, so she had a tent and she had a tent association and she had an interior designer and, you know, it's all completely made up. It's like the, you know, the stuff of a kind of four year old playtime, you know, she has a cabana outside. So she asked the pool boy for a purple drink and, you know, little things like that.
Annie:
She loves the name Fiona.
Rachel:
Yes. She loves the name, Fiona. She loves alpacas. I have no idea where that came from. Part of it is just, you know, it's a creative outfit for me. I live in spreadsheets all day long and I just kind of come up with something sometimes. So for instance, her latest thing for the last year or so is that she's a floof dragon, which, you know, is nothing. I don't know. I literally just made it up one day, which might be disappointing to people are like, Oh, she's so creative. Where did that come from? And I don't have a great answer for where it comes from, but she had–the origin of Floofdragon is Lola had just taken a bath. So she looked, Oh, a little bit fluffier than she normally does, and she's not a fluffy dog. Um, and I had put this big fleece sweater on her. She was just giving me this funny look. And I just said, Oh, you're being a floofdragon. And that was just kind of it, you know?
Annie:
And Woofles.
Rachel:
Woofles for waffles also, just, you know, just trying to be silly, but not stupid, if that makes any sense.
Annie:
Well I think you've done a really amazing job of creating like a whole character around her, that is, that is, I mean, like any character it comes from you, but it's based on this dog. And I guess it's also based on how you see her. It's sort of some amalgam of the two things.
Rachel:
It's hard to tell if it's me or her, and if we're kind of combining the two for sure. The other thing is just about consistency. So creating a character is just a lot of doing the same thing over and over and over. And I've tried to really not stray from those things. So if there's, you know, four or five kind of things in her universe. So she loves carrots. So I make sure to weave that in all the time. So videos of her chewing on carrots are really popular, you know, pictures where the caption is about her asking for carrots or talking about carrots. So I'll do that once a week or once every couple months, nothing unnatural, but I try to make sure that that consistency is there because that's what, that's, what develops the character when people don't interact with her every day. But if, you know, if they say three, they see three or four posts in a row and they all around the same two topics, it starts to embed in people what she's all about.
Annie:
Yeah. Are there other dogs on Instagram that you think are successful as characters?
Rachel:
There are a couple accounts I love that I actually do think are doing what Lola does in terms of the very consistent voice and not really breaking that voice and really having just a few themes that they always go back to. And my favorite is on Twitter. A lot of people have probably heard of it or followed it. It's called dog_feelings. This account is so cute and so funny. So the couple things that they do is, the dog who is actually a golden retriever, is on guard under the fridge, watching a Skittle. And so it's kind of his job every night to walk the perimeter of the house and make sure that everyone is safe and then watch the Skittle. So he does that and, you know, kind of reports back that it never moved.
[laughing]
The other great thing that they do that took me a couple times to figure out, but Annie you'll understand this right away, is if something interesting or surprising happens, the dog sets the household alert level to either light gray, medium gray, or dark gray, because dogs are colorblind. [Annie laughing] So I love that. The dog has a stuffed friend named Sebastian, who he takes everywhere and, you know, he likes to show it to all his humans and he sits and waits while Sebastian is in the washing machine.
Annie:
Aww. Who runs this account?
Rachel:
So I think this, I think it's a teenage boy runs this account from what I can tell. I think it's also the person who's behind WeRateDogs, I'm not positive, but you know, it's just one person, but again, it's, it's that consistent voice. It's really funny. It's just really endearing. And I think that matters.
Annie:
Is there anything on Facebook at the platform that you pay attention to dog wise?
Rachel:
No.
Annie:
No. [laughs] And what about Instagram?
Rachel:
So on Instagram…
Annie:
Do you have feelings about The Dogist?
Rachel:
I love his photos. I don't know him. We have met a couple of times. He photographed Lola once I think that…no, I don't really have any feelings about it. I think that the photography is great. I love that the dogs are varied. Like I've actually found out about a lot of breeds from the dog is just because, you know, he writes what the breed is and writes how old the dog is. I love seeing the names of the dogs in the city. Um, that's kind of my only thought on that.
Annie:
Any other, any other, uh, accounts that on Instagram that you think are we're worth mentioning?
Rachel:
I'm not going to shout out anybody else.
[laughter]
No. You know what I mean? Everyone has their own sort of feeling and flair and I've ended up gravitating towards the accounts who are, where I know that the adults and the humans and you know, where those people are important to me and their stories are funny. I really love dogs and kids. I think that's super cute. And so many of the accounts that I follow started, when we got Lola, when she was a puppy, and as I said, you know, a lot of the humans or the owners didn't have kids, but now over the years they have had kids. And just to watch that interaction is just so cute and sweet. And Frenchies especially seem just really funny with babies cause they're bigger than the babies at first. And, you know, they're, they're sort of like these little Tonka trucks who don't understand, you know, Lola loves toddlers and will just run over any toddler, I guess she just thinks it's a dog. So I love watching that just in general. That's super cute.
Annie:
And, uh, those who are some of Lola’s real life, best friends on Instagram.
Rachel:
So, um, Lola's best friend is named Phoebe. She is a maltipoo. So one of Lola's other things is that she really loves doodles or any sort of fluffy puppy, which is true in real life. In addition to her character on Instagram. So Phoebe lives down the hall. And the interesting thing about Phoebe is she lives down the hall, but on the floor below us, and Lola does not understand the physics of Phoebe living on the floor below us. So yesterday I went to Phoebe's house on the floor below us and we walked up the stairs and then Lola immediately goes to the end of the hallway where Phoebe lives not realizing that we have just walked up the stairs to another floor. And so every day after every walk out of the elevator, Lola turns the other way towards Phoebe's house and I have to pick her up and carry her. So that's her current best friend.
Annie:
So, is Phoebe now famous too, you think, in her own way?
Rachel:
Um, I try to showcase Phoebe as much as possible. I'm sure she'll be happy about this shout out.
Annie:
She’s like the Rhoda to her, to her Mary Tyler Moore.
Rachel:
And she's super cute, very fluffy, very sweet. Just kind of like a ragdoll. It's interesting to pick up dogs that are fluffy after holding Lola for all these years, because Lola is what you see is what you get. When she's soaking wet, she looks exactly the same as when she's dry. You know, she's got zero fluff, but then to pick up a fluffy dog and you know, you kind of feel their bones and they weigh five pounds or seven pounds and Lola's kind of a tank at 18 pounds, even though she's tiny for a Frenchie.
Annie:
And who else were you going to say?
Rachel:
Marlow is the name of Lola's other best Frenchy friend. He's also named after The Wire. Actually he is on Instagram. They're not very active. This is an example of somebody that we met on the street. Um, when Lola and Marlow were puppies, they just started playing on the street. And, you know, we kind of introduced ourselves to the owners and now, you know, they're a really close friends of ours, and this is Lola's sort of best playmate. They play together all the time. Really, really well. We sort of go over there whenever she needs legitimate exercise, you know, for 45 minutes or so. And then we've got lots of friends in the Frenchie community. So, um, if you guys want to look at #teamfruitloop.
Annie:
Oh, right. I remember that!
Rachel:
So fruit loops was another Lola thing. She likes purple and only liked the purple fruit loops. Obviously she never actually had any fruit loops, but, you know, that's all part of the magic. So, the first big party we hosted for all of Lola's friends, I actually went to Costco and bought a couple giant sized boxes of fruit loops and separated them. Um, so we had, we had a whole bowl for the humans of purple fruit loops. And then we had sort of the reject other colored fruit loops, but team fruit loop is the hashtag that we use as a community, just to sort of follow each other.
Annie:
Some people don't such sort of character driven Instagrams. Would you say that?
Rachel:
Yeah. I agree with you. I think that it's not a requirement at all. And I think that it is pretty rare and it does require a certain amount of dedication not to break the voice.
Annie:
Do you think there are certain kinds of dogs that do well? Are there like people who have really great photos, or they're just rare breeds or, or..?
Rachel:
So the most successful accounts that I follow, I would, I guess I would put it in three categories. The first category is rescues. Often pit bull accounts. There's a lot of Frenchie accounts that I follow too, but I think that those people have amazing stories to tell, and it's really important to follow accounts like that. And I, while it's hard sometimes to see those situations, it makes me feel like the internet is a good place, which is often hard to see in the world. But I mean, when I can give $5 or $10 or $25, or just, you know, follow the story of a person who dedicates their life in their home and their family to, you know, to saving dogs and not just dogs, we follow a couple of bunny rescues and, you know, all sorts of other things. So those accounts do really well. And I think there's, there's probably no voice there. It just changes from day to day and just tells the true story of that family or that person. So that's sort of category number one.
Category number two, I would say, is the amazing photographers out there. And I think there's probably a little bit of a different following for those people. I would imagine that they have dog lover or animal lover followers, plus photography followers. So those accounts to me, don't usually have a very consistent voice. I mean, they might, but it's about the photography and capturing amazing things. And then there's some gimmicky type of accounts that I think the dog might be super cute or, you know, the captions might be funny sometimes, but it's, you know, there's a dog that's always posing or a dog that's always eating or a dog that's always wearing clothes. A dog that is always wearing a bathrobe or laying in bed or doing memes, like things that are a little bit more pop culture-y and posed, and I think intended to gain engagement, which is completely fine.
And then there's sort of everybody in between. So I don't know. I think that we're pretty unique in what we're trying to do, which is really just keep the dog as if she is a person running an Instagram account, and this is what it is. And you know, what you see is what you get and it's a Lola. And so I try to answer DMs in Lola's voice and, you know, it's difficult sometimes to keep that voice when somebody asks me a logistics question or whatever I try to answer. And, you know…
Annie:
Do you have a background in any kind of creative writing? Did you do that in school?
Rachel:
So a little bit, I majored in advertising in college and have always been interested in writing and in, you know, kind of media in a broad sense. And I guess when I majored in advertising, social media barely existed, but that's sort of it. I've always been a good writer and enjoyed it, obviously, you know, writing in kind of 200 characters or whatever it was, usually in my car.
Annie:
And your, your day job is
Rachel:
My day job is in finance. I work at Morgan Stanley and, you know, I'm kind of in front of a computer, 12 hours a day, crunching numbers and doing financial strategy. So this is a good outlet. I always joke to my friends that I post photos on my bathroom break at work. I just kind of sit in the stall and post my photo of the day.
Annie:
Do you? [laughing]
Rachel:
I totally do.
Annie:
That's where the genius happens.
Rachel:
I’ll have friends ping me at nine 15 in the morning. “Hey, Lola just posted. What are you doing?”
Annie:
“Nothing, just in the bathroom…” [laughing]
Rachel:
Exactly.
Annie:
So tell me about opportunities that have come up because of Lola’s celebrity. Have there been any?
Rachel:
So people always ask about money and assume that we've made a lot of money off of her. So I'm going to leave that on the side for one second. And I'll first tell you about the opportunities socially, because I think that's been most important to me. We've met a lot of people in real life. And being in New York, I think obviously helps with that because so many of these other dogs with accounts are in New York. We've met so many people that are truly, you know, some of my best friends now. And that to me has been the most important exposure.
Annie:
And I see that, you know, running School for the Dogs, that the people who have Frenchies have a much, um, not closer bond, but
Rachel:
It’s a strong community.
Annie:
Yeah, there is this Frenchie community that's different than all the different breed communities. And I do see a lot of it seems like it stems from Instagram.
Rachel:
Yeah, it does. So I don't know what makes that Frenchie community stronger than other communities, but when my husband and I found when we first got Lola and first started meeting people, is there was this whole group of people that we never would have met otherwise. We didn't grow up in the same place. We didn't run in the same circles. We didn't work in the same industries, but we were all roughly the same age, you know, kind of mid to late twenties. We were half married, half, not most had not had kids yet and sort of got a dog, you know, first instead of having a kid. And it was just this group of likeminded people that we really came to like, and what I found is that through meetups and playdates, I started seeing these people a hell of a lot more than I saw, you know, my quote unquote actual friends. And so they become your community. And that's been the best thing about Instagram for me.
In terms of the opportunities with Lola, either to monetize or to gain exposure, I don't have a great success story. And I think it's probably by choice. There are tons and tons and tons of platforms out there that are interested in connecting influencers with brands. There are places where you can just automatically sign up and say, I'm a dog, or I'm 10 years old, or I'm 50 years old and I'm interested in fitness, or I'm interested in technology, and connect me with any brands. What we've found, and I understand that this is a very high class problem, is that I'm not interested in leaving work on a Wednesday at 1:00 PM to do a photo shoot and get a hundred dollars.
Annie:
Right.
Rachel:
It's just not convenient for me and for my husband and just for our lives. And honestly, hasn't been worth it. I feel like the animal community is so saturated with quote unquote influencers that brands do not have to try very hard to get any sort of collaboration. And we've just felt like it hasn't, it just hasn't been worth it. The exposure is not great. Most often, brands will pay you literally a hundred or $200 max for a post or they'll send you something, and they don't agree to post your photo back. So for me, it was almost free advertising for the brand, you know, whether it's a hundred dollars or not to them that, you know, call that a drop in the bucket. And it just didn't, it felt like I was compromising my content above anything else. And it just didn't feel good. I didn't really like it.
Annie:
I think what you're saying is like that the monetary part is not why you're doing it.
Rachel:
Right.
Annie:
And there's nothing wrong with that. There are different rewards.
Rachel:
Yeah, exactly. And I do think that, yeah, those hundred or $200 obviously add up over time and, you know, we are foregoing money by not really being that involved in that sponsorship community, but it just, it didn't work. It didn't work that well for me.
Annie:
Do you get approached by agencies?
Rachel:
We get approached by agencies very, very occasionally. What we do get approached most by is brands directly, most often smaller brands, tons of brands that, to be honest, seem like they're not real brands. Like, you know, it's a form letter, not maybe not real brands, but it's not a real outreach to an influencer that they care about. It's very clear they're just everybody. Uh, and very often it's not a dog related thing. You know, I'll get approached to sell wine or books or, you know, fine, but it's just, you know, they're very clearly–”I looked at your page and I loved your content” is the email again, you know, it's very clearly not directed towards Lola and those, those, I don't even respond to.
If anyone writes to me and it's very clear that they actually have looked through our feed, I will for sure at least respond to them and talk to them. And most often tell them, we're just not interested in partnerships. And I'm not completely uninterested. It just has to be right. And it has to be mutually beneficial or fun. The other thing is, you know, it has to be something that isn't torturing Lola. So, you know, often it's, you know, wearing something she doesn't want to wear or posing in something she doesn't want to do. And I just, you know, I'm not willing to do that.
Annie:
Um, have you thought about making a book?
Rachel:
A lot of people have asked me to make a book either just kind of, of the Instagram posts and, you know, sort of maybe collate them in a way that tells a story or to write a book. I would absolutely love to write a book. We've had a couple of friends that have done books. It seems to me like they've had varying levels of success. I think to your question earlier, if we were to do it, we'd have to really think about why we were doing it. And is it to get her out there? Is it to try to make money? Is it just for fun? It just seems like a lot of work to do it right. And you know, I would, I would want to do it right. We'd have to think about it if we wanted to do it illustrated or you know, how it would look. And I would just want to make sure that we didn't feel disappointed at the end that we spent a lot of time and didn't do it. But yeah, that would be so much fun. We, I talk a lot about what a book could be or what a story, because I make up stories for little all the time and all it takes, I think for a children's book is, you know, a three minute story.
Annie:
Yeah. I feel like that seems like it would be the right format because you have such a good mix of written content and photos. Tell me about what photos do well and how you take your photos. You don't take it on an iPhone?
Rachel:
So some of them are iPhone. I have an iPhone X or 10, whatever it's called, which I do take photos on. And then I have what I'll call a real camera. I'm sure an actual photographer would not call it a real camera. It's a Sony mirrorless camera. I am not a photographer. So almost every photo I take is on the automatic setting. And people ask me about this all the time. The thing I get asked most about is how I capture all those expressions and the dirty secret is that I keep my camera on the sports action setting, which is intended to capture really fast motion. And that is it. And then what I do honestly, is I post all the photos that everyone else would just throw away because it's a funny face or just a bad face. And those are the ones that I love.
Annie:
Like mid-bark or something.
Rachel:
Mid-bark or mid-chew or lips pursed about to yawn, about to sneeze, about to bark at me, you know, shaking her ears, turned around, whatever it is, I gravitate towards those photos because I think they're really funny. And they help me tell the stories that I want to tell just because it captures that expression. But you do need a camera in decent light with a fast snapshot thing, to be able to capture those and not have them be blurry. So I do take a lot of photos on the weekends since I’m at work all day and, you know, unless it's the summer, I don't have access to a lot of daylight. That's another thing that people ask me a lot is are the photos live? And no, they're not. I mean, I won't post a photo from six months ago and represent it as something that happened yesterday, but it might be from three weeks ago, it might be from yesterday and who cares? You know, it doesn't really matter. I'm not going to post a photo of Lola in the snow when it's in the summer and not kind of allude to the fact, but no, they're not, they're not live, they're not current.
Annie:
And what about stories versus your feed? Do you work as hard at each or not so much?
Rachel:
That's a good question. So stories are definitely the biggest opportunity for me to spend more time on if I kind of made the time or chose to make the time. I think that some of the people I follow not necessarily dog's accounts, but accounts that I followed just on my own feed very often either artists or interior designers have these really cool, curated stories where I pretty sure they use other apps to create, you know, backgrounds or borders and filters, and everything looks really good. I don't spend the time to do that. What I like to do in stories is actually keep it live and just whatever we're doing at that moment in time, it's almost always sitting on the floor in the living room, chewing on something or, you know, having a snack, but that's what I use stories for.
And I also use it as an opportunity to just not have polished photos. You know, I kind of don't care. And I think most people don't about the quality of stories, nearly as much as I do about the quality of posts. I do think it's really interesting that Lola's stories on average get, I think, five or 6,000 views and her posts also get, you know, about five or 6,000 likes, but certainly they reach a lot more people. So stories do have a good amount of reach. And I've said that to brands often when they've approached me and asked me to post, you know, a story or a, like a still post. And I've just said, you know, just by the way, I'm trying to be helpful, that I think stories actually do better and people do see them more. And we do get a lot of actions on our stories, whether it's people sharing them with others or, you know, responding, I don't do a lot of the polls or questions. I could do more of those things.
Annie:
Have you encountered any, any bumps, any people trolling you, any criticism from people, you know, or don't know?
Rachel:
That's a great question. I try very hard to avoid posting content that will get me trolled. And so no is the answer. I have very, very few experiences with people being mean, but that is because I try to be hyper aware of it. So, people like my parents disagree with this strategy, but I am incredibly secular, incredibly nonpolitical. I don't post a picture with Lola eating something that I know somebody is going to have a problem with. I just am not interested in dealing with that. And I don't have the type of personality that I would feel like I had to reply. I just don't care. You know, some people–the one, the one piece of content that occasionally people will say something to me is if I post videos of Lola's sleeping, which to me is the sweetest thing. And they say, “Oh my God, your dog snores so much, she can't breathe,” which I know is not true. And I have zero interest in speaking back to those people about that issue. But in general, I do try hard to keep it as non-controversial as possible. And that might be a controversy sort of in and of itself. I mean, I think especially around politics, you know, it's, it's hard sometimes because I know I have this voice and I have this platform that I could express my own personal views, but I've just chosen absolutely not to.
Annie:
Well, it's almost like, I mean, I'm, I'm not a 12 year old girl in your content totally appeals to me, but I almost feel like your audience is like a 12 year old girl. You know what I mean?
Rachel:
Yeah.
Annie:
Which is like, how can you, yeah. How can you disagree with something that a kid would just find delight in?
Rachel:
And that's what I try to do. I try to keep it always, always light, but you know, out of controversy and sort of out of politics.
Annie:
I think if you're putting something on social media, that's a wise thing to do. So you don't waste your time in the mud. Have you encountered people that, that you know, or your family who are like, why are you devoting your time to this?
Rachel:
That's interesting. I have, when I encounter someone who doesn't have any idea that people put their dogs on Instagram, it is very hard for them to understand what I do and what I'm talking about. And those people are fewer and further between, and they have been in the past, but certainly two or three years ago, I remember seeing a friend at a wedding who I kind of grew up with, but have lost touch with. And, you know, she asked me what I was doing. And I told her about Lola’s Instagram. She just did not comprehend what I was saying. That I had a dog on Instagram that had their own account. And it was just this completely foreign concept. But otherwise I think people do understand it.
try not to spend too much time on it, but, you know, you end up spending a decent amount of time. And I think it does take a lot of effort to maintain a following and to maintain a community. And that's the other thing I tell people and they asked me, you know, sort of how we do it or for advice. And I say you have to put in the time, you can't just post a cute photo and go away, you have to reciprocate, you have to comment on people's photos. And it has to be a real comment. If you're just copying and pasting some stupid comment over and over, that's not going to get you anywhere. It's, you know, it's kind of like real life. You just have to, you have to put in the effort to genuinely build relationships. And if you don't want to do it, that's fine, don't do it. But don't expect all of a sudden, you know, your dog to get 20,000 extra followers on Instagram, it's just not going to happen that way.
Annie:
So what what's next for you or for the account? Could you see going into some kind of social media thing full time or?
Rachel:
No, I don't think so. I like my job. I like finance. I like this as an outlet. I certainly couldn't pay the rent if I went into social media full time. I think, uh, I mean, maybe I could, but no, I think this is kind of it, we're just going to keep going. I think that Instagram has gotten increasingly more frustrating and I know that that's sort of the broad sentiment out there that it's, it's just more and more difficult. There's so much more ambiguity about the algorithm and about how to be successful. There's so many other accounts out there. It has lost its luster a little bit for me and for others.
So I do go through phases a little bit where, you know, I will feel like I don't want to post or I'll feel like I'll take a couple of days off, which I never used to do. In the early days I would post two or three times a day, every single day. It was the first thing I checked in the morning. But now, you know, I've noticed that on Saturdays, her posts don't do well. So I've just posted, stopped posting on Saturdays. And it's nothing to me it's not a big deal anymore. So, you know, I think it sort of ebbs and flows just, you know, as I evolve, but I don't have any broader goals than this. It's a lot of fun, you know, maybe if there's a new social media platform out there, we would experiment with it. But.
Annie:
It would be funny if you created an entirely new character around her. Well I say that because like, I think that so much of every dog is what we project on the dog, you know? And like the dog I see when I look at my dog is not necessarily the dog you see. And I have some clients who I can, I see they see their dog–one in particular, I'm thinking of a client who sees her dog as like really prissy and entitled. And I imagine her dog has sort of a more, I don't know, like rough and tumble kind of anything goes dog. And you know, you can't say that one of us is right and one of us is wrong [laughs]. It's just our different perceptions. And it always reminds me of, of really people too, you know? Like no two people see the same person in the same way. What were you saying?
Rachel:
I was saying that I think that so much of your success in your job is in helping dog owners not anthropomorphize and then actually understand the behavior of their dogs cause they’re dogs and that's important too. And sometimes I do try to take a step back and say, okay, she's whining. It was cute for a second. I got a video, but is she okay? Is there something wrong? Is she just demanding attention? Or actually, is there something wrong?
Annie:
Well, frankly, I think, you know, what you're doing, doesn't bother me at all in that way, because it's like such a ridiculous, extreme. [laughs]
Rachel:
Yeah.
Annie:
It's more frustrating to me when, when I say more as if it's not for what you're doing, doesn't frustrate me even in the tiniest bit. But I do sometimes get frustrated when I see people making interpretations about their dog's behavior, rather than looking at like what the dog is actually doing.
Rachel:
Right.
Annie:
Right? Like, you know, the typical one is like, “he's being stubborn.” Well, what's the evidence of what he's actually doing rather than, you know, and what does stubborn really mean? Stubborn means like, “what I want is more interesting to me than whatever you want from me.” Or, you know, “he's annoyed.” Well, how do you know he he's annoyed? But, you know, I think taking it to the sort of comical extreme is like a whole other thing.
Rachel:
Right. And I do think that we try to make it clear, not explicitly clear, but it should be obvious to any follower of Lola's account that she is very well taken care of. Very well understood.
Annie:
Oh yeah.
Rachel:
You know, so, I mean, there shouldn't be a question that, you know, she's ever unhappy or being, you know, made to be upset by anything that we're doing. We're just trying to capture the regular daily antics.
Annie:
You're doing a great job.
Rachel:
Thank you.
Annie:
Thanks so much for talking to me about her.
Rachel:
Thank you for having me.
Annie:
I hope some people listen to this maybe who don't know about her and discover the wonder that is Lola Barksdale.
Rachel:
Yes! @lolabarksdale! No spaces, no dots. Oh, I have one last tip for people–when you're creating your Instagram handle, make it easy to spell. If you've got an underscore or a dash or an i or an a, in a weird place, you should be able to say it to someone and they should be able to remember it and type it into their phone without having to do spaces, dots or dashes.
Annie:
What's interesting too is you can't have capital letters in it. And sometimes if you don't have a capital letter and you don't have a underscore or a dot, it can sort–
Rachel:
It all looks like one word.
Annie:
It looks like one word in a funny way. So that's another, that's a good tip about making it easy to spell and remember. Great. Well, I think there's some really great tips here.
Rachel:
Thank you.
Annie:
Thank you. Rachel! Give a kiss to Lola for me.
Rachel:
I will.
Annie:
Our Woof Shout Out this week goes to Suki. If you've been listening to this podcast for any amount of time, you might've heard me mention Suki before. She is a sweet French bulldog, also cream colored, who's been fostered by two of our clients, Michelle and Sahu, who are owners of Bucky, the Frenchie, for over a year, they've been trying to find her the perfect home. And it seems like they maybe just found her the right place. I'm gonna read this from Bucky’s Foster Crew, the Instagram account, where they have chronicled their experience, fostering sweet Suki. They wrote, this was two days ago. They wrote:
“The day has come where our sweet, misunderstood Suki has found her forever family. Today Suki is officially adopted. It's been a long road over a year and we would sincerely like to thank everyone for their support. It's never an easy day for us. Adoption day has always filled with happiness, anxiety and sadness, but we know it's the right home for Suki. She will be in a home with a fenced in backyard and have someone home with her most days of the week. She won't have to deal with any of the triggers that fill her with anxiety and dread the triggers that lead her to lash out and nip at what makes her uncomfortable. She will get to be a regular dog who can sit atop acouch, staring out the window barking at any squirrels who dare come to close to her front lawn. We are thrilled for her. She has an enormous amount of love to give, and she has finally found a family to give it to. Congrats Suki. We love you.”
Isn't that sweet? I'm so I'm so hopeful that things are going to work out for Suki in her new home. You can go to the hashtag Suki is adopted, that's S U K I is adopted, to see some posts about her in her new home. And big, big thumbs up to Sahu and Michelle for just being such incredible foster parents. And now they're going to be able to open up their home to a new dog. Although I wonder if maybe they need a rest after having had this particular foster dog for so long and given her so much love and attention.
And our fun dog fact of the day. Up until the late 1800s, French Bulldogs actually had two kinds of ears. They had, some of them had the kind of bat ears that we know and love today, but many of them had what's called Rose shaped ears, which are kind of like crinkly ears that fold backwards so that you can sort of see part of the inner ear. And the Rose shaped ear was the more common ear I believe in Europe. But Americans did not like it. American breeders insisted that the standing up bat ears were the only kind of ears a French bulldog should have. And this led to American breeders actually protesting that the famous Westminster dog show was allowing these Rose eared French Bulldogs in their show. So the American breeders started their own show and their own clubs, a French bulldog club of America. They had their first show in 1898 at the Waldorf Astoria, and ever since then, at least in America, French Bulldogs have had upright ears
*music*
Special thanks to Alix Kriss for producing this podcast, and to JazzBanjoRex, who can be found on YouTube for his version of the Gershwins song on the ukulele, “Play a simple melody.”
Thanks so much for listening. You can support school for the dogs podcast by telling your friends about it, leaving a review or shopping in our online store. You can learn more about us and sign up to get lots of free training and resources when you visit us online at schoolforthedogs.com.
Links:
@lolabarksdale – Lola on Instagram
#teamfruitloop
French Bulldog Club Of America
Other dogs on social media:
Walter Cronite – @thedailywalter
Dog_feelings on Twitter
WeRateDogs
The Dogist – @thedogist
@buckysfostercrew
#sukiisadopted
