There’s a specific kind of heartbreak only social media managers know – watching a carefully built strategy get bodied by someone insisting the TV ad “will work fine on Reels”
What happens when as a social media manager (SMM), you’re forced by your superiors to post content that in no-way is ‘social-first’? That TV ad, they’ve just cropped to 9:16 (if you’re lucky)? Those OOH billboard posters they want shared on your IG grid? I just threw up in my mouth a little bit at the thought, but we’ve all been there.
Let’s not pretend the person behind the social account doesn’t know what’s right for the channels. More often than not they really do, but life isn’t like the SMM LinkedIn posts suggest. Sometimes you’re not at a social-first organisation and just have NO CHOICE. You might even be a team of one.
I love a social media or marketing event as much as the next social strategist, but one thing that gets on my tits, is speakers acting as if all Social Media Managers actually have the option of dictating what goes out on the channels. And don’t get me started on those “If I did social for X brand, here’s what I would do…” videos on TikTok.
No, no you wouldn’t do that, because you’d get there and realise your hands were tied!
I look back at the earlier stages of my career and remember countless times when I’ve given the advice, taken stakeholders ‘on the journey’ of the strategy, best practice and what the performance data has told us, only to be met with nodding and agreement, then 2 weeks later, BAM! here come the JFDIs (Just f* do it).
We all love to judge the social output of brands, which ones are killing it, which ones are terrible, and which ones are showing potential, but let’s give the people behind the brand social accounts some grace.
Judge the output if you like. Just spare a thought for who had to press publish.
