You can do it! I s2g! (You just don't know what you don't know...)
"it" being a job in social media, community managing, etc (also Halloween being gay AF, also an upcoming project called "You DON'T Meet in a Tavern")
Top 3 Hot Topics Today:
Break it Down and Reframe it
Halloween is so GAY
You DON’T Meet in a Tavern
Break it Down and Reframe it
I got to sit in on a webinar this past week put on by Sprout Social called “The Social Dream Team of the Future” and got to hear about 3 industry professionals talk about their past work, where they’re at presently (and their team composition), as well as what they think about where Social Media jobs are going in the future.
A takeaway that made me feel less imposter-y/self doubt-y is that Greg, Rachel, and Gerard (the three presenters) have worked as a team of 1, running all of the socials, to a team of 4, to a team of 13. It’s interesting to see how different companies have their social teams structured. They talked about some of the differences between being channel-specific vs omnichannel (meaning that they have teams that can focus on growth on a singular channel i.e. Instagram or TikTok, vs. managing all the channels and coming up with strategies across the board).
Let’s get into the meat and potatoes of today: I want to break down and reframe some of the skills and experience you might already have so you can keep putting them into action, maybe a bit more intentionally, as you’re honing these untapped skills and potentially looking for work in this field.
Even in the graphic above, you can see that there is a Director level (a people leader) that oversees 3 potential positions you could acquire that you may not even know about. I won’t lament the fact that sometimes, in smaller companies, you’ll have to do the job of all 3 (and more) but let’s assume that you’re applying for a job that has the positions open. Let’s talk about these 3 positions in Social Media:
Social Media Strategist - Awareness Optimization
Break it Down: Have you… Created short-form videos for Reels/YouTube Shorts? Done long-form reviews of games? Made memes/have a good pulse of adapting memes to a niche? Wrote some viral tweets? Have proven that you can build and curate a large following? Do you quote vines/think about hilarious ways you can use sounds on TikTok?
NICE - you’re probably ahead of the pack already!
Reframe it: You have graphic design and editing skills with both digital and video content. You have creative copywriting and copy-editing experience. You and your content have been a proven touchpoint across micro-communities as well as pop culture. You have a strong connection and understanding of viral moments and trending media.
See? Sounds so professional right? You’re already rockin’ it.
Social Media Strategist - Engagement Optimization
Break it Down: Have you… moderated and grown a discord community? Are you active in communities like Reddit or forums? Do you know how to keep communities engaged and safe? Have you built trust in your audience? Maybe you’ve run a Kickstarter campaign or charity stream?
AWW YES - you’ve got engagement experience!
Reframe it: You’ve cultivated strong and loyal communities across platforms like Discord and Reddit. You have experience in writing Codes of Conduct to foster trust and safety. You have successfully led and facilitated crowdfunding and charity events. You’ve managed and understood the lifecycle of community members and the funnels needed to maintain each step.
Boom! Just a couple of buzzwords and jargon and you’re well on your way, aren’t ya?
Sr. Social Media Analyst
Break it Down: Have you… found optimal times to post to get the most replies or likes on your content? Have you looked into your following, audience, and community’s general breakdown? Have you had to pull and track your follower count or impressions? Do you like to look at numbers and cause and effect? Maybe you look up trending words and hashtags for your posts?
Then this might be a position for you! (and I won’t judge you for your love of
MATH. lol jk)
Reframe it: You have analyzed and reported on demographics to help inform social strategy. You have a strong understanding and know the best practices for scheduling across platforms. You’re organized and data-focused. You’ve adapted, communicated, and changed tactics with agility to help optimize engagement and impressions. You’ve used SEO to strategize long-term campaigns.
Didn’t think you did all that did ya? Well, you DID! And you DO!
This was a fun exercise for me to try and reduce the anxieties of looking at job postings and “required skills and experiences” for y’all. It’s a great first step to see what you have a lot of experience in and maybe what you don’t, so you can start trying out things on your platform or in your communities. The hope is that you can start bolstering your skills in case you do get a chance to apply and interview for a social media job opening.
A lot of people have skills and experience in social media that traditional marketers do not have (or are not interested in) and in a growing field like this, we can try and lean into our strengths through our personal social media platforms, our usage of it, and the communities we’ve built. Hopefully, this was helpful and encourages you to keep on learning about what you like and gives you a little more confidence in applying for jobs!
Halloween is so GAY!
This past Halloween (and the past few years, too, now that I think about it…) I got to spend it in a very queer space with my best friend (and this is the second year in a row I entered a costume contest as well). Each time, I got to go support queer entertainers, drag artists, dancers, and singers, and was surrounded by the LGBTQ+ community.
For me, when I think of Halloween and costumes and horror movies (and horror as a genre in general), I always feel like it’s an inherently queer thing. Not necessarily always “queer” in the sense of LGBTQ+ (although there are lots of allegories and allusions), but “queer” in the weird, the strange, the off-kilter. In horror movies, the villain usually has a reason they’re the villain like they were bullied or ostracized from their community because of how they look or act. When we dress up in costumes and drag, we permit ourselves to break down the day-to-day pedantry of performing our professional selves or a specific gender, and sometimes it takes a holiday like Halloween to help facilitate this.
So when you get this good energy of folks surrounding you, in costumes, knowing that they’re both “queer” as in weirdos, but also “queer” as in LGBTQ+, there’s a very strong sense of community. There is joy in the air. There’s a feeling of abandonment of the “perfect” and the excitement of the abnormal. We all fight our own battles, we all might mask in our own ways to protect ourselves, but for a weekend or a night, we can flaunt our costumes and dance and be strange and dressed up however we want to express ourselves. It’s a beautiful thing to witness and be a part of. And that’s the reason I love Halloween, and horror, and the spooky-ooky. It’s scary somtimes, but we persevere, and it’s weird, and it feels comfortable and it feels right. <3
And to break up the mushy-gushy sentiment, here’s a video of me losing this year’s costume contest to The Princess and the Pauper:
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You DON’T Meet in a Tavern
The last part of this edition is a shout-out and plug to the project called “You DON’T Meet in a Tavern”, a book that will be crowdfunded on Gamefound that will go live November 14th (but you can follow now to support Violet Daisy Games and the campaign as a whole!). Violet Daisy Games is an indie board game and tabletop RPG publisher, owned and operated by my friend AnnaMaria Phelps! Please check out and support small and indie publishers. They’re the backbone of our gaming community.
I was graciously asked by AnnaMaria to write a scenario for this project and I couldn’t have been more excited to work with her! I can’t wait y’all to be able to read it and play it (and just a little preview: it may or may not be set in a haunted dollhouse… say whaaaaat? lol). Here’s a little bit more about You DON’T Meet in a Tavern, pulling from the description from the project page:
You have a great idea for a role playing game campaign filled with twists, challenges, and oodles of action. But where do your player characters meet? We've all met in a tavern - so many times that we sometimes imagine many of these taverns are filled with nothing but adventuring parties meeting for the first time.
But there are so many more interesting ways to meet! You DON'T Meet in a Tavern contains dozens of system agnostic scenarios for meeting anywhere BUT the tavern. From spring festivals and mistaken identities to dark magic item shops and shipwrecks, this guide will help you start out the adventure with atmosphere and adventure.
That’s it for this edition of Digital Thiccness! Thank you to everyone who has subscribed and helped me spread the word. This community has always been so supportive of my weirdo-queerdo self and this is my attempt to give back and share what I’ve learned over the years (and hopefully share a smile and a laugh from me to you!).
If you made it this far, feel free to let me know what you want to see more of, if any of the advice I’ve given has given you any insight into an industry you may or may not have been familiar with, or even things like if you celebrated Halloween, your favorite candy, etc. I’d love to hear from ya!
Stay strong. Stay thicc. *Big hug*