Freelance Social Media Manager | Female | 26
26 year old Freelance Social Media Manager reluctant to do the one thing to scale her company: trusting people
Disclaimer: For brevity and ease of read, some answers have been edited.
Snapshot
Job Title: Freelance Social Media Manager
Industry, or desired industry if unemployed: Advertising/Marketing
Time in workforce: 0-5 years
Age: 26
Company type, by FTE size: 0-50
Total compensation: ~6k/month
Location: Florida
Sex: F
Degree: BA Digital Design, minor in Marketing
Satisfaction with current role (1-5): 4
Satisfaction with overall career (1-5): 3
Exploring Career
What are your main responsibilities in your current role? Please list specific tasks in your day-to-day that you feel encompass the duty of your role.
I manage about 4 accounts at a time (up to 2 platforms each), I don't like to take on more because to run social media well you need to be able to give your attention to each clients profiles so if I don't have meetings with clients to brainstorm ideas or share updates, I'm usually checking on their pages, updating metrics to track progress, keeping up with social media trends, etc. If it's the beginning or end of the month, I'm usually strategizing the content for the month to come. It's all freelance so I have a lot of extra time in my day.
What about your job do you enjoy the most? What could be improved about your job situation?
I enjoy the creative aspect of social media, but not the tactical aspect. I think social media is very repetitive and it gets exhausting to keep up with as a whole. In my particular role, I appreciate the flexibility I have because it's my own freelance brand, but at the same time it gets hard to be a one woman show. In my ideal job situation, I would just manage clients, strategize, and then delegate the actual work -- creation (to an extent, I like designing things), management, scheduling, monitoring -- to other people.
How much of required capabilities and skillsets in your role are coming from a formal education (your degree), certification, or apprenticeship (experience)?
I think the capabilities and skillsets in my role are pretty evenly split among the three. My copywriting skills definitely came from my degree, while most, if not all, of my social media knowledge came from online certifications. The confidence and ability to run accounts on my own came from hands-on experience doing it for a company in the past. I would say my creativity is innate but has also been developed over time through those three avenues, plus just observing and interacting with the social media world.
What made you pick this career -- did you have a specific career goal growing up, or did your career path develop over time?
I think it sort of just happened. For context, I've always loved story telling and videography. My first job out of college (6 months post-pandemic) at a production agency that was still advertising through traditional media. My boss was from the television generation, and I was from the social media generation. When things got slow for TV spots, I suggested moving to social media. After pitching the idea a couple of times, he finally agreed and let me take over the responsibility. I learned by doing and immediately saw the return on investment for my company from something as simple as a LinkedIn post. We acquired a couple of new clients from these efforts, and I loved it all—the feeling of measuring my direct impact, the ability to get creative, the organization required to produce and push content—everything. After a couple of months, I felt like I completed my duty at the company and decided to part ways with it (in a positive way) and pursue my own social media 'agency'.
Please describe how you got your job and what the process was like.
I got the job that led me to be freelance through a really amazing recruiting agency. It was pretty simple: I spoke with a rep, she got to know me, she advised me to make a portfolio, and she polished my resume. She then just kept me in the loop with any available jobs. This was one of the first remote (this was important for me, though most if not all jobs were remote at this time) jobs that caught my attention because it was video production (which I love). Through the recruiting agency, I landed an interview with my then boss. The agency coached me through the interview process and gave me suggested questions which I appreciated. I got the job but it was contract-to-hire so I was still technically an employee of the agency. 6 months later I had the option to try out another company or stay with that one, if the boss wanted me to, and he did, so I stayed. Once I parted, I acquired clients by just finding businesses who lacked a social media presence but could benefit from one and reached out, offered one month free, if they liked my work, they hired me.
How long have you been working at your current company? Are you considering leaving? If yes, could you briefly share the main reason driving this decision?
I've been doing freelance for about 2 years now. I am considering working at a company again because I want the benefits and I feel a little burnt out running this by myself. If I could scale the company maybe I would continue doing it, but I don't trust anyone to deliver the quality of work I do so I don't know if I ever will move it beyond this point.
How well does your career progression match your vision or plan so far? Consider aspects like your timeline to promotion, compensation, and overall fulfillment.
I actually have no idea what I want for my future self career-wise. I think I want to say I run my own company and I would love to be a successful entrepreneur but I don't have the desire (maybe guts) to do what it takes, if that makes sense? I feel a little lost with what I want in my life. I know I want to be well-off and have time to travel but aside from that I have no idea. I get burnt out too often for this to be my whole life without help.
Getting Deeper
Share a career-related question you are currently or have struggled with. Make sure to give context!
How do you build a team of people you trust? I run my freelance social media company and would love to turn it into a full business, but right now it's just me. I handle the clients, strategy, curation, scheduling, managing, measuring—everything. My problem is I don't trust people not to screw up.I'm very detail-oriented and I don't half-ass anything. I don't trust that people will work up to my standards, and God forbid I lose a client or have a relationship tainted because I trusted someone to deliver good work. How do you build a team who cares as much as you do and then how do you trust them to deliver?
If you could start all over again, would you pick this career? If not, what else would you choose?
I would, but I would take a slightly different path. I would've started a lot sooner and I woud've gone the route of building a brand for myself as a social media specialist. Social media is constantly evolving and once I entered the game, the influencers in this space (social media management, brand specialist, content specialist, etc.)were already well established and it's a very saturated niche. I would've started TikTok as SOON as it came out.