How to Work in Social Media, Without Hating Social Media

Welcome back to our Firecracker Marketing blog! Woohoo, first blog of 2022! #newyearnewblog

This year, our blog is going to feature rotating posts from all of our team members on a variety of subjects, because variety is the spice of life, y’all. Kicking it off is our Account Supervisor, Tricia Higbee. Give her thoughts a read (below!) and follow her at @trishhigbee.

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There’s no escaping social media these days. Your parents love Facebook for keeping up with family members. Your 15-year-old sister has micro-brand deals on Instagram. One of our Presidents had, like, a personal vendetta against TikTok – remember that? Whichever way you sway, chances are social media impacts your life, good and bad.

As a millennial, my love for social media started on Myspace, strategizing a well-balanced Top 8 and selecting the perfect profile song (Blink-182 “Always”). From there, I quickly fell in love with sharing my snarky opinions on Twitter, which then led to oversharing online via 200-image photo albums on Facebook, and finally landed on finding an artistic eye within Instagram. Looking back, it’s no surprise I ended up working in the digital space. But how do you take a personal passion and translate it to a professional career path without losing the love? How does one take such a polarizing industry and find balance?

I’m happy you asked!

Believe in Your Brands

I’m a firm believer that you should never work with someone or something you don’t believe in. Whether the lack of belief stems from something as serious as a difference in moral standards, or as simple as you couldn’t care less about sports, if you’re not feeling a spark from the start, much like a romantic relationship, don’t waste your time trying to make it happen. The idea of new clients should excite you, so much so that they make all the hard work you’re about to put in not only “worth it”, but an actual source of fulfillment. Of course, we always want to show up and perform for our clients and the success of their brands, but you’ve gotta feel a sense of skin in the game to perform your best.

Realistically, having the option to curate a client list this way is a luxury, and of course, money must be made, but I’ve learned if you lean in close enough, there’s a lot to love about most brands, even if it’s not necessarily the brand itself. Find a compartment, a personality, or a bigger picture pay-off within each client and let that lead you.   

Set Realistic Boundaries

Social media is constant. Constantly going, constantly on, constantly accessible (except for when it all crashes (lol @ Meta). Not many other industries operate that way. Like, if you work in a warehouse, you have to be inside said warehouse with boxes and tape and packing peanuts to perform the functions of your job. With social media, there’s an unspoken expectation of the people who work within it to operate much like the platforms themselves—always going, always on, constantly accessible. And to that expectation, I politely say… hell no.

 Establishing offline/online hours, putting a cap on feedback/editing rounds and taking mandatory time off are just a few of the ways to ensure your boundaries are respected and your personal life isn’t taking a significant hit. Emergencies are emergencies and should be treated as such. Everything else can wait until Monday.  

Build a Strong Support Team

“Teamwork makes the dream work” – Our queen, Rihanna   

Never have truer words been spoken. But really, social media is a dark, scary place to navigate on your own. Having a strong team surrounding you makes maintaining that balance a much easier process to manage. Something I noticed immediately when I joined the Firecracker team was the sense of support. A group of like-minded ladies, who have worked in all sorts of industries, decided to come together under the agreement that we’d get a lot of hard work done, but we’d also have fun while doing it. And sometimes, I think it’s easy to assume “fun” means clocking out early, drinking wine and taking advantage of client perks (which sometimes it does!). But really, fun in a healthy workplace means you have someone to lean on when you’re burnt out—having someone to gut-check your work and care enough about a half-baked idea you have because they genuinely want to see you succeed within your role. Get you a team like that. Or better yet, create the team yourself.

Why So Serious?

This one goes for EVERYONE. Even if you don’t work in social media and you’re just looking for ways to enjoy your scrolling without it turning you into a comparison-making, joy-sucking ball of anxiety. I want us all to collectively agree that we’re going to stop letting things with names like Facebook (it’s a digital high school yearbook and guess what I never held onto: my stupid yearbooks), Instagram (Insta roots from the Latin word Instare, and guess what? Latin is a dead language) and TikTok (TikTok goes the clock on how long this app can sustain; eventually people are going to get embarrassed dancing like that – it simply cannot last forever) dictate our happiness and mental health. I’m a Scorpio, so forgive me while I get a little blunt, but at the end of the day, these apps don’t matter. If they were to disappear tomorrow, brands would find other ways to advertise and spend their marketing dollars. Influencers will become normies. I’ll lose my job; life will go on.

But really…from someone who gets paid to take this seriously, we’ve got to learn when not to. A major digital advertising push for a client about to launch in a new market? Take seriously. Deleting a picture you really liked and associated a happy memory with because it didn’t get as many likes as you wanted? Nah. Unfollow that person who makes you feel sad, put the screen down when your brain feels fried, and remember, real-life will look messier and be more complicated than what you see behind the screen, but that’s the most beautiful part about real life. It’s real. *insert single tear here*

Stay tuned for more insights from the rest of the Firecracker team (who are not all Scorpios; yay, different voices!) on our monthly blog posts and give us a follow at @firecrackermarketing.

Signing off,

Tricia Higbee, Account Supervisor