Social Media Spotlight - Dan Thorne
Name: Dan Thorne
Job Title: Senior Social Media Manager, Guinness World Records
Experience: I started off my career working in magazine publishing for five years, then in radio but my first proper media job in London was working for The Hospital Club in Covent Garden (a members club and events venue for media and creative folk), which started as a marketing position and evolved into social media and editorial. This was around 2009 when Twitter was starting to gain traction and representing a brand on social media was beginning to look like something you could actually do for a job! I then went on to work in social media for TNT Magazine which was all about youth travel and London's entertainment scene. After that, an opportunity at Guinness World Records came up, which I felt was a golden opportunity as far as social media was concerned.
How many years experience do you have: 18 years
What do you love most about social media: I love that instant connection and seeing something take off and gain traction, the great surprises when you post something you're not sure will work, and the constant opportunity to learn about what your audience with engage with. I like being able to share positive stories about amazing achievements and spreading good news. It's important in my job to be able to share a sense of wonder about the world.
Favourite social media platform: At the moment it's TikTok. I enjoy the sense of fun, the surprises and innovations you get to see from creators. It's also got a largely positive audience who share that sense of excitement.
Top tip: Always be prepared to adapt as algorithms shift, learn from your audience and give them more of what they like. Don't be afraid of trying something new and seeing how it works out. Don't put all your eggs in one basket, diversify across platforms and don't forget to customise your video for each channel's requirements. And if something's really not working, even if it's a campaign you've been planning for months, drop it and try something else.
What does your day to day work consist of?: Content planning meetings, checking on new user-generated footage that's just come in from record attempts, checking in with my colleagues in our regional offices, requesting and approving video edits, checking on reactions to our stories everywhere from Tweetdeck to Reddit. Sometimes I even get to present live broadcasts with our records holders who come into the office, from the Harlem Globetrotters to Jyoti Amge, the world's shortest woman. And I often find myself flicking through the many editions of our books from over the years for inspiration.
What challenges do you face within your role?: Momentum is such an important factor in keeping our many channels lively, so having a constant flow of interesting stories to share is a little overwhelming. Fortunately, we have around 50,000 record titles, so there's an enormous amount of opportunity. Deciding the strongest options can be challenging and some of our followers have quite a rigid idea of what makes something record-worthy and aren't afraid to let us know!
Are there any social media tools you use to make your job easier?: I tend to find the basics serve us pretty well, Tweetdeck, Crowdtangle, Facebook's Creator Studio.
As there are so many changes to social media, how do you keep up to date with the latest information?: I can recommend Matt Navarra's Facebook group 'The Social Media Geek Out'. Plus Twitter, which seems to have improved a lot in the last couple of years in terms of user experience, arranging all the interesting stuff into your feed to help users to negotiate the overwhelming noise.
For someone looking to get into a social media role, where would you advise them to start?: Practice writing lots. Getting your copy succinct and snappy in terms of tone, phrasing, alliteration etc. is really important. Read a lot, look at the top performers by checking Social Blade and Newswhip, for example, and see how the biggest social channels encourage engagement and maintain their dominance.
What's been your best social media success story to date (Can be your own or client) and why?: Getting our Facebook page to the stage that we were able to work in collaboration with Facebook for a year of live broadcasting with our record holders. And the highlight of that was the broadcast that we did with NASA - an interview with record-breaking astronaut Peggy Whitson live from the International Space Station.
What has been your favourite social media campaign (Big or Small) this year so far and why?: I was impressed by a lot of the campaigns I saw around the general election here in the UK, politicians on all sides now fully understand the importance of getting things right on social and hiring people that really know their onions.
Finally, what would you like the future of social media to be?: I'd like to return to the more innocent days of excitement around communication, sharing ideas and positivity. Less snark, us and them opinions and one-upmanship. I'd like to see more leadership towards this from the owners of social media platforms.
Want to connect with Dan Thorne?
www.facebook.com/GuinnessWorldRecords
www.instagram.com/guinnessworldrecords
www.youtube.com/guinnessworldrecords
tiktok.com/@guinnessworldrecords
And subscribe to GWR's channel on Snapchat Discover!
