What if your social media strategy did not just attract customers, but made your own employees proud to work for you?
That is the question Patricia Fernandes has been answering at Mercedes-Benz.io, and she is bringing the lessons to Social Media Fest 2026 in London this May.
Patricia is Social Media Specialist at Mercedes-Benz.io, the digital subsidiary of Mercedes-Benz focused on their technology and digital solutions. She did not take a straight line to get there. She started as a social media intern at a large agency in Portugal, spent three years building her craft, moved through two more agency roles, and eventually landed her current position ten years into a career she describes as organic and steady, moving from hands-on execution to a more balanced mix of strategy and content creation.
Her session, How to Get Teams Across the Business Confident Posting and Supporting Social Media, tackles something most social media managers know is hard but rarely talk about publicly: getting the rest of the organisation genuinely on board.
The proof point is a project she has been leading called Meet the MB.ioneer. It began as a response to the challenge of giving more visibility to the company's culture and its people. Over time it evolved into something much more significant, becoming an identity project where employees actively wanted to be part of it because they recognised themselves in the stories being shared. One of the most powerful moments came when a candidate shared during her interview that she had only applied after seeing women in tech featured in the series and feeling represented. That is the kind of impact Patricia wants to help other social media professionals create.
Her session will show how social media can build trust internally as well as externally, how employer branding strengthens when employees genuinely see themselves in the content, and how to move authenticity from buzzword to actual strategy.
When it comes to what has excited her most in social media recently, Patricia points to the social media coverage of NASA's Artemis mission. The way people around the world came together to follow four astronauts on a journey no humans had made before, with social media carrying the diversity, courage, and human story of that mission, showed her exactly what the medium is capable of at its best.
Looking at the landscape ahead, she sees authenticity, fragmented attention, and shifting consumption habits as the central challenges. Her perspective is that social media is no longer simply about publishing content. It is about understanding how audiences consume it, engage with it, and identify with it. In a saturated environment, people are more selective and expect communication that feels relevant, credible, and human. Brands will need to move beyond visibility and focus on meaningful connection.
For the future, she wants to see social media become a more empathetic and representative space, one that gives real room for experimentation, creativity, and risk-taking. Because the most meaningful content often comes from trying something new rather than following a rigid formula.
What to expect from her session: Practical approaches to employee advocacy, frameworks for content that creates belonging rather than just visibility, and a case study in what genuine representation on social media can achieve.
"Focus on relevance and authenticity over volume. It is better to create content that genuinely connects with people than to simply post for the sake of being present."
Want to hear more from Patricia? Join us at Social Media Fest, London. 19 and 20 May. Get your tickets at socialday.co.uk