Features & insight
Features and insight
Expert analysis, reporting and long reads on the platforms, people and strategies shaping social media.
Social Media Marketing Awards 2026: Categories, How to Enter and Key Dates
The UK and Europe's free-to-enter social media marketing awards return on 8 October 2026, on a boat that sails through Tower Bridge. Here are all the categories, who can enter, and how to get your work in before the 11 July deadline.
TikTok's Symphony Agent lands at Cannes: what social ad teams need to decide right now
TikTok has announced Symphony Agent at Cannes Lions 2026: an AI tool that builds TikTok ads alongside advertisers through a chat-led process, turns prompts into video, matches creators to campaigns, and sits across three of the platform's core ad products. It's TikTok's most ambitious attempt yet to fold AI into the whole campaign pipeline, and it forces a real question for every ad team: how much of the creative process do you hand over?
Social Media Industry News Roundup - 22 June
This week in social media industry news: LinkedIn shares new B2B marketing guidance, Instagram expands personalised recommendation controls into the main feed, Pinterest adds Amazon storefront linking, YouTube broadens in-app messaging, Edits rolls out expanded analytics and AI restyle tools, and the UK considers stronger restrictions on teen social media access. Here's what social media marketers need to know.
Cannes Lions 2026: the sessions to see if you work in social media marketing
Cannes Lions runs 22-26 June 2026 with 150+ hours of content and around 500 speakers. If your job touches social, content, community or the creator economy, these are the talks, stages and beach takeovers worth your time.
The Social Media Career Ladder: Why There's No Clear Path, and What Actually Gets You Promoted
Most social media professionals can't see the next rung. Here is what the people climbing the ladder told us about progression, pay, the skills that actually move you up, and AI. Early findings from The Sauce's Social Media Career Ladder survey.
The Social Media Role Is Evolving. Inside a Global B2B Organisation, Here's What It Actually Looks Like.
How social media roles are evolving inside large B2B organisations, from the conductor model to social-first video, based on an interview with AXA XL's Head of External Communications.
Social Media Industry News Roundup - 15 June
This week in social media industry news: Instagram rolls out profile grid rearranging, LinkedIn expands post analytics, Instagram opens Reels post view ads to all advertisers, Meta moves towards deeper off-site personalisation, Snapchat shares new video ad insights, and TikTok announces Community Fest 2026. Here's what social media marketers need to know.
Why the Algorithm Is Making Your Brand Forgettable, and What to Do About It
Tommy co-founder Marcus Foley took the Social Media Fest stage with a question that stings: how much of what you made last week does anyone actually remember? Here is his Anti-Algorithm Formula.
SocialDay Social Media Fest 2026: The Industry Has Grown Up
What Just Happened? The social media marketing industry gathered in Shoreditch on 19 - 20 May, and the two days that followed produced something rare: a sustained, honest conversation about what this work actually is now
How to get your team to start creating content on LinkedIn (without forcing them)
Employee-generated content helps you activate your team's voices and network to support your brand, but how does it practically work? Where do you even start? Here are some tips to consider.
Pinterest wants you to close the app. The campaign that's making a case for inspiration that actually leads somewhere
Pinterest has launched a campaign built around an idea that most social platforms would never say out loud: the best thing an app can do is give you a reason to close it and go and live your life. The rollout began on 1 May across TV, cinema, out-of-home and digital, and Pinterest is positioning it as its most ambitious paid media campaign to date.
Social media job titles: why every door has a different name
Most social media professionals at SocialDay Social Media Fest 2026 carry a job title nobody else in the room shares. Here is what that means for hiring, salary benchmarking, and the case for a social media career ladder.
"I Just Figured It Out Myself" What Social Media Professionals Are Really Telling Us, Early findings from the Social Day Career Survey
We asked social media professionals across the UK and beyond to tell us the truth about their careers: the jumps, the blockers, the things nobody warned them about. What's coming back isn't a tidy picture. It's honest, a little raw, and it's pointing to some patterns the industry needs to take seriously. Here's what we're hearing so far.
The Psychology Behind the Scroll: Theories That Shape Social Media Success
What drives people to stop scrolling and engage with your content? In this post, Luan Wise explores 11 psychology theories that can shape social media success. Drawing on her book with Dr Tom Bowden-Green, Marketing and Understanding Customer Behaviour with the ABC Approach, Luan explains how understanding human behaviour can transform your campaign planning, content creation, and community management. Watch the webinar replay and put the theory into practice.
The Social Media Career Ladder: What We've Learned So Far
I've wanted to do this research for a long time. Social media as a profession has grown from nothing to enormous in about fifteen years, and it's done that without any of the infrastructure that other professions take for granted. No agreed career progression. No standard job titles. No salary benchmarks. What I've heard from six brilliant people so far is too important to sit on.
Nobody Is Teaching Social Media Professionals How Business Actually Works. Here's the Gap.
Ask a room full of social media managers what their biggest skills gap is, and you probably won't hear "content creation." You won't hear "platform knowledge" or "community management" either.
What the best creators & best leaders have in common
The best leaders I've worked with share something with the best creators I've seen build communities online. They put the spotlight on the people around them rather than keeping it on themselves, and they care far more about the growth of others than their own visibility.
Social Media Is Still Being Called "Women's Work." And It's Costing the Whole Industry.
There's a word that keeps coming up when social media professionals talk about how their role is perceived. Not respected. Not valued. Not taken seriously. The word is: girls. Social media girls. Marketing girlies. The person who does the "pretty pink content."