Social Media Marketer Spotlight : Cathy Wassell Founder: Socially Contented Digital Agency
In our new series Social Media Marketer Spotlight, we interview those working in social media marketing.
Ever fancied having a nose at what your peers are up to? Get a glimpse of the day in the life of a social media manager or check out the campaigns they think are pretty darn cool? Perhaps you are looking at getting into social media as a career, find out how these marketers got there.
We we take a look at social media marketers from all walks, brand, agency, freelance and more and see what issues they face, how they got into social media as a career and what tools they use to remain effective and on top of their game with the latest information.
In our first SPOTLIGHT we interview Cathy Wassell Founder of Socially Contented Digital Agency and Go WIth The Pro membership group for new businesses and freelancers.
Cathy, is a Lead Generation Strategist specialising in Facebook Ads and LinkedIn. she helps businesses, freelancers, coaches and consultants build a pipeline of clients, either for done for you services, power hours or with her Facebook Ads Leads Machine and LinkedIn Leads Machine courses. She has her own agency, Socially Contented and also runs a membership to help freelancers launch and grow their businesses - Go With The Pro. When she’s not on social media (which is shockingly little!) Cathy is running around after her two teens and two spaniels. It’s debatable which are more trouble.
Years Experience
24 years of marketing experience, about 8 years of specifically social media marketing experience
The Questions
What does your day to day work consist of?
I run the social media one of the world's top 10 orchestras so they usually have something going on - a livestream, an interview, a tour, a review which all need posting about. They also get quite a bit of engagement on their channels so I need to be on top of that. I work continually on lead generation so I post content including video on various channels. I follow up leads, and run the membership group for Go With The Pro - we have questions in there every day. Plus I allocate time to market my own business every day, so it might be designing a lead magnet for one of my courses or planning a webinar. In addition I am in a couple of mastermind programmes so I need to spend time on those - it might be joining a call or doing some 'homework'. Then some evenings I have our Go WIth The Pro team meeting on Zoom (we're proud to be running a limited company completely as a remote team who meet just a few times a year), a mastermind call or every Thursday at 8 pm the Go With The Pro Twitter chat. Even if I am not hosting that I try to take part because we have lots of great guests and an international lot who come back every week.
What are the challenges you face as a social media marketer?
So many changes! Just this morning it was LinkedIn introducing Lookalike audiences, tomorrow it will be something else. Keeping up with it is pretty exhausting.
Are there any social media tools you use to make your job easier?
I use Slack and Trello for team stuff (and Asana for a different team), Canva for graphic creation, ContentCal for scheduling, Dropbox for file storage (and upgrading to the more expensive package so that I could post directly from Dropbox was a gamechanger), WeTransfer for sending files, Apple Clips and a few others for video creation, Zoom for webinars, meetings and conference chats. Those aren't all directly social media related but it would be difficult to do a good job without them.
There are so many changes in social media, where do you go to get the latest information and stay on top of your game?
I am on mailing lists of a few key sites and there are some that I visit every day to see if anything has happened, like TechCrunch for example. I also have some Google Alerts set up and I am active in quite a few groups.
For someone looking to get into a social media role, where would you advise them to start?
There are some decent free training courses such as Facebook Blueprint where you can at least get an idea of whether you're going to like it or not. I firmly believe some marketing experience is helpful if you want to do more than just curate content, and provide more of a strategic role. Whatever training you have, companies want experience so if you don't have any one option is to volunteer, perhaps for a charity, for a limited time and build up some skills. But many people, particularly women, come to social media because they think it will be very flexible - and it is, but you also need to consider the wider picture. Setting up and running your own business, working from home when you've been used to the company of an office, freelancing when you have been used to the benefits of being employed - all of these can be hard and you need to go into it with your eyes open. That's why we set up Go With The Pro.
What's been your best social media success story to date and why?
When my orchestra client played two nights at the Proms last year I spent about 3 days on Twitter constantly dealing with all the notifications. I've added 5000+ followers to their Facebook page which I'm more than happy with.
Finally, has been your favourite social media campaign this year so far and why?
I think it was only just in this year, but the Army's 'snowflake millennial' campaign was genius, whether you love it or hate it.
Where to connect with Cathy:
https://www.sociallycontented.com
https://www.facebook.com/sociallycontented
https://www.linkedin.com/in/cathywassell
https://www.instagram.com/sociallycontent