Biggest fuck up?
To be honest, ugh I hate to be this person, I’ve not had one defining moment but instead a series of little moments that have changed the way I work, and the way I am when I work. I think the catalyst for these little moments though are… Just Do The Damn Thing.
*The crowd boos and throws tomatoes*
So, I started “Just Do The Damn Thing: in 2023, and more so on LinkedIn in 2024. As a naturally anxious and introverted person, I used to say no to pretty much everything and I really felt like it held me back. At every parents evening, the teachers would tell my mum “she’s great but needs to raise her hand up more in class” and it’s something that really stuck with me.
So, in my early twenties, I just decided that I needed to say yes to more opportunities. In fact, fuck it, say yes to everything professionally, which sounded like a fantastic idea at the time. Until it wasn’t! And I was saying yes to things that didn’t align with what I wanted to do, I wasn’t getting paid for things I absolutely should’ve been paid for and my boundaries were being consistently broken. All of this led to me letting people down, not being able to attend events, and bailing at the last minute. And it sent me into a really sad, and quite frankly, dark place.
Thankfully it wasn’t all doom and gloom because in most cases, everyone was really bloody lovely and it made me realise that I still need to say YES to things even if they scare me BUT they have to be things I want to do in the first place, and align with what I want to achieve. I loved the phrase, and I still do but I’d say it’s more “Just Do The Damn Thing, Mindfully” now.
Rant
Marketing is a beautiful and chaotic industry but it’s full of bollocks most of the time. The biggest offender is some of the advice that people offer, and the advice typically states something ridiculous like “NEVER DO THIS ONE THING EVER” or “DO THIS AND YOU’LL GET 10,000 INSTAGRAM FOLLOWERS” like cool, I get it, you’re trying to hook people in but beyond that, how are you actually advising and helping folks? Because what works for you, probably won’t work for another brand and vice versa.
We’ve seen a rise in unhinged content (enter: Duolingo, Ryanair, Monzo) but does that mean you want to see your healthcare provider creating this content? Probably not. But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t work. I’ll call myself out here. I think links in Instagram captions are (most of the time) pointless, and while I still make the odd meme about it, I don’t tell people NOT to do it anymore. Why? Because when I spoke to my peers, some of them found success with doing it in terms of raising brand awareness, or keeping their brand top of mind. So who am I to say that it doesn’t ever work?
Marketing is bloody fantastic because we can experiment. We can dare to be different. And there’s not a one-size-fits-all strategy.
Useful advice
As a small business owner that specialises in organic social media, the best piece of advice I ever received is to over communicate.
Explain throughly how it works, how long results can take, and be honest about what clients can expect. It’s something that sounds obvious, but something I never actually considered because, as I work in social media, I thought all of these things were clear… But they’re only clear to me because I live it day in, and day out. And generally, it’s something Jemima Kirke said on an Instagram Story. Someone asked her “any advice to unconfident women? and her response was “I think you guys might be thinking about yourself too much” which, quite frankly, changed the trajectory of my life.