Marketers: How to Stop Being Seen as the Arts & Crafts Department

Hey, welcome to Mind Your Marketing. The weekly newsletter that gives you actionable social media advice for your brand.

Last week, I was speaking at the Digimarcon Conference in Las Vegas, and met a ton of great marketers. Welcome to the newsletter if I met you signed up at the event.

Today, the article is going to be about how we as social media professionals can take ourselves more seriously as a business unit and how to show that value upward to executives.

Enjoy below!

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Have you ever felt like the executives at your business don’t take the social media team seriously?

I have.

I’ve seen business owners shovel social media on top of other people’s responsibilities without care for its effect on the employee or the business.

CEOs, COOs, and CFOs tend to forget about social media when times are good and see it as the Arts & Crafts department when things are headed South.

And guess what? It’s not the executives’ fault for seeing social media that way––It’s ours as social media professionals.

Our industry has been plagued with gimmicks and shiny objects that drag us away from making a meaningful impact within our organization. And I get it; it’s tough to ignore trends and avoid signing up for the new shiny app that promises fame and success.

But, social media success isn’t found in flashy content and short-lived apps. It’s found in consistency and taking ourselves seriously as a department.

Here’s how you do that:

1. Establish KPIs with your executive team

2. Build a social plan you can actually execute

3. Have confidence and embrace consistency in content

Establishing KPIs

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are something every marketer needs to establish and review with their senior leadership. Doing so creates (i) guardrails against distractions and (ii) helps when your annual review comes around. For example, if one of your KPIs is to increase engagements by X percent on Instagram, it creates a great question for you before creating content. That is, “Is this post engaging?”

If it isn’t, then get back to the drawing board.

Building a Plan You Can Execute

This means biting off what you can chew as a department. If you have a ton of resources, then great, you should be everywhere. However, most teams I talk to are shorthanded and fighting for air on social media. To combat this, define (and stick to) what platforms you will be on and what type of content you can create consistently.

Have Confidence and Embrace Consistency

Part of succeeding as a marketer comes from the confidence to have your own voice, strategy, and content on social media. While everyone is trying to jump on trends, you should ignore them and focus on becoming a trendsetter. This sounds grandiose, but I mean it. When you lean into developing your own voice on social media you stand out from the crowd and stop reacting to content.

You want to create, not react.

When you do this consistently, you’ll see that your accounts start to attract the right followers.

Until next week,
Jordan

P.S. If you want to connect on social media, where I share tips throughout the week, follow me on X (Twitter) or Linkedin.

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