I first really dived into social media management in 2020 when I moved to the Highlands, though i’d been successfully managing my own media for many years prior. I am still a supported athlete with Rab, one of the UK’s biggest outdoor clothing brands. They support me as a mountain runner and I race in some of the UK’s most challenging ultra-marathons. You can read my athlete profile here and examples of content i’ve created for Rab can be found below. With Woodlands Glencoe, I managed their social media whilst working as an activity manager there, then in October 2022 I got my big opportunity, to travel and work with a global mountain running circuit. Here I had my chance to really show what I can do as a social media manager and content creator, in the 8 months of managing their socials I showed new ways to connect with their audience, bringing unseen engagement to their accounts. For example, when I first took over, Instagram had 95k followers and I left the account with 129k. Of all the reels posted on their instagram account, the top 10 most engaged with are ones that I created during my time there. I’ve successfully managed to achieve over 1.5 million engaged accounts at any given time.

Being an effective social media manager should involve: engaging on the platform, actively using the platform, liking posts, commenting - this is a key way to reach people and to show the algorithms you are an active user. Responding to messages timely, collaborating with relevant accounts, using topics, using alt text. This is how we support to content we create.

When creating content, I start with an idea and find a place for it within the content plan. I source the content, either by obtaining it from somewhere else, or creating it on my own, professionally editing video content in Premiere Pro and exporting and sizing the content in the exact format for social media. I then pair the content with trending audio on the platform it’s going on - this is especially important, then either schedule the content, or post in real-time depending on certain parameters. For example, if there’s going to be a collaborator on the post, Instagram won’t allow you schedule. Then I watch it grow, engage with comments, share it and tag relevant pages that will help my reel gain more reach. There’s many factors that contribute to a successful post, many of which can’t be created on the platform, or on any editing application. Is the content relevant? Has something happened locally that we should post about. Is there an upcoming event we really want people to know about, but we know the engagement on these types of posts can be low, how can we get more eyes on our account in the lead up to posting the content that we really want people to see. This is an insight into how I work as a social media manager with strong marketing skills and content creation skills. Here’s some examples of success over the last year.