1. Tell us a little bit about yourself and how you ended up in your current role.
I was born in France, moved to Canada as a teenager and lived in a few cities around the globe before landing in Toronto in 2009. I have been invested in social media marketing since the Myspace days. My first paid social media job was managing event promotion on Myspace back in 2006; social media marketing was a new beast then, and I saw its immense potential. I veered off marketing and spent five years in the aviation industry pursuing my love for travel. In 2011, as I was transitioning back into having a career in one place, the demand for social media marketing was growing and my interest in it had not wavered. I started offering social media content services to small businesses, which quickly grew into a full-time business. I founded ValetSocial, now based in Hamilton, Ontario, in 2012 with the objective to help small businesses grow through their social media presence. As our clients’ needs expanded, so did our service offering, and we are now providing a full-range of digital advertising services to various Canadian businesses. After adding search engine marketing to our services, the agency gained its Google Partner certification in 2017, and I now lead a small team of creatives who share a passion for everything digital.2. What does your average day-to-day look like?
I generally dedicate the morning to monitoring accounts, optimizing ad campaigns, and connecting with teammates and clients about current campaigns and pending requests. ValetSocial is set up as an entirely remote office, and with our small team in two provinces, we regularly exchange on video-chat to stay connected and up-to-date with each other, whether it’s to discuss a client account or simply catch-up! Because my whole day is spent on a screen, one of my most important daily rituals is to eat away from my desk at lunch, generally with a book – it is my key to remaining productive in the afternoon. In the afternoon, I focus on execution and learning. I review social content and ad creative on Gain before it’s sent to clients, write reports or proposals, and take care of admin tasks. To always stay on top of industry changes, I also regularly take part in webinars or listen to podcasts about what’s new and exciting in the digital space.3. What’s an example of a social media marketing mistake you see frequently?
We frequently encounter businesses that have already invested considerable sums of money in social media advertising without fully taking advantage of the targeting options. This can be a costly mistake, as they deliver their message to an audience that is too general, hence unlikely to be interested in what they have to offer. In these cases, I recommend testing precise targeting options that are relevant to the business against each other and delivering the ads to users who are most likely to be interested in what they see.4. What have been the most valuable lessons you’ve learned about managing multiple social media accounts over the last few years?
Efficient processes are crucial to efficiently manage multiple social media accounts. Among them, how we receive and act upon client feedback greatly impacts the time it takes to finalize a content calendar. Since our team relies on Gain to process all communications about content – both internally and with clients – we have saved considerable time. On a more practical note, here’s a “team favourite” tip to ease the burden of managing multiple accounts. We spread the monthly cycles of accounts in the calendar so they do not all need the same attention at the same time: an account will have a cycle running from the first of the month, while the next will cycle from the 10th of the month, or from the 20th. That way monthly tasks and waves of content creations are spread out and allow for an easier schedule management.5. How does Gain help you be more productive when it comes to managing social media content?
Before Gain, we used a mix of scheduling and monitoring tools, image files, and spreadsheets. In one word, it was complicated! Gain has boosted the efficiency of our team by allowing us to better collaborate on content creation using only one tool from creation to publication. The capacity to send content for internal approval makes it easy to get a second opinion or ask for media to be created for a post while keeping everything in one place. Our clients are always delighted when we introduce them to Gain because it truly makes content approval painless. They see exactly what a published post will look like on various devices, can request modifications from our team, and don’t even need to remember any login credentials, as they simply access pending content from the notification they receive by email. It’s our favourite tool, by far!Many thanks to Ann for chatting with us! We’ll be sharing more tips and insights from the top agencies using Gain to automate their social media approvals so stay tuned! If you’re ready to streamline the process of getting creative content approved in a timely manner with clients, try out a free demo of Gain today.
