BLOGmas Day 10 & 11: My Work As A Social Media Executive

Waaazzzuppp people, it's me again back for our BLOGmas day 10 & 11.


I wasn't able to do BLOGmas yesterday because I felt so sleepy the entire day and immediately went to bed after watching my favorite YouTubers' VLOGmas videos haha. This usually happens to me during weekdays when I don't get my much-needed zzzzz. Also, it was too traffic going home from work yesterday which made me so tired once I got home. Usually, during times like this, I don't eat normal meals anymore. I just ate the overly salty Cheetos from the Christmas loot bag given to me and that's it. I spent my remaining energy to watch Youtube. Today, however, I am doing this BLOGmas entry a few hours earlier so I can finally finish the series of books that I am reading. I am currently on the 12th book and I want to finish it before the year ends so I can finally start reading another Song of Fire and Ice book next year (that's the Game of Thrones series' books okay). I finished the book A Clash of King for an entire year last year which is a bummer because I'm not a multiple reader and I can only read one book per month or week. I promise to read more books next year but my record this year ain't that bad too. I think I've read 20 books this year with some of them just being a light read (around 100 pages each).

Also, speaking of books, even though I haven't read that much this year, I got to watch a lot of movies this 2019. I lost count of all the movies I watch but I am sure that it is more than 20 and probably around 50 movies both through streaming, torrent (sorry), and free movies that I get from When in Manila haha. I promise that next year, I will log all the movies and books that I've read and review some of them (old or new) for this blog and so I can show you guys all the titles that I got to experience during BLOGmas (yes, sure na na may BLOGmas ulit next year HAHA).

Anyway, for today's BLOGmas, I am currently sitting on my office chair doing some work stuff. I am taking a 10 minutes break right now so I decided to spend it writing this blog. Only a few people know what exactly I am doing as my job and I guess, I just want to share more about this to you guys so you can also get to know me more.

My first job is actually in a BPO company. After that experience, I promised myself never to go back to industry because as much as I have high respects for BPO employees, I just don't see myself in that setting ever in my life. This is a personal choice and nothing against that career path. They say that money is huge in that industry but to be honest, I don't care. I don't want to be stuck in something that I am not enjoying or happy to do so after that short stint in that industry, I worked extra hard to make sure that I'm never going back. Until I finally found the job that I stayed for 2 years of my life and since then, everything changed. I am currently on my way to being 4 years in this Digital Agency life and I couldn't be happier.

Well, what exactly am I doing as a Social Media Executive?

To bluntly put it, no, I am not an expert when it comes to coding, IT-related stuff, and back end process of social media. So to my mom, and all the titas/titos out there... I can't solve why your laptop is showing a blue screen and I cannot make your website from scratch, okay? Now that's out of the way... What I exactly do is well--- be an expert in the digital world.

SEO, Marketing, Ads, Graphics, Conceptualizing, Copywriting, Analytics, name it and I "somewhat" know it. I'd like to emphasize on the term "somewhat" because I am far from being an expert and I am still learning every single day that I go to the office. Some tasks is beyond what I can comprehend but since it's still under my scope my work, I do my best to figure it out and thank God that I got to learn it on my own and with help from my superiors. So far, I can honestly say that my Social Media knowledge is at more of an intermediate level right now. As much as I want to learn more about media planning, buying, and how ads run smoothly, I'm still at the surface level of those topics and hopefully, I can learn those things as I progress in my career.

So, what exactly do I do? Right now, as a Social Media Executive in the agency that I am in, I manage our pages' community by replying to their messages, comments, and raising red flags to our clients and AMs (Account Managers) when there are complaints about the brand. I also create monthly content calendars for the brands I'm handling, create their analytics report (which is the most boring yet stressful part--- this is all math and insights), help brainstorming, help with strat reports (I always do the competitive scan + analytics of our competitors), and look for possible KOLs (influencers). Sometimes, I study about SEO too and try my best to incorporate it with our brands' strat through reports. I started this career through another agency. It's where I learned a lot from scratch. In that agency, I learned not just to do analytics and all the works that I'm doing right now but I learned to be a copywriter, strategist, content consultant, and somewhat a concept director when it comes to the more artistic or graphics side of my work. Oh wow, I learned a lot from that company and up until now I am very much grateful to my boss there for teaching me most of what I learned in my career there (Hi Sir Jay! HAHA). Also, during that time of my career, I got to go to places and create my content from scratch. From mingling with basketball players (ugh, I miss my PBA team!!!), to creating vlog contents for a brand (I loved editing + making vlogs because of this), I can safely say that I've come a long way when it comes to knowledge and wisdom part of my career.

Right now, what I am currently learning are the ropes in using 3rd party trackers and more on social media analytics. We are more data-based here in my current agency and I got to learn different social media listening tools and analytics software. There are days when everything that I am doing is the same but there are days when I am exploring more and more of the social media world. I made a lot of mistakes in my current company and with these mistakes, I learned to be more critical of what I am doing and be more detail-oriented. I've always been a detail-oriented person... I am almost a perfectionist when it comes to doing my work but here, it's a different world. I needed to exert extra effort in checking out errors and tasks. I became more specific and careful with what I post as we are handling bigger brands here. Also, I learn to be more careful and organize with my work tasks here. I love how everyone in our team is very collaborative which each other when it comes to pitches and meetings making me learn a whole lot of experience and knowledge here.

I am quite proud that I have navigated my way and survived a lot of critical reports here in my current company. Aside from brand works, I also get to learn more about the art side of content creation through the various pages that I am handling through my freelance work (which is basically just a pro-bono work for my mom HAHA). For these personal pages (aka my mom's pages), this is where I am my own client. I get to take control of what direction we are going and I can experiment more with content and art direction. Yup, if you are following some of my mom's pages, I'm the one who creates the graphics there from scratch. I am yet to ask my bae to teach me how to use Adobe Illustrator because I want our content to be more "HD" and quality than the tool that I am using now but let's see. To be honest, what you see in my vlogs and page (shameless plug: please follow my page TheWandering Panda) are all the fruits of my labor--- watching tons of Youtube videos and applying what I learned from work for my gain HAHA.

Thinking about it, I realized that despite having bosses throughout my career, most of what I've learned is self-taught. There are times when I'm not contented with what I'm learning at work so I try to research more about certain topics or things that spark my curiosity. I have a long way to go when it comes to my career and every day is another day to learn more about it.

Do I love my job? Nope. Do I like it? Yes. The only thing why I can't love my job to the fullest is because of the part where I can not stay off-grid. I cannot delete my Facebook account or Instagram account anytime I like. I cannot have a downtime and break free from my phone because I have to be up to date with the latest trends, social media site updates, etc. It sucks because I am an analog person and I don't want to be glued on social media every single day. But I have no choice. This is what feeds me. And no matter how much I don't like going online or browse through these social media channels, all I have to do is accept the irony of my life HAHA. But I do enjoy it at times. Especially when I got to study the trends and issues that keep on popping at Twitter (yes people, kala niyo share share lang ako jan-- I'm watching you guys HAHA CHAROT).

Do I recommend switching careers to be in the digital world? If you are a trendy person and loves to go online, follow trends, learn more about the ropes of this world, then go. This job is for you. But don't forget that there are dirty works here too like the analytics and business side. You have to stare at numbers for a whole day during the reporting season and you have to be accurate AF when doing these things. Also, there is some social media dirty laundry that you cannot avoid at times. I mean, I started my career because of those "dirty laundry" and though I very much regret that I did that, I guess, I am just naive like everyone else in that team. After that, I promised myself never to that kind of work again unless it's for someone or something that I truly believe in. It's not all glamour in this business ya know.

Anyway, that's it for today's BLOGmas. I do hope that you enjoyed reading this entry. I am also running out of ideas on what to discuss on my next entries but feel free to comment or message me on what I could or should talk about next.

See you guys tomorrow.

Love,
KAT 💛