This is such an important thing for SMM to explore! A company I worked for deleted/hid all content that featured me when I left. Fortunately I have records for my portfolio. Now this brand pays an (unknown) actor 7 figures to be their social face. Wild!
This was a great piece, Rachel — raises lots of questions.
We’ve essentially come full-circle: SMMs going from managing influencer campaigns to being the influencers themselves.
SMMs might want to look into how actors handle this when being the face of a TV show.
It’s the same concept, and all conversations around pay, exclusivity, terms, and non-competes come to bear here.
Actors may also get paid future royalties for all episodes they feature in on a show. Are SMMs entitled to future royalties from ad revenue earned from content featuring them? How would they claim this, and how would fair pay be determined?
It’s definitely a great time to be in social, but SMMs also have to protect themselves from harm or backlash — just as an entertainer may get real life threats for playing a character.
And just like actors, SMMs will also need to protect themselves from *typecasting.*
For example, if you’re known as the spaghetti brand TikTok chick, how might that affect your prospects of handling social for a B2B brand (one that pays more, for instance), or transitioning to comms for the government or UN?
Typecasting is not necessarily hard to overcome, but it’s def something worth thinking about.
As for SMM-focused brand campaigns like what Away did, that’s just brilliant — and I hope we see more of that going forward.
I come from segment marketing, and I’m about to join an established, hip outdoors company as social media manager, and they want me on camera. This is an informative, inspiring and educational post. I’m so glad I subscribed to your blog.
I work with bands and individual musicians. One band initially had me attach my name to general posts ("This magazine interviewed X about..."; "The online store just added..."). Then fans started asking questions of me, addressing replies to me, etc. At that point I pulled my name from everything. It seemed wrong.
I find this really interesting as well. How far can a brand take a position? There might be people who enjoy being a social media manager or strategist behind the scenes and don’t want to be the face - how will that impact jobs?
This is such an important thing for SMM to explore! A company I worked for deleted/hid all content that featured me when I left. Fortunately I have records for my portfolio. Now this brand pays an (unknown) actor 7 figures to be their social face. Wild!
This was a great piece, Rachel — raises lots of questions.
We’ve essentially come full-circle: SMMs going from managing influencer campaigns to being the influencers themselves.
SMMs might want to look into how actors handle this when being the face of a TV show.
It’s the same concept, and all conversations around pay, exclusivity, terms, and non-competes come to bear here.
Actors may also get paid future royalties for all episodes they feature in on a show. Are SMMs entitled to future royalties from ad revenue earned from content featuring them? How would they claim this, and how would fair pay be determined?
It’s definitely a great time to be in social, but SMMs also have to protect themselves from harm or backlash — just as an entertainer may get real life threats for playing a character.
And just like actors, SMMs will also need to protect themselves from *typecasting.*
For example, if you’re known as the spaghetti brand TikTok chick, how might that affect your prospects of handling social for a B2B brand (one that pays more, for instance), or transitioning to comms for the government or UN?
Typecasting is not necessarily hard to overcome, but it’s def something worth thinking about.
As for SMM-focused brand campaigns like what Away did, that’s just brilliant — and I hope we see more of that going forward.
I come from segment marketing, and I’m about to join an established, hip outdoors company as social media manager, and they want me on camera. This is an informative, inspiring and educational post. I’m so glad I subscribed to your blog.
I work with bands and individual musicians. One band initially had me attach my name to general posts ("This magazine interviewed X about..."; "The online store just added..."). Then fans started asking questions of me, addressing replies to me, etc. At that point I pulled my name from everything. It seemed wrong.
I find this really interesting as well. How far can a brand take a position? There might be people who enjoy being a social media manager or strategist behind the scenes and don’t want to be the face - how will that impact jobs?