Hello!
In his 1967 essay, "The Death of the Author", Roland Barthes argued for the diminishment of an author's intentions when analysing a text. Instead, he argued, what mattered is the interpretation the reader brings to it.
So, too, we might argue that the intentions of a Social Media Manager are irrelevant when analysing a brand's social content. You may have published that post to inspire or educate your audience. But if all they do is laugh at it, doesn't that make it entertainment? Even if that was the opposite of what you wanted?
But what if we took this idea even further? What if the Social Media Manager didn’t matter at all?
Who is “the Social Media Manager”?
I've been thinking a lot about this. About the role of "The Social Media Manager" as part of the broader discourse of brand social. At times, the SMM has meant to be an invisible figure, just a content facilitator who exists only in the margins of content. But at other times, the SMM is front and centre, the very focus - hero, even - of the content.
And brands wring a lot of value out of flirting with this idea of acting as the Social Media Manager. Brands that openly talk about their "boss" or how they had to fight the Legal team to get their content approved.
But what does it mean when this is just a fiction? An elaborate cosplay where brands co-opt the concept of the relatable individual with content that has, in fact, been written to a brief by a committee via a multi-step approval process? What then, HUH? Are we 'post-Social Media Manager'?
This playful switching up of identities is also cropping up in other ways. Duolingo pretends to be an anthropomorphic owl on TikTok, and I hate to break it to you, but an actual owl is not posting those videos. And Wendy's have been doing a weird extended bit on Facebook where they're pretending to be an old couple using Facebook.
The ‘unhinged’ debate misses the point.
A debate is raging within social marketing thought circles. And by "raging," I mean about two or three folks passive-aggressively posting about each other on LinkedIn. The topic of the debate is the "unhinged social media manager". In short, is it cringe?
The debate is primarily about tone rather than the presentation of identity. Whether or not it's appropriate for a brand to have an "unhinged" tone of voice seems mostly a matter of taste to me. Tone evolves with the times, and we undoubtedly live in unhinged times. So if the app I use to indulge my self-delusion that I can learn an entire language in the time it takes to boil a kettle wants to post thirst traps, go off king.
I’ve written a lot about this before. Here’s me from last April:
There’s been a sort of cold war going on in social marketing driven by a kind of chaos. What started as that sassy tone of voice on Twitter has spiralled into something altogether weirder on TikTok. The game there is simply posting the most unhinged content possible.
Duolingo are kind of the best at this, and their owl has rightfully garnered a lot of praise. But it’s always been a case of ‘where do we go from here’. How long until a brand posts something straight up NSFW.
Hell yeah, I just quoted myself. But in short, "unhinged" is fine. Or not fine, it depends. Should an airline that charges pensioners £50 to print off a sheet of paper post content of them literally giving customers the middle finger? That's between them and their God.
The more interesting question is how we should feel about brands pretending to be people online. I don't even know how I feel about it. Is it weird or unethical in some way? Or is it just another natural evolution of social media best practice? We'd all just got on board with the idea of posting in the third-person ("We're excited to announce..”) but now maybe first-person posting is the way to go?
Remember the human.
But I hope turning the Social Media Manager from person to persona doesn't leave the human behind. Social media accounts are still primarily run by Social Media Managers, who play a massively important role in shaping a brand's presence across their channels. That doesn't - and shouldn't - mean that the brand's voice is their voice, but we should view SMMs as more than mere content producers.
This last point became even more salient this week with the Facebook NBA incident, where a disgruntled former employee posted about their negative experience working on the account.
If they wanted to post as a Social Media Manager, the NBA sure got it here! And there's an important takeaway here about robust access and off-boarding policies, even if Facebook is the absolute worst at this. But the more significant takeaway should be about treating employees well.
It was depressing to see some Thought Leaders saying things like, "well, this person is clearly not to be trusted, we cannot believe anything they say." This kind of extreme stunt is only ever done as a last resort. Burning your bridges (and probably your career) isn't something anyone would do lightly. Sure, their follow-up posts where they directly promoted their side business were a bit much, but on the whole, I'm sympathetic to the ex-SMM.
I’ve heard rough things about the world of sports social, and I’m sure plenty of folks are exploited by the prospect of getting to work on their favourite team’s account. So, even if your brand is going to act like a human on social, please still treat your actual humans nicely. They’re very important.
Ok, that’s it for now!
Oh, I’m doing a talk on the 7th about The Rise and Fall of New Platforms. It’s presented by Sprout Social, and I’m sharing a virtual stage with your friend and mine, Matt Navarra!
Hopefully see you there!