![]() ![]() Long story short - their copywriter, with 10 years experience, decided to leave the agency, so they took a chance on the kid (that had wandered in by accident) to fill those shoes. I didn’t have a bloody clue what they actually did. God bless your naive heart.Įither way - one account led to another… led to another… led to me asking the boss of my weekend bar job to hire me as an in-house social executive (yup), led to a job at a magazine (climbing)- and then finally? One day? I emailed an agency. Don’t get me started on the hard life lessons a twenty-year-old girl must learn regarding ‘people who say they will pay’ vs. Once you take on three or more decent sized brands at that rate (with three or more platforms each)… social media quickly turns into a 24/hour job, a crash course in customer complaint handling, a degree in translating broken English and one hell of a learning curve in what will grab someone’s attention. In fact back then, people were used to brands posting several times a day. As it happened - tweeting ‘professionally’ was not the “making £90/hour from my smartphone, while getting my nails done” dream ride I had imagined. “Hey, I don’t mean to be rude but your company tweets like the town imbecile - want some help?”īefore I knew it, I had clients in Asia and was staying up til 3AM for Skype meetings, which was mostly nodding and smiling, as they barely spoke a word of English. Most were all too happy to chuck £70/week (oh, my pitiful rate) at some kid with the balls to say: Social media was an alien, complicated world that they frankly wanted no part of. Not only that? They had no idea what the hell they were supposed to do on it. I emailed, and emailed, and emailed - and to my delight? Small business owners are apparently way, way too busy to do their own social media. One by one, I located every company in a 50 mile radius who had under 500 followers on Twitter (I’m somewhat obsessive). Social came naturally to me, so this was going to be a walk in the park. An opportunity to help them grow their business, yes, but moreover - an opportunity to earn a shit ton of money by doing what I perceived to be very little. ![]() Somehow.Īnyway, dripping in youth and naivety, I saw opportunity amongst those small, vulnerable, typo-tweeting businesses. I speak fluent ‘Meme’ ( Me Gusta!), and even managed to write a 10,000 word dissertation about parody Twitter and I found that much to say. I witnessed the birth (and consequent death) of MySpace, the rise (and plateau) of Tumblr, the never-ending boom of Facebook and the cult uprising of Instagram. I’m the ‘guinea pig’ generation of social. Social was making a jump, at the time - from personal to professional.įacebook ‘pages’ didn’t exist yet, but big brands were starting to make waves, youthful brands were starting to go viral and as I watched - I noticed that small businesses were starting to look a bit… well, silly. I was just an oblivious youth, with a knack for making strangers hit the ‘Like’ button on Facebook… who had somehow stumbled into an agency.ĭuring university, I realised that social media was starting to become serious. I don’t mean that facetiously - I literally had no idea what a copywriter did, or that they even existed. I had no idea what a copywriter was, when I became one. “So you’re just a writer then-” hold up, bucko. Or, an advertising copywriter - which are confusing (and potentially outdated) ways of referring to someone who writes down words better than other people. Most of the time, when I tell normal (non-ad) people what my job is, I am met with two responses.ī) a sudden glazing of the eyeballs, accompanied by the comment: “so you like, trademark stuff?” (I do not do that). To some, I’m a ‘content storydo-er’ (wtf) and to others- I’m a personified dictionary, paid for the sole purpose of removing their need to google how to spell a word. ![]() The role of the copywriter has become increasingly murky.Įven within my own agency - there are some hilarious, throw-away interpretations of what my role is, which are a daily reminder that the position itself is one of many hats.
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