Behind the Screen with Social Media Lead Strategist Lindsay Meibers

How about we start with a little background info – how long have you been with 2060 Digital and what’s your role like?

I’ve been working with 2060 for almost three years. I started as a social media strategist and now I’m a lead strategist, managing several accounts of my own while helping with pricing and leading the team.

Leading the team – what kinds of things does that entail?

I meet one-on-one with the social media strategists and coordinators to see how things are going with their clients, if they’re getting all the information they need to best manage their accounts, answering questions, and helping them brainstorm. Amy Oliver, the other lead strategist and I, also make sure that everyone on our team has the latest and greatest news about social media.

So give me an inside look – you’ve got a new social media client – what happens next?

When a new client comes in, they’re assigned a strategist who sets up an initial meeting with them. But before that meeting, the strategist starts prepping an extensive document to help them learn as much as they can about the client and begin building a strategy before they ever meet them. They get information from the Digital Brand Strategist like the goals of the client and why they chose to work with us so we can make sure we’re giving them what they’re expecting.

That first meeting goes pretty in-depth as we learn more about the client and present our initial ideas. And then afterward, the strategist finalizes a whole set-up strategy including contesting to kick things off new graphics to refresh their pages on the platforms we’re managing, and more. And once everything’s approved by the client, we start managing it all, writing monthly content calendars and putting together recaps and reporting.

It sounds like a very detailed and regulated process, but I know collaboration within the team is really important, as well. What kind of help do you give each other?

We have brainstorming meetings every other week which are great because there are times when someone’s had a client for years and they need ways to keep content and contests fresh. They can ask the group for help and ideas and come away with some new and creative ways to reach the client’s goals.

Yeah, that’s got to be a challenge. I think anyone could say, if they’re regular social media users, that if they’ve seen one sweepstakes they’ve seen them all, so you’re really fighting against that overload.

I think something that sets our sweepstakes apart are our graphics – we have an awesome design team and they create really beautiful graphics for us. But we’re finding that the simpler the contest the better. We’ve done some crazy contests with tons of different steps and have gotten good results, but as the algorithms change for how content appears, we’ve found that simple sweepstakes still do what we want. I just had a sweepstakes the other day get 2000 entries, which is pretty unheard of, and it was super simple. It just comes down to how it’s presented – the graphics, the form – and the prize.

You mentioned algorithms always changing, and I remember when there were no ads, there really was no algorithm either, it was just real time and content just fed in. It’s really become a pay-to-play game now.

Your business’s social media presence is more of a marketing tool than ever before, so having someone who can run your pages who’s an expert in social media marketing is so important. And that’s who we are – we aren’t just a team of content writers – we also have that marketing savvy as well.

But even though you do have to have a budget and a brand message, it’s just as important to engage with your audience. Whether you receive positive or negative interactions with your brand on social media, you have to have someone get involved and let your audience know you hear them. We take all that off the client’s plate – the marketing expertise, the creative content and graphics, the daily interaction – and they know it’s in good hands with us.

We’ve been offering social media management as one of our solutions for a few years now – I think it’s safe to say we have some legitimate social media experts on our team. Along with that experience, what else do you think makes the team as strong as it is?

Our department just keeps growing and growing, and that’s because clients are seeing that what we’re doing is so different from what other agencies are doing. The quality of our work is unmatched.

And that’s because we position ourselves as a true extension of the clients’ team – my clients can call, text, or email and I’m right there and I know exactly what’s going on with their account. We know and understand the mission and values of their company just as much as we do ours.