Marketing Happy Hour - How to Navigate Challenges on Social Media | Social Media Manager Kelsea Cozad

Episode Date: January 11, 2024

This week, Erica and Cassie catch up with fashion industry social media manager Kelsea Cozad. In this episode, Kelsea passes along her 10+ years of social media knowledge, including her insight into and perspective around leading social media during unprecedented times, how the industry has changed since 2014, and how to navigate challenges with empathy and tact. She also gives us her take on how she believes social media will evolve in 2024 and advice for learning your audience and getting clear on your brand's social media goals. Here's a peek at what we cover in this episode: [00:03:45] - Kelsea shares a look into her 10-year background in social media, first working in the agency space and gaining experience in a variety of industries present in the Columbus, OH area (like tech and retail), then moving from a digital marketing generalist into the concentration of social media brand-side, and explains how the social media landscape has changed since 2014. [00:08:41] - Kelsea gives us a peek into her day to day role as social media manager at a large fashion brand, working to deliver their brand purpose to their consumer. She also walks through her team's current priorities: creating and distributing short form video content, building a community, and fostering a better understanding of the quality of their product. [00:11:17] - Kelsea shares more about her experience leading social media during unprecedented times and provides her best advice for brands navigating rough social sentiment about their brand or global events in general, including how to respond to comments in an empathetic and understanding way while meeting the consumer where they are for their underlying request. [00:19:01] - Kelsea lets us in on her 2024 predictions for social media and why she says she's excited to see what happens as we "hard sprint in opposite directions" in the space. Grab a drink and listen in to this week's Marketing Happy Hour conversation! ____ Other episodes you'll enjoy if you enjoyed Kelsea's episode: ⁠⁠⁠Building an Engaging Brand on Social Media | Jack Appleby of Future Social⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Brand Communications 101 | Kate Haldy of Anthropologie⁠⁠ ⁠⁠Top Social Media Tips by Platform | Bri Reynolds of Lyft⁠⁠ ____ Say hi! DM us on Instagram and let us know which bonus episodes you're excited for - we can't wait to hear from you!  Please also consider rating the show and leaving a review, as that helps us tremendously as we move forward in this Marketing Happy Hour journey and create more content for all of you. ⁠ ⁠Join our FREE MHH Insiders online community to connect with Millennial and Gen Z marketing professionals around the world!⁠ Get the latest from MHH, straight to your inbox: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Join our email list!⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Connect with Kelsea: Instagram | LinkedIn Connect with Co-Host Erica: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Connect with Co-Host Cassie: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow MHH on Social: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LinkedIn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠Threads⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠Twitter⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠TikTok⁠⁠⁠ | ⁠⁠⁠Facebook⁠⁠⁠ New to Marketing Happy Hour (or just want more)? ⁠⁠⁠⁠Download our Marketing Happy Hour Starter Kit⁠ This podcast is an MHH Media production. ⁠Learn more about MHH Media!⁠ ⁠Interested in starting your own podcast? Grab our Podcast Launch Strategy Guide here.⁠

you're listening to the marketing happy hour podcast where we discuss career and industry insights with our peers in marketing we're here to talk about it all like the ups and downs of working in social media how to build authentic relationships in the influencer and pr space managing a nine-to-five and a side hustle at the same time, how to be productive in your life and career without losing your sanity, and more. Ultimately, we're here to build a community with you because we're all trying to navigate the world of marketing together. Are you ready? Grab your favorite drink and join your hosts, Cassie and Erica, for this week's episode. Welcome back to another episode

of Marketing Happy Hour. This week, we're joined by social media manager, Kelsey, of a prominent American fashion brand. Kelsey has spent 10 years in the social media space and she's passing along her knowledge to us today. We discuss leading social during unprecedented times, what her day-to-day looks like, predictions for 2024, and so much more, including career insights. So you know the drill, grab a drink and let's dive in. Hi Kelsey, how are you doing? Awesome. How are you? Doing well. We're so excited to have you today and to learn from all of your experience. But before we get started, I have an important question for you. That's something we ask all of our guests. And that is what is in your glass this afternoon? I am actually drinking a diet Pepsi in a wine glass. I gave up coffee a couple of weeks ago and I did not give up caffeine, but I gave up

coffee. And so I need a little afternoon pick me up for sure. We always love a pick me up. I actually have, I haven't dived into it quite yet, but it's a plant botanical vodka seltzer. I'm excited to try that. And then also just water. I don't know. I haven't been feeling super great today, so I'm trying to stay hydrated and, you know, get better.

But Cassie, what do you have? Yeah. So I just have water for right now. Um, finished my caffeine earlier today, but just trying to stay hydrated and, and just, you know, fueled for 2024. But Kelsey, I'm curious, what are your caffeine alternatives outside of coffee? So I'm a big tea girl. I'm like a big fan of England in general. I love British soccer and I like really gotten to tea. I love a lot of like British bands and music. Um, so I drink English breakfast tea in the morning and then love a good diet Coke, diet Pepsi, whatever. Um, I was, I feel like everybody's been sick lately. I know you guys aren't feeling super well, but I got sick a couple of weeks ago and coffee just didn't sound good randomly. And I was like, I'm going to ride this train because I'm way too addicted to coffee

anyway. Um, so I'm just doing a little like coffee break for, for the time being. And I feel better. Like I feel great without it. Yeah. Yeah. So funny, funny enough, not to go too far down in this tangent. I was drinking so much coffee for the longest time and I got sick and I had coffee while I was sick and my body completely rejected it. And ever since then I've, I only drink like coffee once a week now. Like I can't, it's so weird. It's the weirdest thing. So yeah, yeah. The body is a crazy, crazy thing. So anyways, moving on to kind of the core purpose of this discussion here at Kelsey, like Erica said, we're very excited to have you today. But before we dive in to the conversation fully, do you mind sharing a bit about your background

in social and how you got to where you are today? Yeah, I'm happy to. And so excited to be here. Thanks again for asking me to be on the show. I've been in the social media industry since 2014. And now that it is officially 2024, I can officially say I've been doing it for 10 years, which I feel so old, but that's okay. So I started my career working at agencies and eventually moved to brand side work. I think I mentioned before we started recording, I'm born and raised in Columbus, Ohio, and

this city has just been so good to me from a marketing perspective. We have a lot of creativity here, but also just a ton of diversity of industry. So there's a really big tech sort of space happening here. A lot of big retail names are in Columbus, a lot of insurance agencies, a lot of healthcare. And so I've really had the opportunity to dabble in all of it. And I feel super fortunate about that. But when I started my career in 2014, I was really a generalist in the digital marketing space. And social media was kind of like a side dish, like a little side piece that you added on to digital marketing. And I fell in love with it and really ran with it and spent a lot of time networking and building relationships with people who had

the jobs that I wanted to have. And I think that's been the biggest key to getting to where I am in my career. So with that, you kind of mentioned the different areas that you have dabbled in. And I think Erica and I could both agree that we kind of got started the same way, touching social just as a small piece of the digital marketing space. So it's so funny to how now it's evolved into such a big portion of a strategy and there's positions solely for social. But on that, how have you personally seen the industry change over the last 10 years? You have been in social. Yeah. I mean, so we talked about it, right? It was, it was sort of like a little, I mean, there was three channels. It was Facebook and Twitter and Google plus,

it was like just the most random channel. So it was really in addition to your website, website content or, um, an add on to your email marketing strategy. It was never your sole marketing focus. And so a lot of my career early on was spent asking for like the scraps. Like I was always asking people for content that they shot for something else that I could use on social or copy that they wrote for something else that I could use. And so it's been really cool over the past 10 years to watch it evolve into its own ecosystem, its own universe, and see it sort of gain its own authority, which has been really fun. The other thing that I think is really interesting is social started really simply. It was really about building a community. I think everyone sort of knew it was a long game in the beginning.

Virality definitely existed back in the day, but we were all really concerned with growing our following and growing that community and nurturing that community. hitting. It's so short. It's so impressions focused and less engagement, right? Like less, like less long game, it feels like. So it's been a shift definitely for the good and the bad, I think, in my opinion. Yeah, for sure. Well, and there's a lot of different pieces and facets to social, right? It's just community is one piece. And then there's the content creation piece, the writing, the engaging, there's a lot to it. So curious, because we like to keep it real here on Marketing Happy Hour, what do you like about social and what do you dislike and how are you navigating those kinds of different areas of your role? Yeah. I love when we talk about the functions of social and the different pieces of it, strategy is my bread and butter, what I love more than anything.

I think I'm really good at finding patterns and noticing trends and telling a story or weaving together some complex ideas in a more simplistic way. And I love that social gives me the space to do that and the data to do it really quickly and in real time, which I really love. What I don't love about social is how quickly the rules of the game change, right? Like it's almost ever changing. As soon as you sort of get your footing in one area, you can anticipate that it'll be different and everything will change with what you thought you knew. But that's also exciting, right? It keeps you on your toes and it'll be different and everything will change with what you thought you knew. But that's also exciting, right? It keeps you on your toes and it keeps things fun and challenging too. So I can't complain too much. Yeah. It never gets stale over in the world of social media.

I'm curious to hear too, what does your day-to-day look like right now as a social media manager at a large fashion brand? Well, I would say no two days are the same. It's a lot of fun. So we're pumping out a ton of content. I work on the strategy team. I have a few direct reports. And so I spend a lot of time nurturing them and their development and getting them to think a little bit more strategically and a little less executionally. I collaborate really closely with our creative team. They're shooting content, they're editing videos, they're writing copy, but I'm also really closely aligned to our brand marketing organization, our content team.

So I'm really like a little cog in the big integrated marketing wheel working to deliver our brand purpose to our consumers, right? No two days are the same. It's a lot of fun and exciting stuff to talk about as fashion retail you can imagine is, but it's also a lot of like data and nerdy stuff that I love to sort of nerd out on when I have the chance to too. So that's a lot of fun. That's the best way to describe it. Oh my gosh, that is awesome. It's always fun to hear from people who are loving their jobs and their day to day and, you know, are finding something

new to appreciate in every day. So I love hearing that from you. What does your team currently utilize social for? Like, how are you connecting with your consumer on there? What channels are you kind of more focused on? Yeah, we're really focused on short form video content, which I think anyone who is on social is. So we're on all the big channels, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, doing the short form video thing. We're really concerned with building a community and not just, you know, community of consumers, but a community of creators as well. I think that's important and a big differentiator with

what we do. And we're also really proud of the product that we create. So I think there's also a big piece of us just not only spreading our brand purpose and our brand message, but just touting how great this product is and making sure that the people that haven't heard about it fall in love with it and the people that already fall in love with it have their voices heard, too. So it's a lot of amplification. For sure. Well, we want to also touch on your expertise, just leading social media during unprecedented times. You know, we've all been through a lot over the last few years. So curious if you have any advice for brands who may have to work through a period of rough social sentiment, either about their brand or just global events in general? Yeah, that's rough. So I have led a number of brands through a number of unprecedented things, as I'm sure a lot of us have over the past few years. And I've seen people do it really well, and I've seen them do it not so well. And I think

the underlying thread in the brands and the organizations that do it well, that take a stance from a social perspective, that have a purpose that they want spread and a message that they want heard, is that they look introspectively first and they get their own house in order before they start the external communications. I think there's a Mother Teresa quote that's like, if you want to change the world, go home and love your family. It's kind of like that. Like the brands that want to change the world, start with their employees, start with their culture before they go out in an external calm space and start touting how they're going to change the world. Right. And then the brands that are a little more hasty and do the opposite don't really, A, weather the storm and B, make out right away. Make sure your employees are taken care of, that your culture is a good fit, that your people are well-paid and that they are heard and satisfied and cared for. And listen to them. What do they want your consumers to know? What do they want people to know about your brand? And I assure you that is a far more winning strategy than the most tailored press release you could pay for or a piano driven short form video on reels. Yeah. Well, and it sounds like communication is a huge piece of that. And so with that too,

whether you're literally a titled leader or you're a young professional looking to become a leader in the future and kind of working on those leadership skills. Do you have any tips for just building internal relationships to improve that communication and that connection with both the social team as a whole, but also just cross-marketing functions and even sales to improve that communication internally so that you're aligned on what's going out to consumers? Yeah, I think that's a great question. So it's hard because it's a vulnerable topic and everybody wants their culture, their job to be perfect and everyone to feel comfortable, but the nature of work is a hierarchy and people don't always feel comfortable saying how they really feel.

I think if you can master a way to get people to communicate honestly and vulnerably, whether that's in person, anonymously written, establishing that line of communication will be more beneficial than anything else. I had a friend who, when she was a teenager, which is the most angsty time of all of our lives, could never explain to her parents how she felt. And her mom gave her a notebook. And so every night she would write in this notebook and leave it outside of her mom's room. And her mom would read this notebook and then write back. And that's how they communicated because she just couldn't formulate the words when she was 14, you know, to say, I hate you. But she could write it down. So think of alternative, unconventional, different ways to keep that line of communication

open with your people, being empathetic and knowing that this is a workplace, you are a boss, a leader in some fashion, and it's scary to be vulnerable and reward that and maybe even incentivize that vulnerability. And then I think it's important to just go back to the bare bones of like taking care of your people. Are people paid well? Do they have good work-life balance? Are their ideas heard? Are they appreciated? If those things are like taken care of of the safety that they feel in coming forward should, should be a no brainer and it should just be there. Right. Everything else should fall into place. Yeah. I love that. That's excellent. And I think we saw a lot of, you know, aftermath of brands putting up blanket statements on social media for different things. And if they didn't have that, you know,

internal alignment with what they were putting out to their consumer, they were dealing with, you know, the social media police and things like that. I'm wondering if you have any advice for brands out there who might have to actually respond to those comments and how to be empathetic and understanding and really hear those people and kind of like portray that versus, you know, just a blanket reply that says, thanks for your feedback, whatever. I just love to hear like, you know, how someone can respond to that in a great way that actually reflects who they are as a consumer brand. Yeah, I think this is kind of

like we were talking earlier about the different facets of social media. This is kind of like community management 101, right? If somebody has something negative to say about you or your brand, I think in this instance, we're saying an employee having something negative to say about a company, but it could also be in my line of work, somebody complaining about the jeans we sell, right? Either way, my job is to figure out what they want and their requests. A lot of times they just want to be heard, right? So what is the true underlying request in this comment? Is it to be heard? Is it to be validated? Is it to have something solved, a problem solved? solved you know likely that's not the case but identify what the real request is and then meet the need sometimes it's better to meet the need offline and take the conversation away but I think if you can be savvy and insightful and empathetic enough to just really figure out what it is they want and meet that need, you'll have no problems. And so an example, right? Like I maybe I'm on Glassdoor for an imaginary company, not my own.

And I'm like, I am having a hard time with leadership. We need a new CEO tomorrow, right? Is that really what I want? Or do I just want to be heard? I think a good response to that specific comment would be, thank you so much. Would love to learn more about why you feel this way. Do you mind emailing me at this da-da-da-da or can we set up 15 minutes to chat so I can hear more about why you think that way? I'm taking the conversation offline. I'm validating everything you said. I'm not telling you you're wrong. I'm also not agreeing with you. But I can tell that you feel some type of way and that you need to get that feeling out and you chose this platform to do it. And I'm just going to meet you where you are. I think that's the formula.

Yeah, no, I love that. And I appreciate your insight there because a lot of people in social, you know, they haven't been trained on how to respond to anyone. And, you know, it's really tough when you have those comments that are just, you know, they haven't been trained on how to respond to anyone. And, you know, it's, it's really tough when you have those comments that are just, uh, you know, off the wall because somebody is, is feeling something and feeling wronged even. And, um, it can be hard to know the right thing to say and, and, you know, hard to kind of navigate those conversations. So I appreciate you, uh, letting us in on, you know, how you would respond to something like that. So thank you so much for that. Yeah. Any predictions just moving on into kind of like a fun segment, any predictions as we're looking forward to what's to come in 2024 in the world of social media? How will it evolve? What will we be seeing brands do with their social media content? I know you said that it's a lot more of the short form video, all of that stuff, but is there anything that you can predict

moving into the new year that maybe we haven't seen in the past? Yeah, I actually get this question a lot and my answer hasn't really changed in probably the last eight or so months because I still continue to see this. I feel like we are taking really hard spreads in opposite directions from a content perspective. What I mean by that is on the short form video side, if you look at TikTok and YouTube shorts specifically, the content that is being most seen, shared, engaged with is almost hyper authentic, almost random, right? It's like hard to evaluate what it is, but it's lo-fi, it's low quality, it's quick, it's aggressive sometimes, chaotic. It's almost so authentic that it's crazy. On the other end of the spectrum, we are sprinting toward this like machine learning, AI, metaverse, like alternate reality, almost hyper curated world.

And so it's hard to say because I think something in society is having us run in those two directions. I think there is still room for the stuff in the middle, right? There's semi-produced content. So think of like your Instagram influencers. We still like that. There's still a space for that. But for what's like new and next, it seems like we are just running away from each other really hard and people are investing in both of those, right? I think the hyper real authentic short form stuff is winning right now, but that's sort of what I perceive

out in the landscape right now. Yeah, any tips on that too though for just testing and seeing what resonates and paying attention to data and things like that? Because I think especially newer brands, they're like trying to figure out what that strategy looks like for them.

And maybe they do decide to go one way or the other. So any tips for that? Just kind of learning your audience. Yeah, that's a good question. I would get really clear on what your goals are from a marketing perspective. If it's to acquire a new audience, I might lean one way over the other. If it's to build a community and nurture an existing audience, and I would assume these are everybody's goals all the time, but I guess what your priority is, if you are looking to prospect and sort of get new eyeballs, I might lean the way of the world,

which I think is short form and hyper real. Um, but if you're looking to sustain and build a community and, uh, nurture, which is again, more of a marathon, less of a sprint. Um, I might look at maybe some of the stuff in the middle, some of the older school stuff, um, something that's a little less on the opposite ends of the spectrum and test and see what your audience resonates with and what your audience resonates with on different channels, right? They're on all of them, but they are interacting with the content differently. And so, you know, don't take my word for anything. Tell me who your audience is and what they like.

And I'll tell you that tomorrow, the platform will do something different. So really about testing and learning. Yeah, for sure. Thank you for that. We'll have to touch on career again here for just a minute as we ask one of our favorite questions. So would love to know from you, what do you know now that you wish you knew early on in your career? Good question. I, um, it took me a long time to digest that unlike any other sect of marketing, everybody I encounter thinks that they can do my job because they interact with the tools I interact with every day. They're creating content in some way every day. They're creating content in some way every day. I'm from, from interns to C-suite executives. Everyone feels like they have an opinion or a stake in what I do because they actively do it in their spare time. Unlike an email marketing manager or a copywriter, even, you know I think if I had digested that and had the empathy to understand that, right?

Empathy is a two-way street. I want people to empathize with me, but I also need to empathize with my leadership that they feel like they can do this too because they do do it, right? I would have saved myself so many headaches. I would have saved myself so much drama. I could have gotten to where I needed to get to quicker because I would have established my expertise in a different way. I would have used different tools, different data sets to prove points. I would have spoken to strategy in different ways.

It's really about realizing how social is different than anything else in the marketing space, but is also so crucial to what you're doing and empathizing with the fact that everybody thinks they know what's going on because they use it in their spare time. And that's fair too, you know? Yeah, a hundred percent. And the frustrations that come with that have led to a lot of our friends actually leaving the social media space and just not working in it anymore. So major respect to you for, you know, navigating that and, and recognizing that, you know, it's empathy is the two way street and you have to, you know, say, okay, well, this is why XYZ works. And this is why I'm the, you know, expert in my field, but I understand

that you also have a perspective and that's valid too. So thank you again for sharing that. Or you have a guest who has a TikTok and she knows. It's like, exactly. Or they're like, how quickly can you turn this around? Because we need to get this up tomorrow. And you're like, oh, there's so many steps that have to happen before that. But I love it. Yeah. Okay. Well, we're approaching the end here already. I feel like, you know, this went by so fast and we have so many more questions that we could ask you, but where can everyone find you and follow along with what you're up to now? And just everything that you're doing in your career. Yeah. I encourage all the connections on LinkedIn. It's my favorite

social media platform. It always has been. But I'm at Kelsey Kozad, just my first name and last name on everything. Lots of pictures of my four-year-old and my husband. So come hang out. Amazing. We'll link that in the show notes for everyone. And thank you again for coming on. This has been a great conversation. Thank you guys for having me. This was so fun. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Marketing Happy Hour podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe, rate, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. If you want more of Marketing Happy Hour, but don't know where to start, we invite you to download our free Marketing Happy hour starter kit at marketing, happy hr.com forward slash starter dash kit. This interactive magazine style PDF walks through who we are,

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