How brands should prepare for the future of social media – Romy Fleishman’s advice

By Nikita Geldenhuys

Fleishman foresees video taking on an even bigger role in social media going forward. But creating a video, and sharing it on social media platforms, is not enough, she says. Brands need to tailor videos to each of the social networks they use.

media update caught up with Fleishman after her presentation on “The power of social media” at a breakfast session by JumpStart, the chapter of PRISA dedicated to nurturing young PR professionals.

The event hosted 21 guests, with Kagiso Molatedi, PRISA’s skills development co-ordinator, saying that highlighting the topic of social media is important because it’s one of the few marketing platforms that agencies use to market their clients’ services or products.

At age 29, Fleishman has been a social media manager for Ogilvy & Mather South Africa and head of social at FCB Africa. She is also the co-founder of ‘Turn Your Voice Viral’, a campaign designed to combat cyberbullying at schools.

She now works at Mann Made Media, a full service agency specialising in video. Here’s how she got to where she is and what she thinks social media marketers should prepare for:

What can brands expect of the future of social media, and how can they ready themselves?

Video is becoming imperative. If I were a brand, I’d only be investing in video. Video is the most consumed form of media on social. In fact, Facebook’s video views have taken over YouTube’s.

To be prepare for it, brands need to adapt to the situation – and hire the right person.

I feel that brands also need to educate themselves on digital, and what works and what doesn’t. It was a big topic that came up a lot with the young marketers who attended today’s event.

They also explained they don’t know how to build a relationship with their brand. Building a trusting relationship with your client is the next bridge to cross. Once marketers achieve that, they can start to do real social with their brand and cut through the clutter.

Your presentation highlighted the importance of breaking up your social media content, like videos, for different platforms. How does that work?

Brands absolutely have to make their videos unique for platforms. Brands will waste so much budget on this beautiful video just because it’s put on the wrong platform and targeted incorrectly.

Consider longer videos, which you then cut into smaller pieces to create posts. You can also make GIFs out of them.

You mentioned social listening today, also known as social media monitoring. Why do you think this tool is so important?

What I’ve heard from a lot of my friends in the analytics space is that above-the-line agencies are actually deploying social media software to inform their above-the-line strategy.

Social listening software gives you the ability to obtain insights and then create content around that. It’s probably the most informed form of content creation you can do. It’s such an essential process because of the strategic input you get.

The example I used in the presentation was an energy drink brand I worked on. I worked on the account and one day we did some listening because we wanted some content to put out. We found thousands of pages about the energy drink and chocolate milk. We put out some communication to see if it’s true, and we were on the mark, because we listened.

We shot a quick GIF of people pouring chocolate milk into the energy drink and people loved it. We would never have known if we didn’t do some social listening to see what people were saying about the brand.

You picked up these insights by working with the social media strategies of prominent South African brands. How did you work yourself up in the ranks to where you are now as head of social media?

I started in social media in 2011. I owned a below the line company when I finished school. We did promotional staff, events, and we dabbled with social. We started receiving requests from our clients to draw crowds to their events through social media.

When we closed that company, I wanted to go purely into social media. I started working at a little agency called Freshive. I learnt absolutely everything there, including content and paid social. From there, I went to Popimedia, which was a purely paid social media and development company at the time.

I then went to a company close to my heart, Ogilvy & Mather, and worked there for two years. I learnt the most at Ogilvy.

Myself and my colleague started up the social media department at Mann Made Media. My main objective here is new business acquisition. We’ve recently won a couple of big clients, so I feel we’re doing well. One of our core focus areas now is to highlight best practices in social media. Bad practices happen a lot in the industry.

Any tips for aspiring social media specialists?

Learning social is hard. It’s the kind of field where, unless you are practising it, I don’t believe you can actually learn it. You have to play with the platform, and the more you do so, the better you become.

I was lucky to have started in social so early, as I was able to just adapt with the platforms. As they changed, so did I.

Connect with Fleishman on Twitter or on LinkedIn.

JumpStart’s first session for 2017 featured Tshegofatso Selahle, a communications manager for one of South Africa’s largest banks. Read his views on “the death of the press release” in our article PRISA’s JumpStart holds first breakfast session for 2017.