Am I the only one thinking, “The poor social media manager!” ?
If you’re wondering what’s wrong with the caption - well, pop quiz, Singapore is not a part of Malaysia. The irony of National Geographic making a mistake about geography is, well, too delicious to ignore, so this post has gone viral.
I’ve managed social media accounts for nearly 5 years, and the pressure is unbelievable. You are expected to produce content and respond/react to comments at an unholy rate. One social media post is a project in itself, and often requires coordination between many internal departments.
On top of this, the sad fact is many social media managers are one-man-shows - they have to do the content creation, publishing and community management by themselves. This is a profession where the burnout rate is high. Many SMMs are leaving the profession altogether.
One of the organisations I worked for was linked to the government , so each tweet and retweet carried serious weight. Fortunately, I had a team under me, and that made the pressure more manageable. However, before they came along, I was doing it solo! Crazy pressure. I lived in dread wondering if any of my posts would end up going viral for not great reasons.
So I’ll give National Geographic’s social manager a bit of a break. It could be a crazy day. A crazy month.
Or well, they need to brush up on their geography lessons.