📘My experience running Scary Mommy's Instagram
The best job interview when possible: paid trial work
I started posting original content to Scary Mommy’s Instagram on 4/1/2017.
I remember because it was my birthday and Cincinnati Reds Opening Day. We were downtown partying as early as 10am. The parade was hopping. We were with friends. Annnnd I was on my phone, manually pushing out memes to SM’s 500k followers and obsessively tracking engagement. It was a blast. (No sarcasm.)
This was the first post by the way. 🤣
Let’s discuss my approach to running the Scary Mommy Instagram. This may seem like a unique arrangement that is not relatable. (I had the keys to a huge parenting account and free reign to bring on a few creators of my choice.) But the general goals were pretty common: engagement and follower growth. So if you work in social media or business or non profit or even just marketing in general, and you’re looking to amplify your socials, you may find some nuggets in this post.
First thing I did was form the Parenting Meme Dream Team. Recall that because of The Glad Stork and my grind to get to 10k, I made all kinds of connections in the content creation space. Some of these cool people became close friends and will be for the rest of our lives! Forming the Meme Dream Team was easy. It consisted of: myself, Ally Probst, Simon Holland, and Joanna McClanahan.
Pause for the oohs and ahhs of the studio audience.
This team was a FORCE. Unstoppable. And super fun. So first advice if you’re looking to grow audience and engagement? Get the very best creative talent in the biz and make sure they’re valued and know how valued they are.
Ally, Simon, and Joanna are content creation ROYALTY.
I love process. I love having some guardrails within which unbridled creativity can run free. Rigid process and creativity? Those things seem opposed? But I think both of them are essential in the correct amounts.
Weeks for us ran Monday through Sunday. Everyone (including me) submitted memes on Wednesday. I selected my favs, edited, and formatted the images for the following week.
We ran 5 memes per person, for a total of 20 original memes per week. I accepted more than 5 from each though, so we could build a surplus for off weeks or vacations.
At first, I didn’t use a scheduling tool. I fired up my phone at regular times (8:12a, 12:12p, 8:12p) and published. I didn’t need alarms, because I was already obsessively tracking notifications and counting down the minutes until our next post. Being obsessive is a recurring theme when it comes to social media success.
Eventually I chilled out A LITTLE and started using a scheduling tool. Each Friday I sat down and scheduled all of the content for the upcoming Monday-Sunday week in a marathon sesh.
This is gonna piss off any designers who are reading. For creating the meme images, we used PowerPoint.
Pause for the gasps of the studio audience.
I love PowerPoint. Formatting text, changing sizes, cropping, moving things backward and forward (layers) are all optimized. And these are the key things you need for meme making. Then you can export a single slide (or every slide) as a jpg.
I took everyone’s submissions and dragged and dropped slides in order to rank them, then drew the cutoff line of what I’d take or not.
I hear Laura’s voice in my head right now as I write this, “Who cares about all these details? Get to the point!”
(Made this in PowerPoint. And it shows.)
All of these details ARE the point. We created a process. We adapted when things went better or worse than expected, but other than that, we stuck to it. Once the guardrails were in place, WE ROCKED IT OUT WITH FUN AND CREATIVITY AND FRIENDSHIP.
Every single day we were publishing great stuff. Really groundbreaking high art.
No days off. But we didn’t burn out. We didn’t get TOO STRESSED (other than me). We just consistently made great stuff and stuck to the process.
Consistency over intensity.
(Graphic by instagram.com/lifedsn)
Ally, Joanna, Simon, and I has a blast that summer. We were gaining AT LEAST 1k followers PER DAY. (I know because I was also compiling stats and analytics of our KPIs, Key Performance Indicators.)
I even worked out a partnership with Bustle. We shared Romper posts on Scary Mommy, and in return they shared Scary Mommy posts on Bustle. Remember this relationship, it’s foreshadowing. (This story is incredible. Somebody purchase the film rights.)
Speaking of foreshadowing, while researching for this post, I came across this one. If we only knew…
I try to end these posts on a boom. And my intention was to end this by telling you how much I was paid to lead this team and manage Scary Mommy’s Instagram. In my mind, it was a low amount. It would be like BOOM.
Everyone would be like “WOW. I can’t believe he shared that. Also I love how he ends on a boom. I’m so glad I am subscribed / I am going to subscribe.”
The point I was going to make was that I wasn’t doing it for the money.
I talked to Vinit and Jill before 4/1/2017, and I knew that Scary Mommy’s parent company Some Spider wanted to start a dad brand. So even if it wasn’t explicitly stated, this was the start of an intense job interview for The Dad. (If you’re looking to hire a key position, I highly recommend the paid trial work situation. It’s the very best option for a job interview, when possible.)
Plus it was fun. I would’ve done it for free.
I went back and checked my invoices ANNNND… I was paid $450 per week.
Actually that feels pretty good, haha.
Not the boom I thought I could end on. Once again credit to Jill and Vinit. The job could've been not-all-that-time-consuming if I phoned it in. But as you can imagine, that was not my approach AT ALL. So yes, I was working a ton of hours on this.
During that 6 month period, we gained 200,000+ followers.
I’ve hyped up ending on a boom too much now. There’s a lot of pressure. Let’s see…
On 4/1/2017 I was downtown Cincinnati posting for the first time on Scary Mommy’s Instagram. The start of an unstated job interview.
On 6/27/2017 I was in Manhattan, outside of a sushi restaurant, waiting to meet Vinit in person for the first time for an actual job interview.
Boom.
Joanna is AMAZING.
Any tips or general roadmap for how someone with “promise” 🥺 goes about getting paid to do this even part-time?