Life & Work with Savannah (Social Media Savy)

Today we’d like to introduce you to Savannah (Social Media Savy).

Hi Savannah, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
Hi! I was born and raised in Southern California. I lived in Nashville, TN for several years to attend Belmont University before moving back to California. During college, I started pursuing my dream of being a professional songwriter and along the way, had a myriad of other jobs ranging from a server to an administrative assistant to a freelance vocalist to a social media manager. While pursuing my dreams of becoming a professional songwriter, I noticed how the lives of the music artist friends and collaborators started to completely change through promoting their songs and their brand on social media. I had artists who I was writing songs with “blow up” on TikTok and suddenly overnight, they had publishing deal offers or record label deal offers on the table immediately. This amazed me, and I came to realize how much of an impact social media could have on an artist’s career or a business’s revenue, and I wanted to be a part of that.

I started my career in social media management as a part-time intern, working for a small music tech startup that needed help with building its social media presence. I quickly fell in love with the process of helping individuals or businesses create quality content that showcased their personalities and what they stood for as a company. I worked for several companies as part of their social media teams and really learned from those experiences, but I felt an appetite for more. This passion inspired me to create my own social media management company called “Social Media Savy”. As a freelance social media manager, I’ve been able to work with different businesses and individuals to create social media content specific to their needs, and it has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life. I’ve been able to pursue this dream of helping businesses grow, and I truly feel like I’ve been able to make a difference. I still continuously pursue my dream of being a professional songwriter alongside my dream of helping businesses and brands with their social media, and I am so grateful that my knowledge and my experience in both often coincide and actually benefit each other!

Would you say it’s been a smooth road, and if not what are some of the biggest challenges you’ve faced along the way?

It has not been the smoothest of roads, but it’s been absolutely worth it. A challenge that I faced when I started Social Media Savy was initially finding clients. I cold-called and cold-emailed a ridiculous number of people and was faced with many rejections every week. However, my experience in the music industry really helps me to have thick skin and view all rejections as redirections. I try my best to see every “no” as a “not yet” or as a redirection to a better “yes”, and this applies to finding social media clients and to songwriting. I’m actually very grateful for those rejections because they made me work harder and smarter. I started targeting specific businesses and creators that I believed in and who I knew I could truly help. Pursuing your dreams in any industry will always have pushback and will always come with rejection, but I know it makes you a stronger, more intentional entrepreneur and a better person overall.

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about what you do?
Absolutely! I am a social media manager, which means I help brands, businesses, and influencers create content to establish their social media presence. My responsibilities for each client vary, but I offer all forms of social media management. Some clients only need content ideas or content editing, but I offer that and everything in between. The most popular choice of my clients is full social media management. This means that I send original content ideas tailored to each client, visit the location of their business for content creation filming, edit all of the content, and post all of the content for my clients. Many of my clients are business owners who used to be extremely overwhelmed with trying to handle modern social media demands on top of all of the responsibilities that come with managing their own business. I’m so happy and proud that I’ve been able to take that stress off of them by handling all of their social media needs.

Where do you see things going in the next 5-10 years?
The social media industry is a difficult one to predict because it’s constantly evolving. My focus recently has been helping brands, businesses, and individuals create short-form video content for TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube Shorts, and I think it’s a great focal point for business owners’ online presence. TikTok has become the new search engine, like Google, where users search for specific answers such as “What cool restaurants are near me?”, “Where is the best dessert in Los Angeles?”, etc., which makes it a fantastic tool for businesses to use to promote the “answer” to the users’ questions: their business or product. I don’t foresee short-form video content going away ANYTIME in the next 5-10 years. However,  eventually, I think our current forms of social media will fade and morph into new platforms. This is similar to how Myspace is gone, Vine vanished and Facebook is declining in users of the younger generations. No one knows exactly what the future holds, but I believe social media managers are a fantastic investment for businesses. In this lifetime, there has never been a better way to reach potential customers, so it is absolutely worth it for businesses to hire a social media manager.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://socialmediasavy.org/
  
• Email: [email protected]

Image Credits
Lily Nelson https://www.instagram.com/itslilynelson/