Celebrating ten years of Stephanie Reed Communications Ltd!

I have just marked TEN YEARS of running my own social media marketing business.  

And what a ride it has been. During this time I have welcomed three sons and the best thing about my work, by far, is the flexibility it has given me to look after my kids.

Over the last decade I’ve had the pleasure of promoting the likes of Historic Sussex Hotels, Synergy - The Retreat Show, Mar-Bella Collection Greece, The Influence Crowd, Riad Elegancia, Healing Hotels of the World, Tauck, Releasd and Tria Beauty; helping them to generate more buzz and sales from their social media presence.

Most of the time I’m working from home but my business has taken me overseas too (another favourite part of my job!); including capturing content for Synergy - The Retreat Show in Mexico and Bali, Mar-Bella Collection Greece in Greece, Tauck on a European river cruise and Les Bordes Estate in France; plus managing PR for Vision Expo in New York with the brilliant Gossip Genie (where I developed a lot of my social media skills).

Important lessons I’ve learnt along the way:

• Nice clients are even better than the 'cool' clients. What really matters is working with good people where there’s mutual respect.

• You need boundaries. I’ve always struggled with this, as I love what I do and I’m fully invested. It's tricky to find balance between going the extra mile and over-servicing. It’s vital from the start to set boundaries with clients around the way you communicate and what days you’re available.

• Don’t work for free. I genuinely think there’s a misconception that the ‘free’ in ‘freelance’ means that you work for free. Be sure to charge for any work outside your remit and don’t feel guilty for asking to be fairly compensated.

• Your own marketing matters. A large chunk of my business leads have come through LinkedIn, thanks to organic posts promoting what I do. I also started to get attention from well-known brands once I invested in professional photos and a website.

• Social media management and content creation are two separate things. Ten years ago, these elements would often get grouped together but with the emergence of reels, stories, etc, content capture/creation became more time-consuming and required different skills. I do both and enjoy doing both, but the latter needs to be costed for separately.

• Social media is still undervalued. I look forward to the day when more businesses recognise the array of skills and time involved in doing social media well, and compensate their social media managers fairly.

Thanks to the clients who have believed in me and for the support from peers. Here's to the next ten years!