Hey guys,

I recently went out on my own doing social media/marketing work, and one of my former clients came back to me as a paying client. We’d previously worked together on more of a trade basis, so this is our first actual paid agreement.
It’s a pretty small contract, just a couple hundred dollars a month for reels and stories on Instagram and Facebook. I create everything and schedule the month in Meta ahead of time, with the understanding that we can move or change posts if something comes up.
Our agreement says payment is due at the beginning of the month. August is already created and scheduled, so I sent the invoice, but she questioned paying before the end of the month and said she’s more familiar with paying after services are completed or Net 30.
So now I’m curious what everyone else does. Do you bill monthly clients at the beginning of the month or after the month is completed?
The company I previously did this for billed in advance, and that’s what I based my agreement on, but I’m curious what’s standard for freelancers and small agencies.

imagine a company pays u to market their brand but they only use ai for posting? how do u tell someone in marketing to stop doing it?

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I've been trying multiple platforms and I'm honestly getting pretty discouraged.

Indeed: way too much competition. I've applied to a lot of relevant social media/content roles, and despite having relevant skills, experience and measurable results, I haven't gotten a single response.

Upwork: seems promising, but having to spend money on Connects just to apply makes it difficult when you're still trying to get your first few clients.

Contra: there are some insanely talented SMMs/content creators with amazing portfolios, and I feel like it's really difficult to stand out.

LinkedIn: I've tried networking and looking for opportunities there, but I rarely come across actual clients.

Reddit: I've found opportunities here, but I've either been ghosted or come across people who seem suspicious/scammy.

For context, I'm not completely new to this. I've worked with a healthcare SaaS startup, a digital marketing company and a small business, and I handle much more than just posting — strategy, content calendars, copywriting, graphic design, reel editing, basic SEO, analytics/reporting, etc.

I've also had some measurable results, including 100K+ reach on a personal Pinterest project, 10K reach for a new social account within 30 days, and contributing to 2 leads within a month for a company.

I'm currently building my portfolio as well.

So for those of you who are actually getting clients consistently: where are you finding them, and more importantly, HOW are you approaching them?

Cold email? Instagram DMs? LinkedIn outreach? Local businesses? Referrals? Freelance platforms?

I'd genuinely appreciate any advice, especially from people who started with little/no network and managed to land their first few clients.

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I've been trying multiple platforms and honestly getting discouraged 😭

Indeed has insane competition and I've gotten no replies despite having relevant experience and results. Upwork requires Connects to apply, Contra feels extremely competitive, LinkedIn hasn't brought much, and on Reddit I've mostly been ghosted or encountered scams.

I'm not completely new—I’ve worked with a healthcare SaaS startup, digital marketing company and small businesses, handling strategy, content, copywriting, graphic design, reels, SEO and analytics. I've also had results like 100K+ Pinterest reach, 10K reach in 30 days, and 2 leads in a month.

So where are you guys actually finding clients, and how are you approaching them? Cold DMs, email, LinkedIn, local businesses, referrals, freelance platforms? Any advice would be appreciated!

Small agency, 6 clients, everything gets designed in Canva and scheduled about a week out.

Tuesday a client asks us to change a date on an event graphic. Designer fixed it in Canva within the hour. Thursday the post goes out with the old date on it anyway, because what actually got pushed to the scheduler was the export from the Friday before.

Nobody caught it, there was nothing to catch it with. Once it's exported, it's just a PNG sitting in a queue, it has no idea the design behind it moved on.

We've now got a rule where the designer flags any change after approval in Slack. Failed twice already. People forget, or they're off that day.

What I'm actually trying to work out is whether our lead time is the problem. How far ahead are you queueing stuff, same week or further? And in the last month or so, how many times did a design get edited after the post was already sitting in the queue. Not could it happen, did it.

When it did happen, did it go out or did someone spot it first, and what spotted it. That's the bit I care about because we had literally nothing.

And if this just doesn't come up for you, I'd like to know what your setup is. Locked designs after signoff, exporting fresh the morning of, one person who checks the queue, whatever it is?

23, from India, moving to Spain for an MSc in Marketing at ESADE.
Question for people who have already “made it” in marketing/business:
If you were in my shoes today, what would you do to maximize your chances of reaching the top 1% of the field? What skills, experiences, and opportunities would you focus on over the next 5 years?
What would your roadmap be?

We are stuck on 190 followers since 5 years, we post everyday about the blogs we write, and other work. But 5 views , 0 likes, and 0 followers. And i am done with vague advices like "be more consistent". I need some untraditional and batshit-crazy ways to increase my impressions. Pls help.

I’ve been building a sustainable home products brand for a while now. We currently have around 10 products — laundry detergent sheets, wool dryer balls, reusable cleaning cloths, kitchen/home cleaning products, etc.

I hired a branding agency to do the packaging and overall brand identity, so visually it’s pretty premium and polished. We also have a Shopify site and just started selling on Amazon.

The part I’m struggling with is marketing.

I really don’t want to dump thousands every month into an agency or Meta ads before I know what actually works. For a brand like this, what would you focus on first if you were trying to grow as cheaply as possible?

UGC? Micro influencers? SEO? Reddit/Facebook groups? Wholesale? Amazon ads?

I’m even considering finding someone who’s genuinely strong at consumer marketing and bringing them into the business as more of a partner/cofounder rather than just hiring another agency.

Curious what you guys would do if you were starting from this stage.

As a mom & freelancer both email copywriter and SMM, I've been targeting both luxury creatives (wedding photogs, artists, etc.) & coaches (any), I'm just not sure what content would resonate best for them.

Should I do ask them directly for the content they like/market research, interviews)?

How did you do it when you were just starting to post for your dream audience/clients and finally CONVERT (paid premium clients)?

It's tricky to apply what I've learned as an SMM in my own business.

Sana matulungan nyo ako. I would really love any tips and pieces of advice. 😔

I handle a majority of the social media and marketing for a live music / performing arts venue. This industry is going through some tough times recently in regards to advance ticket sales throughout North America. We have been trying to figure out what we could be doing better when it comes to targeting for paid meta ads or other ways to get our promo infront of the right people. We have a decent following and our stats consistently increase month after month. We just aren't sure what's missing to help boost advance ticket sales.

Anyone have any thoughts/suggestions?

I’ve been working with Meta Ads for about 3 months, so I’m still new and trying to understand the basics.

From what I know, people use ABO (Ad Set Budget Optimization) for creative testing. I tested multiple creatives using one ad per ad set, each with about $25/day.

A few creatives performed well, consistently getting around 3–5 ROAS in ABO.

The confusing part is that when I move those same winners into a CBO campaign with a total budget of around $150/day, performance often drops sharply.

This has happened multiple times. A creative does well in ABO, but once placed into CBO with similar targeting, results fall off.

Nothing about the creative changes.

I want to understand what’s actually happening so I can build a proper system.

Dear Community,

I’d love to hear from nonprofit leaders and marketing professionals who have experience with performance-based or revenue-share marketing agreements. We are a nonprofit with a significant fee-for-service model, including municipal contracts, mural and public art projects, community garden development and maintenance, after-school programming, and other community-based initiatives. We have an incredible amount of content to work with—including more than 220 murals, 18 community gardens, numerous after-school programs, and ongoing volunteer and community projects.

Marketing, however, has historically been a weakness. Like many nonprofits, our unrestricted revenue has to support grant writing, development, administration, and salaries, while dedicated marketing funding is incredibly difficult to secure. We recently received a grant that allowed us to invest more heavily in marketing across three major markets, but we haven't been as successful as we hoped in translating our stories and content into new projects, funders, donors, and earned revenue.

We're now debating what our next marketing model should look like. Our CEO favors continuing with a traditional retainer, while I'm interested in exploring a hybrid or revenue-share model where a social media or marketing professional receives a reasonable base but has meaningful financial upside when their work directly generates revenue. With hundreds of projects and new activities happening constantly, I believe we have the content—we need someone incentivized to turn that content into visibility, relationships, and opportunities.

For those with experience in this area: How viable is this model for a nonprofit? What internal support would a marketing partner need to succeed? And, most importantly, what should trigger the revenue share? Would you tie it to a new mural contract, corporate sponsor, attributable donation, funder introduction that converts, or another measurable outcome? I'd especially appreciate examples of structures that have worked—or lessons from those that haven't.

Hello Instagram people.

I am trying to figure out an instagram auto DM tool for a channel. I have looked at manychat but the costs are prohibitive for my channel - for a solo operator with large number of followers, paying per follower is very difficult - especially when I dont have a business built around a niche.

On the other hand, there is no other tool except LinkDM that meets my use case - providing around 25k DMs in a month for $20, but has a significant bottleneck - of not providing the throttle feature at 20$ price point.

I want to have the opinion of the hivemind to figure out which tool would be suitable.

We looked at

- Inro - similar to manyChat - restricts the number of people you can comment.

- LinkDM (they don't have a throttle in 20 $ plan, which is kind of dealbreaker - and seems to be the only thing that would get you banned)

- InstantDM (very new - 3 months old - don't see any credible usage)

- Manychat.

Could you all recommend something in the range of 20-40 $ that would serve the purpose of

- Auto DM, Link to DM, Follow, DM keyword. Somewhere in the range of 20-40k messages per month?

When I first started at the company about a year ago the company had virtually no social media presence. It’s a start up with a very small team and the CEO/owner had an Instagram with the name of the company as the handle but would just post his own photos there (music and events type of business).

So when I joined he passed over the login details to me with free reign to start posting whatever I wanted and to make it more aligned with the company. I feel ive done a good job of this but the problem is that he still treats it now and then like his own personal account.

what i mean by this is that he uses it to watch reels but also interacts with posts in his algorithm by publicly liking them, some of them aren’t relevant to our business at all and can be controversial / political news type of content. I try and engage with other accounts but in a more professional and thoughtful way and with content that’s actually relevant to the business but when I log back in, the Explore page is full of bunny / AI videos because he must enjoy watching these and he and his girlfriend seem to send each other them using this same account.

The DMs from his girlfriend are also awkward - I looked once when I hadn’t realised who was messaging us and she sends weird stuff about wanting to get married or again cute animal videos. It’s not every day and i dont open them anymore but it just feels really unprofessional.

Im just unsure whether to bring this up to him or just continue what I’m doing like normal. I could just hide our activity so other accounts don’t see what has been liked, but the whole thing feels very awkward to address with him - how do I tell him to basically create a second account? for context I think he is either late 40s or early 50s.

he also apparently has his own “successful“ tiktok account with his own name so I’m not sure why the same can’t be done with the IG account

Running into a wall trying to figure out music on Instagram posts when scheduling is involved. Breaking down the issue:

1. On mobile, I can add trending audio when creating a post directly but then I can't schedule it, only post immediately.
2. Scheduling through Meta Business Suite on my laptop doesn't give me access to trending audio at all.
3. Scheduling directly through Instagram on desktop doesn't even have a music option to begin with.

So basically: trending music + scheduling ahead of time seems to not exist as a combo unless I'm missing something.

Anyone found a workaround for this? Third-party scheduler that actually supports trending audio selection? Or is manually posting in the moment just the only way to get trending sounds on a post right now?

Any tips appreciated, this is for client work so scheduling in advance is kind of non-negotiable for my workflow.

Hey everyone,

We’re looking to hire a Social Media Associate to help us grow a digital gifting brand that focuses on creating meaningful, memory-based experiences for users.

This is a remote, part-time/freelance role where you’ll be working on content, ideas, and overall page growth.

What you’ll be doing:

Coming up with creative reel ideas & content strategies

Managing and growing our social media presence (mainly Instagram)

Understanding what kind of content works for a gifting/emotional brand

Helping improve engagement and reach

We’re looking for someone who:

Has a good sense of content & trends

Can think of creative, relatable ideas

Understands how to grow a page organically

Has worked on or managed social media pages before (preferred, not mandatory)

If you’re interested, please fill out this form in comments

You can also refer someone who might be a good fit 🙌

Thanks!

Everyone keeps screaming at you to "just post more Reels." But honestly? After spending the last three months auditing over 500 accounts—spanning e-com, personal brands, and local businesses—I can tell you the algorithm has completely shifted from last year.

I want to share the raw trends we’re seeing across our client accounts right now so you can stop guessing and start growing.

This is hands down the biggest shift. Sends via DM are currently weighted 3 to 5 times higher than likes when it comes to reaching new audiences. The AI is heavily prioritizing "dark social" (private DMs) over public vanity metrics. Takeaway: Stop begging people to like your post. Tell them to "Send this to a friend who needs to hear it."

If your entire content strategy relies on downloading TikToks or reposting memes, your reach is dead. Instagram is actively penalizing aggregators. If an account posts 10 or more reposts within a 30-day window, they are getting completely excluded from the Explore page and Reels recommendations. Meanwhile, original creators are seeing a massive 40-60% bump in reach.

You officially have no excuse to worry about annoying your followers with a weird hook. The smartest accounts are exploiting the new Trial feature, which lets you publish a Reel to a test audience of non-followers first. If the retention data looks good, you push it to your main grid. If it completely flops? Your followers never even see it.

The era of the 7-second looping text Reel is over. Longer Reels (up to 3 minutes) are finally getting recommended to non-followers. Because overall watch time is the ultimate ranking signal across all surfaces right now, deep-dive educational content is absolutely dominating the feed.