How I Work — Claire Trévien from Passle

I decided to start this new series, How I Work (inspired by LifeHacker), where I’ll be interviewing social media managers and marketing managers. I’ll be asking them a bunch of questions from what’s their hardest work challenge they’ve faced to what’s their favorite tool and anything that may pertain to their work life.

Our first interviewee is Claire Trévien. She received her PhD on the topic ‘Spectacle in Prints of the French Revolution’ and regularly contributes to Digital Doughnut, Business 2 Community, and B2B Marketing. Currently, she is the social media and marketing manager at Passle, a digital marketing start-up.

What does your daily routine consist of?

First thing in the morning I check my emails and social media accounts, last thing at night I go on ‘airplane mode’ and read a book — what happens in between tends to vary a fair amount depending on the week!

What’s your favorite blog?

Ok, for pleasure, nothing quite beats The Toast, I absolutely love Mallory Ortberg’s very funny history of art posts, see this one for example.

For work, I always find interesting posts over at Business 2 Community.

What’s your all-time favorite book? What book are you reading now?

Oh that’s a really difficult question! An all-time favorite is probably Victor Hugo’s L’Homme qui rit, which inspired all sorts of other works including (I’d argue) Batman’s Joker.

At the moment, I’ve given myself the challenge to review one poetry pamphlet a day in December for Sabotage Reviews, so I’m reading Kirsty Bowen’s fantastic Shipwrecks of Lake Michigan (dancing girl press) at the moment.

What are your top 3 work tools/apps that you can’t live without?

Buffer, Canva, an army’s worth of post-it notes.

Anyone specific inspired you or motivated you?

Many people have inspired me at various stages of my life and I am constantly finding new role models. Most recently, I found Harriet Creamer, speaking about collaboration at the PSMG annual conference last week very inspirational.

I’m wary of pedestals however, role models are still human, looking up to them shouldn’t mean condoning everything they do, or rejecting them entirely if they deviate from your idea of them.

What is the hardest challenge you’ve faced with social media?

I think learning the differences between B2B social media and B2C social media was initially a steep learning curve — different niches respond to different networks and approaches. This is also what makes social media marketing consistently interesting.

What are some things you do to save time?

I schedule social media posts using Buffer so that there is a layer of activity even when other work takes over.

I create newsletters using Passle’s tool, which automatically pulls up extracts of all the posts created that week — it saves me a lot of time!

What’d your favorite advice you’ve ever received? What’s one advice you would give others?

I’m not very good at taking advice, but I still like that Samuel Beckett chestnut:

I’d happily give that advice to anyone, fear of failure prevents fantastic projects from happening: throw yourself into every project that matters to you wholeheartedly.

Do you listen to music when working? If yes, what do you listen to?

I do indeed listen to music — it’s an open office so it helps me block out other noises! I have a couple of Spotify lists I go back to, mostly quite energetic stuff, the opposite of those ‘listen to the rain’ lists we’re meant to gravitate towards.

What’s your favorite and least favorite thing about being a social media manager?

I enjoy the variety of the work and the agility of social media marketing. Social media has a dark side too however, we’ve been seeing it on Twitter in the last few years for instance: doxing, harassment and threats, etc. You often feel you have to defend the positive sides of social media when you’re working in that world.

Do you have one rule you try to stick to?

Test again and again and adjust your campaign/behavior accordingly.