Beth Webb, a social media strategist, has worked at Harrogate-based marketing agency Extreme since 2018.
She’s worked on a wide range of accounts including Nisa Retail, Wagg pet food, ICOACHKIDS, as well as award-winning campaigns for leading soup brand, GLORIOUS! We found out how a week in her life looks.
Monday
Oh hello Monday, my old friend. I always feel like Mondays dictate my week, so I start with a 30-minute dog walk with Bear my Cockapoo to get some fresh air, some morning steps in and a chance to wake-up before a day at my desk at home begins.
We try to stick to no-meeting Mondays (and Fridays) at Extreme, so it’s always a WFH day – great for scheduling in time for those chunkier, please-don’t-disturb tasks. Interspersed with some Bear belly rubs, of course.
So, enough of the admin and down to a truly important task – informing my colleagues of what I watched over the weekend. (Since no one asked, this of course included Eurovision and a stream of Little Mix’s last concert…)
Afterwards, it’s time to get my head down. Typically this includes either a proposal, social audit or social strategy. I find I produce my best work whilst accompanied by a banging soundtrack (I’m talking Disney, Mamma Mia, Musicals or naughties pop).
Throw lunch in there at about 12:30, followed by another walkies session with Bear to contribute to those miles (we’re currently supporting our 2022 charity partner, Yorkshire Cancer Research in their Step Out For Yorkshire Challenge, so every step counts!).
I’ll aim to clock off for around 4:30, and then head to the gym to really be that cliché you see on TikTok – I definitely don’t get my 3527 litres of water in though like they recommend.
Tuesday
It’s an office day today, so I’m up even earlier for the dog walk before I hit the road and set off for Windsor House – opposite Harrogate’s undeniably resplendent Valley Gardens – for around 8:15, attempting to avoid the school and work traffic. We’re so lucky to have a nice panorama of Harrogate from the sixth floor!
One of my clients is currently running a global campaign to youth coaches in France and Spain, so I spend the time checking over the ads, and setting up the next phase so they’re ready to go live.
And just like that, my bank of desks are full (hey Donna, Sally, Laura and Lucie) and the office is louder. Days in the office tend to include more in-person meetings, so I’m moving from my desk to the Outside In meeting room as this week we’re prepping a slides deck to present to one of our clients with ideas for Q3.
My afternoon doesn’t get any quieter as we have a client joining us in the office for a two-hour Discovery workshop to get to know them better. We do these when a new client signs on with us, so we can ensure that the strategy that follows is not only completely bespoke, but really is approached with a 360 view.
Once the session is over, I tidy up the notes that were taken and write up the key takeaways. Then, the clock strikes 5pm and that’s my cue to head home to make sure I miss as much of the rush hour as I possibly can!
Wednesday
Happy hump day! My day is starting somewhere different today at a top secret location as part of our agency’s 20th anniversary activity. After meeting our Social Designer, Sally, we spend an hour collecting content ahead of our launch.
Then it’s back to the office just in time for a morning of meetings – Wednesday is the busiest day in the office, so there are some key recurring meetings.
Lunch comes and goes, and as it gets to the afternoon I make the most of the office being busy by getting some TikTok content created alongside Sally, finding some willing team members to be part of the show – just so it’s not always my pea head!
Next up, we’re back for a team training session for Google Analytics 4 – as a creative brain who works better with ideas, it definitely goes in one ear and out the other at parts, but it’s important for me to understand the changes and how I can use this in the future to shape campaigns and report on success or insights.
After that, I’d pencilled in some time with the creative team to follow up from one of our ideations to look through and green-light which ideas to progress into design. Then before I know it, it’s about 5pm and time for me to head home from a very Beth and Sally day!
(Unless it’s a Wacky Wednesday, the first Wednesday of every month. In which case it’s to the pub with the rest of the team – we usually start at Foundry Project in Harrogate!)
Told you Wednesdays were busy…
Thursday
I love going into the office to see the team, but I certainly don’t get that much done, so Thursdays are very much my ‘catching-up-from-Wednesday’ day. After my morning dog walk, I’m back at my desk bright and early to schedule some content for Extreme and brief in some new artwork.
Later that morning, I have a call with the team to talk through a brief that has come in for social campaigns and management. As this particular brief covers all aspects of social media, it was a full team meeting which was fun.
Thursday afternoon includes an internal catch up on one of our clients with the project team to check in on everything, so my time is spent planning for that and then looking at any follow up actions to steer the strategy for that client.
Following that, I virtually join our monthly #LifeAtExtreme meeting, to plan the upcoming month, chat through internal goings on and finalise some exciting new employee reward and recognition activations.
In between all my afternoon meetings, I’m setting up the audit and strategy docs for the client we had the Discovery meeting with earlier that day. Then I’ll spend around half an hour toggling my time, as inevitably I’ve forgotten to do it the days I’m in the office so have that impossible task of trying to remember what you did in those gaps between meetings.
Friday
More like Fri-yay (cringe, I know). We’re back with another no-meeting day, so today is a day my brain gets a chance to breathe, and it’s the day I usually leave my idea research and campaign planning to.
So after my usual morning routine (you know that by now), I’ll spend the morning reading the ideation or campaign brief, and then dig deeper into Pinterest, TikTok, Twitter, Prolific North – great inspiration for ideas. (It’s one of my favourite things to do).
At midday I’ll get outside again for my lunchtime walk, where I’ll usually spend half of it jotting down notes in my phone because my brain has gone into idea overdrive.
Then, in the afternoon I’ll start work on the audit I set up on Thursday, looking at the client’s social activity to date, what their competitors are (and aren’t) doing, plus some other golden nuggets that will help feed into the strategy.
I’ll aim to finish around 4pm on a Friday (bring on July when our Summer Fridays kick in and we finish at lunch), tying up any final emails or tasks for the week and giving my team members some well deserved ‘high-fives’, before closing my laptop and saying hello to the weekend.
