What the hell is full stack social anyway?

Before we start this, I just want to reiterate, that I really, really hate stupid buzzwords. BUT. I have been looking for a way to describe what it is that I do succinctly, and I believe I’ve found it.

A full stack developer is someone who has an understanding of each part of the process, back end through front end. A full stack designer is a someone who knows how to code the front end stuff they are designing.

Here’s a great description of what full stack strategy is.

I do full stack social media

That essentially means I’m cross-disciplinary and able to take a project to completion.

Back when social started, it was one job: ‘social media manager.’ Then as Twitter and Facebook grew and more platforms were born, it stopped being a place for just the internet cool kids and people began to realise it was a slightly bigger gig than we first thought.

We saw the advent of community managers, and social media copywriters and social strategists and social media analysts. And then we needed to monetise it somehow, and we started seeing ‘paid social’ experts appear.

That’s where I come in.

I’ve been working in social since the very beginning, so I’ve worked across all the various disciplines at various points in my career.

For me, doing full-stack social manifests like this:

• I will deep-dive research your audience. Using a bespoke suite of software that I have put together I offer social media audits, competitor reviews and more importantly full social listening capabilities to be able to identify very clear audiences for your project. 
• I can write your social strategy for any or all of the social media platforms that are appropriate for you/your brand (this is most or what I do these days)
• Does this strategy include a big creative idea? I can make this happen! I lead the creative and use a team of designers and developers to produce the content
• I can also implement your strategy (My community or social media managers are skilled at writing for and managing all aspects of your social media.)
• Need paid social advertising? (Probably, it’s 2019 – the best social includes an element of paid!) I write paid strategy that works alongside your organic social. What’s the point of having a media agency who don’t talk to your organic social team? I understand how to get your content in front of the right people, how to get them engage with it, and all importantly how to get people to convert. Across all platforms.
• Want to know how it all went? I LOVE analytics. KPIS are my thing. What’s the point of doing something if you’re not going to use the learnings to improve?

What’s the advantage of having one person see the process through from beginning to end? There are a few.

1. A strategist who also manages communities from time to time, will have a better grasp of what is possible in terms of execution
2. Creative ideas work differently on social than other more traditional digital creative. A full stack social person is going to be able to help you understand how and where the content you’re creating is going to be distributed and what you need to consider during this process
3. You don’t need to hire a separate copywriter to write updates/blog posts. That’s a thing we can all do!
4. There’s less miscommunication, as one person who understands each element of the process is involved from start to finish.

So, that’s it. All it means is that I can work across any part of your digital output, and understand it. This doesn’t mean I want to community manage everything that I work on or be responsible for the creative, but it means I understand how to. And that’s always an advantage.