We spoke to Corinne Clark, a freelance specialist.
Corinne works in in social media, marketing strategy, and comms campaign management. For this episode, we focused on the shift from working in-house at big organisations to supporting teams from the outside.
The Freelance Jump
Corinne began her love affair with freelancing when she was a broadcast journalist. Before moving into digital communications, she spent many years working in radio, eventually shifting toward the website side of things, including podcasts and digital news. This led her into the world of PR, tourism and marketing comms, where she started “doing more social content” and moved into the charity sector.
Before returning to freelancing, she worked in the social media team at Great Osmond Street Hospital and was the Head of Social at Sightsavers (where she worked for nine years). She then wanted to “work with different clients [...] meeting new people and building a community.”
And here she is, a year later, after taking that plunge.
Outside vs. Inside
Going freelance has given Corinne a new sense of creative freedom. In-house, she says, you can feel like you’re “trying to sell social media internally”, that “people aren’t really listening”, or that internal politics stop you from trying new things. As a freelancer, the focus is different: you’re thinking more about the audience and what’s working externally.
Another benefit of freelancing is that she’s “learnt a lot from different clients on the way they structure campaigns and the way they work together internally”, which has been refreshing.
While rewarding, it has also come with its challenges. She initially underestimated just “how much time goes into doing things” and “oversold how much content [she] could produce in a day”. After doing 12-hour days on the regular, she’s learned to give herself “time to absorb and understand what [the client is] looking for so [she] can give really quality work” as well as better “valuing [the] time and the thought” that goes into her work.
Successes and Learnings
Corinne has “definitely been one of those social media managers who's been convinced that jumping on a trend is going to work” and that the content she’s spent so much time on “is going to go viral - and it never does”. We’ve all been there!
This has taught her to distance herself from the content she consumes on social media and focus solely on listening to her audience. “It is cool when something happens that you're not expecting because you learn so much about the world you're living in and the communities you're operating in.”
On the opposite side of the spectrum, one of her most cherished successes was when she overhauled the teenage section of the GOSH hospital website. She worked directly with teenage patients and their families to “co-design and shape what it was going to look like.” This participatory approach is something she “carries with [her] through all [her] roles”.
Staying Grounded
Corinne has experienced burnout firsthand, having spent periods working seven days a week and being constantly tied to social channels. That experience influenced how she wanted to work in-house, prompting her to do things differently for both herself and her team.
Now, as a freelancer, she struggles a little more to hold her boundaries: “the stress of maybe not quite knowing where your next job's going to come from means that you're always, constantly on it.” But, she always tries to balance her days by going outside and purposely not thinking about social media.
Her biggest piece of advice for someone working in digital comms? “Think about the audience first. [...] Rely on the audience insights” and, if you don’t have the data, make sure you “build yourself some slack into your campaign planning and do some testing.”
Thank you so much, Corinne, for talking to us about your experience!
Join us next time on Humans Behind the Handles as we continue to meet the real people behind the social feeds of charities and non-profits across the sector.