Humans Behind the Handles: Lauren Plüss

In our second episode of HBTH, we chatted with the brilliant Lauren Plüss.

Lauren's a freelance Marketing & Digital Comms Strategist tells us about what life behind the handle is like for her, how she protects her mental health, and what she’s learned along the way.

The Journey

Like many of us, Lauren didn’t have a set plan after university. She interned at several charities, exploring different roles, before landing a job that covered “all aspects of charity work — volunteer management, fundraising, comms, finances, everything.” It was there she fell in love with marketing.

Soon after, she joined Capability Scotland in a digital marketing role, and then worked with a range of other charities in digital roles. Back then, a “digital” title could mean anything from “fixing the office printer to running social media” but Lauren learned to set boundaries and lay the groundwork for a thriving online presence.

Since then, she’s earned a Digital Marketing Diploma and built a diverse career working both in-house and freelance. These days, she starts each week with her own one-person stand-up: mapping out what needs doing, which clients’ content is due, and what’s on deck for the days ahead.

Biggest Pet-Peeve

For Lauren – and for many of us working in social – the biggest misconception is that “you can’t just post something on social media and expect to see results straight away. You need to have a strategy, a plan!”

There is a lot of effort that goes into each post. We need to think of the impact, the audience, the tone, the platform, the sources and the goal to make it worthwhile.

“That last minute request from a random person within an organisation asking you to put out a PDF on social media”, as Lauren puts it, isn’t going to help.

The Wins and the Learnings

Lauren’s proudest moment to date came while working at Young Scot during COVID: “Every time there was an update from the First Minister, we had to work out what was relevant to young people and write it in a way that was understandable to them.” Her team’s work had a real-life impact on young people during a crucial and very anxiety-provoking time.

But not everything was perfect. Her biggest whoopsie also happened around then, when she was conducting an interview with Scotland’s First Minister and the National Clinical Director and the phone fell off the tripod. “Of all the times that you wanted that to happen, it's not in front of the First Minister and not when it's a livestream…”

We feel you. Most of us have been in a similar situation and know what it’s like!

The Advice

When you’re the human behind the handle, there can be a lot of pressure to be “always on” so it’s important to know how to unplug, take a step back and rest.

Before she went freelance, Lauren asked for a work phone so she could literally turn off. “Sometimes I would just be sitting on the sofa watching telly and find myself in the work Instagram account and I was like, how did I even get here?”

Now, as a freelancer, she has a phone work partition, so she has separate work apps and personal apps that she can turn off at different times.

In addition, she would encourage everyone working in digital to: take their holiday (please do!), take lunch breaks (we all need to eat and recharge) and have a good relationship with their line manager. When working on campaigns that can cause a personal response or activation and they need to step away, everyone should feel “like they’re not going to get repercussions for saying they can’t work on it that day.”

Lastly, she wants to remind us that “metrics aren’t everything”. You never know how much a post has impacted someone’s day. So although it’s important to examine the numbers, when something doesn’t work well, “take it as an opportunity, not a failure” and remember that real impact is harder to measure.

Thank you so much to Lauren for the thoughtful advice and for sharing your expertise with us!

Join us for the next episode of Humans Behind the Handles as we continue talking to comms professionals about what it's really like running social for charities and non-profits!