5 years in social media and these are the 3 things that have kept my career movi
By Dayana Collazos Ibarra · September 30, 2026 · Curated by George's Blog
5 years in social media and these are the 3 things that have kept my career moving forward…
This month marks 5 years since I started my first ever job in social media!! Where has the time gone 🥺
Now that I'm coming to the end of my early-career stage, I wanted to share some of the things that have really made a difference to my career so far and have allowed me to grow so much quicker.
📌 Get comfortable with numbers and data
Whatever your role is within social media, learning to understand post performance and account analytics is key. Understand what matters, what shows growth and what contributes to wider department and business goals, for yourself and your stakeholders.
Once I started to understand the numbers better, I was able to produce better reports and present more confidently to my team, showing them what social media can really achieve, like more email sign-ups.
Performance tells you if your content and social efforts are actually working.
📌 Look outside your industry for real inspiration
When you're doing a social media audit or a content brainstorm, or just want to scroll the feed to get some inspo, don't just look within your world.
Lean into looking at other industries. It will give you fresh perspectives and ideas that pull you out of the box you operate in, and help spark different types of creativity.
At Folio we operate within the book space, but I'm always looking at clothing brands for inspo. It takes me away from the book world and really opens up my creativity.
📌 Work on your communication skills
This one challenged me the most. I've always struggled with public speaking, pushing back and standing up for myself.
We're in an industry where we constantly have to explain what we do and the value it brings, and in a lot of cases push back on things that don't align with our strategy or brand.
How you deal with that and set boundaries all comes down to how well you communicate and having the ability to have difficult conversations.
Have any of these helped you too, or what would you add? 👀
(I might actually make this a series… who knows 👀)