24 hours to have an opinion or don't bother
I’ve been working in social media full time since 2015 and the world has shifted massively. There was a time when a good idea could sit for a good few days while the whole team got involved, and nobody panicked about being too late. Now everything runs on a countdown. If you haven’t got your hot take out within a day, people have already moved on.
I want to talk about two videos I made years ago, during my time as a content editor at Chain Reaction Cycles, and what they tell us about how differently we used to approach social media.
The fidget spinner craze
Fidget spinners were everywhere online and we kept watching the trend grow. So I thought, why don’t we try that. I spent a morning digging through old greasy bike parts in the warehouse, found what I needed, and set up my filming gear right there. Looking back – I wish I had at least tried to clean the chain a bit!!
Editing back then took a bit longer than it does now, so that side of it took me about a day. Then I wrote an article for the Hub website (long since gone), embedded the video in it, and shared it out across socials.
It blew up. First video I ever made that got Chain Reaction Cycles past a million views on Facebook. No big meeting, no campaign brief, just a pitch, a morning with some bike parts, and a bit of patience while the edit came together.
Nothing changed for me internally after that. No new resources, no shift in trust. It was a job well done and on to the next thing. That was just how it worked back then and it helped me learn what it meant to really build a community.
All in for the mannequin!
The mannequin challenge was a different approach altogether. Most of my content was made either by myself, or working with the other two members of my team at most. But this challenge needed more. I needed to approach the buying and merchandising team, the designers, the people who were never in front of the camera and pitch my idea to them. They all had to be in the same place at the same time, with props! No big deal right?
Oh yeah – they also had to hold those crazy poses while I walked amongst them filming!! That kind of planning simply isn’t built for a 24 hour news cycle. If I tried to pull that together today, the trend would be dead before I’d finished the group chat. In 2016, something like this brought the whole team together, it was a laugh, they loved the result and it was a stroke to the ego to see it well received on social media. Fast forward 10 years and it’s a different story.
I would still like to think before I post
There’s still value in taking the time to craft something well thought out. Not overthinking it into paralysis, just speaking on what you actually know, in your own voice, without rushing to have an opinion by lunchtime. And if a trend genuinely fits your brand, enjoy it. Have the laugh. Just don’t force something into a space it was never going to sit comfortably in.
None of this is really the fault of business owners trying to do their best on social media. It’s the pace the whole thing moves at now, and how sceptical people have become because it so often does feel like you’re being sold to. So how do you combat that when you’re also running the rest of your business, without a team, without a decade of experience behind you, and without the hours in the day to sit and craft the perfect post?
That’s the real question. And it’s the one I try to help people answer through Noodlehorse Media.
