This week we will be diving into the world of Brooke Inhat, the current manager of social media communications at American Express. With her years of experience leading up to this position, Brooke was able to share great insight on how to stay relevant yet appropriate in the corporate communications world.
As a brief overview of Brooke’s impressive resume, she previously worked with the brand management team for 4 years at AMEX before being promoted. In her role she focuses on reviewing analytics and then creating an appropriate social strategy to best suit each channels needs.
Working in a corporate and professional space is very different then a small or stand alone business when it comes to staying trendy and breaking boundaries. In Brooke’s role, she must evaluate what trends could actually be done by their team and ensure they follow what the brand values. In a time when everyone is focused on virality and feels the need to take part in every trend to grow their following, it is still important to take a step back to ensure what you are posting does not completely dismiss all the work done on creating a brand image (unless that’s what you’re going for). We don’t need to see AMEX’s team posting the newest dance trend but maybe they’re using the song or doing a slideshow trend instead.
Another note Brooke had made was in regards to commenting and connecting with users online as another aspect of social media management. I find it so funny when I go on Tik Tok and there is a video that has blown up and all you see in the comments are these large corporations commenting “you ate that up.” or “Great work, ___!). This is a new common way for brands to relate to their audience as a personable identity. Furthermore, connecting through mentions or helping customers out through DM, especially for AMEX, is a great way to improve the brand’s reputation.
The last piece of advice I wanted to touch on was the use of organic content vs paid content. It is interesting seeing the shift or balance of real time posting and stylized content in large organizations and how that affects content budget and production. As Brooke mentioned, when they post a story directly from their iPhone at a hosted event, that performs better than a paid for reel or picture because as consumers we want to know that the brand is real and that is one way we can know someone is behind the account and is the voice for AMEX.
Overall, it was lovely to hear Brooke’s insight and hear all of her tips in social media management. As mentioned previously, it is important to have skills in metrics and photography when applying for jobs after university because even in corporations, they’ll be put to work.
