In the fast-paced world of digital marketing, staying ahead of the curve is both a challenge and a necessity. To gain insights into navigating this dynamic landscape, we sat down with Chris Reeve, the driving force behind Reeve Social Media. With a rich background spanning affiliate marketing, graphic design, and social media strategies across various industries, Chris has carved out a reputation for excellence in social media marketing.

From reflecting on his journey and the evolution of social media to predicting future trends and discussing the impact of AI, Chris offers a wealth of knowledge and a unique perspective on the industry. In this exclusive interview, we dive into his biggest moments of growth, the underrated platforms that businesses should watch, and even his personal take on social media trends. Whether you’re a marketing professional or simply curious about the world of social media, Chris's insights provide valuable guidance and inspiration.

Q: You’ve had a great career in marketing which has got you to this point of running your own business. Can you tell us briefly what you did before starting Reeve Social Media, and how did that experience influence your approach to social media marketing?

A: “Before I started Reeve Social Media I worked in a number of marketing roles from affiliate marketing, to graphic design, to e-mail marketing and various social media marketing roles focusing on B2B technology, recruitment and sport. This helped my ambition with Reeve Social Media because I learnt how I wanted to do things and how not to do things...”

Q: How do you think the role of social media in marketing has evolved over the past few years, and how has your agency adapted to these changes?

A: “Social media has gone from being a nice to have, to a non-negotiable. It's more important than ever before to be ever present on the key platforms that your target market are hanging out on. The agency has had to not only adapt but also keep up, and that's why I spend 20% of my time on learning and development to make sure that we are up to date with not only the latest trends on the algorithm updates, but also how the platforms are responding to specific content”

Q: Your business has been going from strength to strength, you’re working with some amazing businesses. What’s been the biggest growth moment for Reeve Social Media so far, and how did you handle it?

A: “Thank you so much for those kind words, I really appreciate the compliment. It's really tough in business at the moment and it's a real tough job running a business, and so I do really appreciate the kind feedback. The biggest growth moment for Reeve Social Media so far has been a year and a half ago when we landed a large cluster of financial firms, luckily I have a trusted local team that are in place and are able to turn their hands to anything and everything at scale. I trust them implicitly they enjoy doing what they do and therefore we were able to take on those accounts after winning them and help them excel on all social media platforms.”

Q: Cystal ball time, we marketers like to try and predict the future! So, looking ahead, what do you think will be the biggest challenge or opportunity for social media marketers in the next few years?

A: “Not so much of a crystal ball prediction but can really make it clear to people that video content is going to become a non-negotiable if you want to cut through the noise on social media and win more customers/clients for your business. Regardless of platform, social media has been TikTok-ified to the degree that our attention spans are sapping further, meaning that it is again going to be a non-negotiable for businesses to really understand how to grab attention, everything starts with attention, and this will be the only way you will succeed on social media. In the future we are also going to see a huge transition into AI, we're already seeing massive developments there but we're going to see much more in the future, and we will be in an AI first social media universe.”

Q: You work with lots of different businesses, across sectors and sizes. Through that mix of experience, which social media platforms do you think are underrated for businesses, and why?

A: “The social media platform that is still massively underrated for businesses is LinkedIn. The organic reach on this platform is where it was for Facebook back in 2011, where it was really easy to grow a large audience at scale for your business. It is more important than ever before that people stop treating LinkedIn like an online CV site and more like a social media broadcasting tool, where you can communicate with your customers in multiple different ways take advantage of the LinkedIn organic reach before it gets saturated with too much content, and therefore too many ads just like every other social media website.”

Q: AI is everywhere at the moment and like many businesses, you’re looking at ways to integrate AI to improve your productivity. What role do you think AI and automation will play in the future of social media marketing?

A: “Your comments about AI are completely correct, it's definitely important to bring AI into your marketing mix as soon as possible, not just for efficiency but also for improved quality of content. The only thing you have to be very very careful with is facts, and that is that AI is only grabbing facts from a few years ago and not all time, which means when it comes to AI for social media marketing, yes you can use it to get the ball rolling but we cannot emphasise enough how important is to optimise that content to ensure facts are correct and also so you are not posting the same content as everyone else and therefore being penalised in the algorithm. But yes, we are advocates of AI technology in social media marketing.”

Q: We love your monthly Coffee with Chris video podcast, you’ve had some great guests (including Naked Dan!) What has been the biggest challenge in running a video podcast, and how do you keep each episode fresh and engaging?

A: “Thanks for your kind words about coffee with Chris, Dan wasn’t too bad of a guest I suppose... in all seriousness he was a fantastic guest, and it was a pleasure to have him on the show. Hosting a podcast is a fantastic strategy for multiple different reasons, if you are in the business world one of the things that you can do off the back of a podcast is get multiple different pieces of content, short form video clips, long form articles from transcribed audio, and multiple different things to post on your social channels. It is a great way of building rapport with your trusted partners with your business affiliates and also with your customers of the future. You can keep each episode fresh and engaging by taking the time to properly research each guest and getting under the bonnet of their personal mission and their why, as well as what they do within their day job. The more you make a podcast about getting the most out of the guest, the more successful it will become. But hosting a podcast does come with a warning, you have to make sure that you have at least 10 episodes in the bank at any one time to ensure a frequency, so many people are starting podcasts and then they are not getting over the 10 episode number and that is because they are not organised and they don't have enough time to sustain it.”

Q: If you could go back in time and give yourself one piece of advice when you were just starting out, what would it be?

A: “The advice that I would give my younger self before I entered the world of business would be that everything is gonna be alright, you're doing better than you think you are, and everyone is making it up as they go along. It is very natural to suffer with self-doubt and impostor syndrome, but the longer you are in business the more you realise that everyone is struggling with the same challenges as you and you should be confident in your ability and your business.”

Q: You’ve got a bit of a side hustle, haven’t you? So, wearing your Talk Norwich City and Canary Call hat – If you could sign any Norwich City player, past or present, to join the Reeve Social Media team, who would it be and why?

A: “First of all, congratulations this is the best business interview question I have ever had. The Norwich City player that I would sign to join the Reeve Social Media team from past or present would be Tom Trybull, he was a German midfielder that was signed under the Daniel Farke reign and was a midfield machine. He wasn't afraid to put a tackle in and at the same time he retained his energy throughout the game, and continued to deliver so consistently in every single match and therefore he would be my pick, the German efficiency”

Q: Lastly, just for fun, what’s the one social media trend you secretly hope never comes back?

A: “There was a social media trend at the start of 2024 where someone was filming and zooming in and out on different team members dancing going through items of clothing that they were wearing. I’m a big believer in jumping on trends where appropriate for your business but some are worth a miss, in my personal opinion I wouldn't be best pleased if I was engaging with a business where the Managing Director was clocking off on a Friday at 3pm wearing a swimsuit.”