Samantha Wiltshire
Sam is a social media strategist and personal brand manager who takes the overwhelm and confusion out of marketing yourself on Instagram and LinkedIn.
She offers practical, unflappable expertise to help you create content, show up consistently and reach your goals.
- Tell us a little bit about your business… / or the organisation you work for.
Samantha is the Founder of Samantha Wiltshire Social, a digital marketing agency that specialises in building personal brands for female founders, professionals and entrepreneurs on LinkedIn and Instagram. She’s passionate about putting women in the spotlight and building communities and spaces for women to network.
2. How did you get into the industry?
I’ve been a social media marketer for several years (and a marketing nerd since I was a teen), working with a wide variety of founders and entrepreneurs along the way.
Before that, I trained as an art historian and curator, and wrote copy for best-selling travel guides. After spending my days writing and putting on exhibitions in galleries, it seemed like a natural career progression to take those skills online and share my passion for putting words and pictures together with others.
3. What are the biggest opportunities and challenges in your industry?
There are unlimited opportunities for women to be recognised for, and build communities around their work on social media. The biggest challenges are dealing with constant platform updates, battling with algorithms and maintaining firm boundaries over how much to share online. Social media can be a dark place and it can be hard to avoid that side of it when you’re on it all day long.
4. How would you describe your leadership style? (if not in a leadership role talk about your working style)
Relaxed, and trusting. I give my team full autonomy to complete their work in their own time because I understand that family and real-life stuff should always come first. So long as the output is there, i’m happy.
5. How do you get the most out of the people who work for you? (or work with you)
Communication, communication, communication!
6. What are the most crucial elements to your business running smoothly and being successful?
Building confidence in my clients to show up and put themselves out there, strong coffee and the ability to be super flexible with changing schedules/being reactive to trends.
7. How has the past 12 months been for you?
Amazing! We’ve worked with some really exciting clients and achieved some career highs for them, and the SWS team is growing.
8. What will the next 12 months look like for you or your business?
We’re planning on growing the team, I’m going to be doing more talks and workshops, and we’ll be looking at ways we can provide a one-to-many service so that we can help more women to show up and shine online.
9. What are the highlights of your career so far?
Being one of the first UK creators on the LinkedIn Creator Accelerator programme, working with some of the UK’s most exciting entrepreneurs and founders, speaking at events and on panels,
10. What’s the biggest professional / business mistake that you’ve learnt from?
Not growing my team fast enough. Thinking I could keep doing everything on my own without any help and getting in my own way.. I wish I’d taken a team on waaaaay earlier than I did.
11. What’s the best piece of professional / business advice you’ve been given or would like to give?
Look for what you notice, but no one else sees.
