How the struggles of hapless social media managers have become a big TikTok trend

Funny videos showing the struggles of social media managers to create trending videos on TikTok have been racking up millions of views for their relatable self-deprecating humour.

Many of the videos feature the persona of a hapless marketing manager, and usually involve them either trying to persuade colleagues to join in with their videos, sharing their pain when a post hasn't performed as well as they'd hoped, or joking about the few people who see their posts.

The videos often show themselves in conflict with busy colleagues who don't think their job is real work, "the boss" who rarely understands what they're trying to achieve, or – even worse – the legal department who often spoil all their fun and games.

Some of the videos get millions of views. The video, below, from marketing agency @pl_partners from the point of view of their "marketing girl" happily leaving the office on an e-scooter after their latest post got 16 likes – "you've been a great help today" – got 1.5 million views:

And this video from @giraffesm uses a CapCut template of Barack Obama unveiling his portrait at the Smithsonian Institute to imagine their team showing the boss the big impact the company TikTok is making, before revealing a TikTok video with 215 views:

It worked – the video's had 2.3 million views.

This video from Finnish social media manager @irinakirvesmaki shows a common problem of the social media manager trying to navigate the complex corporate approval process while trying to quickly tap into one of the latest TikTok trends:

The video, which uses the trending "That made me cry" sound, has been viewed more than 300,000 times.

Canadian social media manager @haileymoulton regularly posts from the perspective of a struggling social media manager – like here where she's questioning how long it will take to get approval for a post from legal:

And this one from @later.com from the point of view of a social manager liking their own posts from different TikTok accounts to boost the numbers has had 465,000 views:

There have been 1.1 billion views on the hashtag #socialmediamanager – plus an additional 50 million on #socialmediamangers, 83 million on #socialmediamanagerlife and 13 million views of #socialmediamanagerprobs. There have also been more than one billion views on the hashtag #workinghard which is often used in posts showing examples of social media managers or admins doing the exact opposite, like this video from @gab.ri.elleee (2.1 million views):

Another angle is social media managers trying to rope in their busier colleagues to appear in their videos – this video from pet health company @pet.iq has been viewed more than 1.3 million times, even though their TikTok account only has 2,100 followers::

Many of the videos use trending sounds and CapCut templates, both to show that the social media manager does actually know what they're doing, and to help their videos be seen by more people.

This video, from social media influencer platform @mavelysocial, uses a trending clip of Anna Faris in the 2005 movie Just Friends saying "I'm not supposed to worry about stuff like that, I'm the talent!" in response to her boss asking for performance data:

And this video from @copleys.mom from the point of view of a marketing intern trying to persuade a vice president to join in with a TikTok trend – "we're not doing that" – has had 3.6 million views:

Buzz from Shooglebox quickly picks up and tracks TikTok trends which go on to be used by social media managers, highlighting some of the big talking points emerging on TikTok and social media every day.

It's used by journalists, creators and brand teams who need to spot and stay on top of the latest trends.

This stack of social media manager cards gives you an idea of how you can use Shooglebox to create a read-only box of cards around a theme or trend and share it with others.

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