This blog post was originally published on October 3, 2020, on the original Social Media Tea website. For record-keeping purposes, it has been copied over to the new site blog.
Hello, friends! We realize that it’s Saturday, a day we usually take off, but we felt it was necessary to address one of our recent servings of tea.
We made the decision to remove yesterday’s Instagram post from our account, and it will not make a reappearance on our Twitter or Facebook as it normally would if we followed our usual posting schedule.
It was pointed out by more than one of our followers that the post was unfair to individuals who work in PR, an area of communications that is vital to the overall success of a brand or organization and certainly not a stranger to being undervalued or disrespected, much like social media.
While we call ourselves Social Media Tea, our posts are for all professionals working in digital communications. We are incredibly sorry to have missed the mark with that post and disrespected the hard work that our colleagues in PR do. We promise to be more discerning with future tea submissions.
To be clear, the experiences of the person who spilled that tea are still valid. Their feelings and frustrations have merit and are important to the larger discussion Social Media Tea aims to spark when it comes to how digital communicators—whether they handle social media, public relations, internal communications, advertising, marketing, or whatever—are treated by the industry and each other.
For that reason, the Instagram post that we removed is transcribed at the end of this statement. We thought it was best to publish the removed post here for clarity and context, and also ask that everyone reflect on the feelings exhibited in said post.
Working in digital communications, especially right now, can be a rough ride. We promise to show more empathy for all of our peers moving forward and hope that you can do the same. Thanks for sticking with us, sharing your experiences, supporting each other, and, of course, spilling the tea.
The Social Media Tea Team
PS: Never be afraid to call us out on our shit. Ever. Learning from your mistakes is part of growing. If we all don’t grow and evolve, then the industry won’t either.
Instagram Post from October 2, 2020
Working at a communications agency in the digital side is the worst. You are underpaid and undervalued, clients treat you like shit, and the PR team notoriously has the easy job, but gets all the praise.