Staying Grounded in a Digital World: An Interview with Freelance Social Media Manager Karina Saniuk

By George Clyde

Since the introduction of social media in the early 2000s, we all have had to learn how to balance two separate worlds, the one on our phone screens and the one we exist in physically. It isn’t possible today to be a member of society and ignore one or the other. Every person, every company, every city exists here on earth but also in an online reality where a flawless self-image must be presented and maintained for the world to see. That’s where Karina Saniuk comes in, a freelance social media manager who works here at Paddington Arts. Her role is to help people achieve online perfection, perfection that can only exist in the glittering realm of social media. 

Karina didn’t have a degree in marketing, communications, or photography. In fact she had little to no experience with any of those things. She was taking a gap year before college and working as a waitress, when she got an opportunity to help a company out with social media. She loved the creativity involved in the work, and slowly but surely that job turned into more and more opportunities. “If I saw a company that needed help with their social media, I would reach out to them. If they ignored me, they ignored me. If they didn’t, they didn’t,” Karina said of her early days in this line of work. 

Initially she looked to other social media pages in hopes of emulating their formula, but what she soon realized as she got behind the scenes is that everybody is still figuring out how social media works. “I thought that successful marketers and social media managers had a way of doing it, and because they do it that way, they’re successful,” she said. “But I’ve soon come to realize that no one knows what they’re doing.”

In just a few years she’s learned how to edit, film, photograph, and work with companies to craft something that represents their values while also broadening their audience. 

This kind of persistent, try-everything attitude is what’s gotten Karina this far. But what you wouldn’t know from her social media posts is that she does deal with a lot of anxiety and feelings of inadequacy. Even for Karina, who’s career is built around social media, it sometimes can become too much.  “I think, to be, like, on a real and be vulnerable, I have been struggling with my mental health in terms of social media recently. And, it’s, especially when you have pressure to do a certain job on a certain project, and then you look online and you see people doing really well, and, it does, it’s, I’m not going to swear. It basically messes you up.” 

“I shouldn’t be in this room right now,” she remembered thinking early on. “I’m not qualified enough.” What Karina’s learned to do though is embrace that anxiety. “When I don’t feel like that, that’s when I’m not growing,” she told me. “So sometimes the anxiety, in a healthy dose, it’s an indication that this is way out of my comfort zone and I just need to keep pushing.” 

In between her work, Karina looks for ways to ground herself back to the real world. Whether that be taking nature walks, which she does routinely, or just simply turning off her phone and reminding herself that “You don’t work for the UN. The world is not going to die if you dont post or something doesn’t go out.” 

As well as keeping her own mental health under control, Karina has also had to learn how to guide other people through their anxieties about putting themselves and their work out in front of so many strangers on social media. She describes herself as often having to play the roles of “coach” and “cheerleader” for people who are nervous about presenting themselves online. 

“I can give you an example, Paddington Arts, the team was really shy. They didn’t want to be in posts at the very, very start. Wasn’t that right Steve?,” Karina asked playfully, turning to Steve Shaw, the team’s director. “And now I’ve got Steve on an interview. It’s a combination of gaining trust from the company as well.”

At the end of the day all of the anxiety and eventual satisfaction that Karina deals with in the real world is what you don’t see when the final glimmering product goes up on social media, but it’s the part that makes it all worth it. “One of the most rewarding things is working for a more personal company like Paddington Arts and actually seeing your work do well,” said Karina when I asked her what gives her the most satisfaction. “Even like little moments when I talk to the kids about how to be safe online, that’s quite rewarding. And also seeing that my work for a charity has made an impact that always makes a difference.”