Thomas still creates content today, though it’s more “thoughtfully” curated and draws on over a decade of experience in the industry. Along with her friend Molly, she has amassed 1.2m likes on TikTok and 35,200 followers.

“The people who are best at social always have their hats in the ring,” she adds. “Because there are certain things that you would never know unless you were literally in the back end of TikTok.”

Her next dream was to move to London, which seemed a “magical” place for a young creative. In 2019, she began working at Birchbox, a beauty subscription service, and would go live once or twice a week on Facebook to host a “game show” for a few hours. “It was the first idea that I felt confident in pitching and making happen,” Thomas recalls. “And it ranked in the top three lives globally that year; it ended up with 1,600 comments a minute.” Building this relationship with customers (Thomas doesn’t use the word community lightly) laid the groundwork for everything that would come next in her career.

“I don’t think brands build communities, but I think in this case we really did. And that was from spending so much time live with audiences every week, with the same people. I knew about people getting married, people having babies. People in the chat were becoming friends, so it really was such a special place.”

Toothpaste brands don’t have ‘communities’

The topic of communities on social media is a hot one. “Community management,” as it is sold, means that people need to reply to comments, says Thomas. “If you’re a toothpaste brand, what do you mean you have a community?” Thomas believes that a true community on social media forms when people in the comments share a common interest or belief.

“I think a community on social is where people in the comment section actually have something in common with each other and share this thing they believe in,” she says. “So if you’re a fan of a football team or Call of Duty… If you’re in places where people have this passion and shared love, then, yes, I think people are part of those communities.”

She says that while brands strive to have a personality online, more often than not that is just the personality of the admin managing the account. She’s a firm believer that social shouldn’t sit apart from the brand; the tone-of-voice, so to speak, should be consistent throughout the entire business.

She emphasizes the importance of strategic thinking in social media, noting that many brands still treat it as a siloed space. In her view, there is often too much focus on being different on social platforms without considering how those efforts contribute to the broader goals of the business.

Social media managers face ‘tough’ questions

While standing out can be effective, she believes brands should take a step back and evaluate the bigger picture. Increasingly, those working in social media will face tougher questions about the real impact of their work and how it supports the overall business strategy.

Over the past week, in typical fashion, we’ve seen brands jump on the ‘Astronomer CEO’ meme, which Thomas has thoughts about. “Every piece of social content is an ad – and not in the sense of paying money, but you creating something to show to an audience,” she explains. “If you wouldn’t put that on the TV – obviously, social content and TV content are very different – but if you wouldn’t confidently as a brand put it somewhere else, why do we think it’s OK for it to live on social?”

In 2022, Thomas joined TikTok as its UK live content and campaign operations manager. It was a dream role that came at a time when she felt incredibly confident in her abilities. With a boss who truly believed in her vision, Thomas helped grow the Live team from 13 people to 130 in two years.

“At the time, live content was the biggest revenue maker for the platform,” she says. “It wasn’t this kid dancing app any more. That perception had already shifted. But the live content team was so new. And that was quite cool.”

Working at Frankly with Michael Corcoran

In 2024, Thomas left TikTok to join social media consultancy Frankly as director of social media. There, she worked closely with Michael Corcoran, known for his standout marketing work with budget airline Ryanair. While there, Frankly partnered with global brands across the industrial goods, pharma and finance sectors.

However, just two weeks ago, on Friday the 13th, the company made headlines for alleged financial misappropriation. According to The Irish Times, liquidators were appointed to Frankly’s parent company, Frank & Bear. The company, which employed 12 people, was reportedly “unable to meet its debts” and “two of its three directors” were said to be involved in “promoting a petition through the courts for the winding up of the firm.”

Thomas was gutted. “€1.75m. That’s how much our company’s financial controller is alleged to have misappropriated. According to the reports, it funded house renovations, holidays, cars and even a Premier League season ticket,” she wrote on LinkedIn to her 17,000 followers.

Thomas says the news was “unexpected” and tells The Drum she was “gutted.”

“Frankly was a business I helped build and then for it to all crumble and us not have a chance to do anything about it was a hard pill to swallow.”

Legal proceedings are still ongoing, so it’s a touchy subject for Thomas. She explained that, after she posted the news on social media, she received so much support from people in the form of messages and calls, even from people she didn’t realize had been following her career.

“I’ve spent my whole career trying to build a ‘network,’ a ‘community,’ because I didn’t have one starting out. I didn’t intern at a big name. I didn’t know the right people. I didn’t grow up around this world – as I’ve said 63,939 times, I really thought The Apprentice was what this world was like. But I do love people.”

A look to the future

From the ashes of Frankly, Thomas, Cochoran and Chris Barton have rebounded this week to open a new social media consultancy, Slice. “We’re here to slice through the BS,” she laughs. “We know that, when you do social right, you can actually have an impact for businesses. And Michael is the poster boy of that. How he changed Ryanair is insane, building this cult brand that Gen Z and Millennials now love. So we decided to do it together. We wanted to create a consultancy that helps brands get more serious about how they think about social because it’s still not taken very seriously.”

In addition to developing a strategy that genuinely drives business impact, the team recognizes that many social media managers and heads of social often aren’t operating at the level they need to be. As part of their approach, they not only deliver the strategy but also work closely with internal teams, coaching them, running workshops and holding weekly meetings. The goal is to upskill everyone involved so that, by the time the engagement ends, the team is in a significantly stronger position than when it began. A key part of that process is also building confidence within the team.

“By having a strategy, this one pager that everybody buys into, it gives social teams the ability to push back,” Thomas adds. “Because if you don’t have it – which most don’t, they have some content pillars and a little tone of voice document – you don’t get the respect from people [within brands]. They just see it as a channel on which to dump whatever messages they want. And we know that, so it’s about giving everyone confidence to deliver something better for the brands.”

Thomas says she’s excited to do something different now and feels that will set Slice apart in the industry. It will operate as a consultancy rather than a traditional agency. She explains that, unlike many agencies that push for retainers or encourage clients to produce large volumes of content, this team often advises the opposite. It focuses on what’s truly effective, often recommending that clients create significantly less content but with greater strategic impact.

“Having my own name as part of it, that was so far away from anything I imagined, being from this little Welsh valley. Even working at the brands I’ve worked at was so far out of whatever I had previously thought was possible. So now to co-found a company doesn’t seem real, but I’m really excited.”