I was hired by The CapTable to work on cover images and infographics for their stories, along with collaborating with its reporters to write and design social media-only stories to expand their online presence.
That last part didn’t pan out at first, as it depended far too much on reporters having the time to work on additional stories, leaving it shelved for a time.
Then some time in the first quarter of 2024, I took on posting to The CapTable’s social media—its LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram—myself for their existing dailies, with content drafted and vetted by the reporter and/or the editor. This was purely for timeliness and efficiency purposes, as the erstwhile solution was suboptimal.
And then, towards the end of that year, I started taking stabs at drafting the social media posts myself. After all, I was already reading story drafts to pitch cover image and infographic ideas, so it only made sense that I could use my head-start with the story beats to also write socials.
My colleagues were super patient and helpful. I also stayed up late many nights doing my homework on social media management, and cross-referencing what studies and agencies online were saying with our own analytics. After some teething pains and some trial and error, the proof of the pudding became self-evident.
The quality of our socials had never been better—both in terms of content as well as design. Our engagement metrics were head and shoulders above competitors’—double what it was year on year!—and the number of people clicking through to our stories grew strongly. Indeed, while I know enough to not overstate how important social media is for a news outlet, the last six months at The CapTable were also its strongest, and I believe this was one among a number of other reasons.
Up until 29th May ’25, the identity of our social media was almost entirely my handiwork. Take a look. I think you’ll like what you see. And if you need a designer who can capably run your social media presence, this is my email: shirtshanks [at] gmail [dot] com
Sharath 