Mark Williams 0:07
You’re listening to Balance, Not Burnout, a podcast helping leaders rethink the speed of their business. And I’m your host Mark Williams. Join me as I explore the power of a more intentional, balanced approach to leadership. Thanks for listening.

Mark Williams 0:25
Welcome to Balance, Not Burnout season two. This is Mark Williams, your host and I am super excited today. We have a special guest. She is Director of Content Marketing and Social Media Strategy for First National Bank of Omaha (FNBO). Regina is deeply embedded in the latest social media trends and manages a team of five. And she started her career in New York City actually and eventually moved back to her home state of Nebraska, where Regina is a mom of two and is always on the go. And I can share I have a son who is also a Husker. So we have that in common the great state of Nebraska, super excited to talk to Regina today about again balanced, not burnout, especially in a job that’s 24/7 like social media. So Regina, welcome and tell us a little bit about yourself and how you got to where you are.

Regina DeMars 1:12
Awesome. Thank you, Mark. So I’m Regina DeMars. I’m the Director of Content Marketing and Social Media at FNBO. And my team’s really responsible for developing content for all of our fnbo branded social media channels. We have a blog, we handle influencer marketing, we have a cash ology video series, a podcast. And really more really, our entire job is to kind of elevate fnbo reputation as an industry leader and employer, and I have been here for a little over eight years. Fantastic.

Mark Williams 1:50
So I’m gonna jump in just with this. I have an 18 year old son just graduated high school last year. And of course he ribs me all the time about social media, because first of all, I don’t understand Twitter, like I can’t make it work. I don’t understand it. Who cares about my whatever I have to say about a topic. So he teases me constantly Instagram, I don’t, I don’t really understand it. But in your world, you really do have to keep up on the trends. And speaking as a 55 year old dad who has trouble just keeping up with whatever new apps everyone is using? How do you do it? Like? How does how does the department stay in front of the latest trends and what people should be doing on social media?

Regina DeMars 2:28
Yeah, so yeah, the trends seem to change, you know, every minute. So we’re constantly looking across all of the channels, because we are active on all of them. And we have content calendars that we create, you know, typically a quarter out, but then we’re always looking at what is trending hashtag, what are the trending topics, and then the real challenge is trying to figure out quickly how you can create content to capitalize on those trends before they’re on to the next thing. So recently, you know, we were kind of playing off of the Stanley Cup. And you know, the phenomenon with that. And we’re like, Okay, we have to take this video in the next hour. And we just grabbed people in the office and you know, kind of reenacted what was happening at Target. And it was just a fun way to play off of the trend. We had fnbo branded kind of a similar look as the Stanley Cup. So we’re like, Oh, we got this, we can quickly create content. And it was just fun to see, personally and professionally. how people respond to that. And they’re like, oh, wow, that’s so creative. Great job. Yeah. So we’re always looking at those and I can relate. I have almost 16 year old son and a 12 year old son. And I mean honestly, sometimes I will ask them like, what are you seeing on Tik Tok? And what should we be a part of, and it’s just part of our ongoing conversation. They’re well aware of what I do for a living. It’s been PR social media for over 23 years. So it’s funny that they’ll actually share ideas with me and they’ve been featured in some of my content and Tik Tok videos over the years as well. That’s

Mark Williams 4:23
Awesome. So now this begs the question. So your world revolves around social media. I know that your kids just based on their ages revolve around social media as do mine. How do you create a break with your family from social media? Like my kid lives online? Literally, he’ll walk the dog and he’s looking at the phone. Like how do you set I’m curious as to your own personal boundaries, just work and you know, keeping separate work from home. And then how do you manage it with your kids?

Regina DeMars 4:52
Yeah. So my kids, they love to be on social media, but thankfully they like to be very active. Have as well, and they love attending, you know, any type of sporting event, concerts. And so we do, actually, we try to plan out our calendars a month in advance as much as possible because to your point having, you know, for me to be my best them to be the best, there has to be a good balance. And, you know, I don’t really love to plan but I do plan because I have to. And I, you know, we have a shared family calendar, both on our phones, but we have an actual calendar in our home office. So everyone’s aware of the schedules of that week and that month, and we try to every Sunday, go and look, see the schedules, make sure everyone’s on the same page. My older son is very go with the flow, everything’s fine, younger one, he wants to know exactly what’s happening every minute. He doesn’t like surprises. So it was really helpful to have a calendar to just show kind of at a glance, here’s everything we’re doing. You know, we tried to catch up a lot of the times it’s in the car, because we’re never able to eat dinner together hardly at all. And my kids get really sick of my tactics with conversation starters. But they’ve gotten too used to me. So now they just expected and, you know, rather than asking them, how’s your day, you’re gonna get a fine. I’ll ask them to rate their day? Or who would you go on vacation with and they know what I’m trying to do? So at this point, they’ll give me a little more than yes, no answers.

Mark Williams 6:40
So I’m curious, that’s at home at work I have found, especially with the social media, there are now there’s probably six or eight ways for someone to get a hold of me, including including those that work for me, right? So they can send me a text, they can send me an email, very rarely do people call me anymore, but you could still call me in theory. How do you set boundaries outside of office hours for your for those that report to you specifically? Especially because the content that you guys are viewing? And that you work with? Is that kind of a 24/7? Medium? So I’m curious, how do you set your own boundaries. And if you were to send an email or a text to an employee after hours is your expectation that they return it?

Regina DeMars 7:25
They usually will return my text messages. I try to be very intentional and purposeful, though, and not send something after hours unless it’s absolutely necessary. For some one of us to jump in and handle a comment. So you know, during work hours, constantly checking social media, we have tools that help us, you know, alert us if f&b is mentioned in a con in the comment that we need to address. Sure. And you know, so during the day work hours, it’s constant. And then at night, I’ve just kind of tried to spot check every once in a while. And then always before bed and always first thing in the morning. But I really tried to designate you know, that time outside of work that if it’s like, okay, I have to spend 30 minutes on this quickly. And if I am with my family, I’ll say, hey, it’s gonna take me 30 minutes, I need to handle this quickly. So I’m not trying to, you know, talk to them, and handle work at the same time. And, you know, we’re all familiar with that infinite scroll, I tried to, you know, have good behaviors with my own social media outside of work to, you know, make sure my kids understand like, yes, it’s important you connect with people on social media, but you need to, you know, take a break and, you know, go outside, and they’re very active in every type of sport. So they definitely like to be with people outside and away from their, their phones as well. But with my team, you know, I think we all we all just have a really good relationship that, you know, everybody’s willing to step in and help out if it’s necessary. But we try to ideally make that not the norm, like there’s always going to be times where we’re going to have to jump in work on something late at night work on the weekends, because social media doesn’t stop. But, you know, we tried to hopefully limit that to not be the constant and the norm. Yeah,

Mark Williams 9:32
I’d imagine. So I’m in financial services, we’re insurance, and we are heavily regulated. We’re also heavily regulated with what we advertise and how we advertise and what we say and unfortunately, some of those laws and rules now have meshed into the social realm. Right? And so I’m very careful for example of a reply that I would on Twitter, right how I would reply what I could say what I can say about product, I’m assuming the banking business is regulated very similarly with what you can and cannot say. And the challenge of social media is it does have to be social and Twitter is a prime example. Twitter is made to be is to respond and respond quickly. So I’m curious, how does the how does the compliance world mesh with your world of posting and posting rapidly? Is it a hinderance? Does it cause you some problems? Obviously, a little bit? How do you guys manage that, that whole process that compliance process? Yeah,

Regina DeMars 10:24
so we definitely work closely with compliance. And it’s been amazing to see how the relationship has evolved over, you know, the past five years. Whereas we used to say, Okay, we need if it’s a product post, it would take 10 days, and now they’re like, Oh, I get it, like, it’s social media. And you need to be nimble, especially with some of those trending topics. And so we’ll just pick up the phone, or we’ll email the team. And we’ll hear back very quickly. But, again, we try that to make that only be every once in a while, we can leverage that content quickly. But otherwise, we send them our product posts, you know, we try a month ahead of time, just so they can have more time to review it. And, you know, we we have a great working relationship with them. We know like do’s and don’ts, we are always updating our processes, our procedures, and working with new team members that come on board to say, Okay, here’s how we need to work together. And here’s kind of the why behind it. It’s not that they’re just trying to tell us no, we can’t share this message. We also have especially helpful for Twitter for x, we have kind of responses that have already been approved by compliance, and legal, so we make sure we have that strong library of comments ready. So we know they’re approved, and we can share them. But yeah, I mean, you definitely have to be, you know, aware of not never sharing and PPI data, or anything proprietary. I’m

Mark Williams 12:09
curious with five team members, and maybe this is some of your your past, hopefully, but how do you spot an employee who you feel might be getting burned out? And what’s the advice you give that employee who’s working for you? And oftentimes that happens to some of our best employees? I find, right? The ones that don’t want to say no, that give us 110% All the time? How do you spot it? Do you spot it before they do? And how would you coach someone through that? Yeah,

Regina DeMars 12:36
I’ve definitely experienced it. And a lot of the times I can just see it, and how they’re working, or if they’re, the responses are, you know, shorter, or just seeing them in the office and like, Okay, you look a little stressed out, like you have a lot going on. Let’s talk through it. We have, you know, weekly team meetings, I also have one on ones with my team members to kind of go over and help them prioritize tasks based on the importance because I do think sometimes, you know, people just take more on and take more on and if they do a really good job, then they get more work usually. So we definitely talk as a team, like, I guess, similar to what I do with my children, I asked like, how are you guys feeling this week up from one to 10? And how can I help you get to attend. And through those conversations, I feel like we, you know, configure out if there’s just too much at one given point, you know, sometimes there’s one person that has, you know, the top priorities going on at the same time. And we really try to, you know, have that weak culture mentality and ask the rest of the team members like, Okay, what’s your schedule? Like? Is there something that you can help the rest of the team on and, you know, I feel very fortunate that the team feels very open to discussing what’s going on. But again, if, if they don’t come to me, I usually feel like I can, I can tell when there’s, you know, something going on and address it with them. So, you know, to make sure that they’re having a good balance, because if they do kind of burnout, then it takes a lot more to get them back up to, you know, kind of a healthy balance. You bet.

Mark Williams 14:31
And I think you told me once before that some of your team members are cross trained with some of the other functions that other people do and they and they act as replacements. That has always been in theory that works in my company, right? Like you have these people that are cross trained, but ultimately in practice it generally speaking, fumbles and I’m not placing blame on anyone. It’s just it’s very difficult to take over the reins of someone else’s job and do it even when they’re out for only a few days. But I think you had mentioned that And I’m curious how that works for your folks like do Are they really covering and covering? Well, is that is it the team mentality, which is wonderful if you’ve created that, so I’m super envious number one and surprised and, and trying to figure out how you’ve actually managed to do that? Well, yeah.

Regina DeMars 15:15
So yeah, I mean, everyone has their specific responsibilities that they’re, you know, working on on any given day. But, I mean, thankfully, we do a lot of cross training, and we’ve had people that have been out on maternity leave, or like, Okay, well, we know ahead of time, obviously, when that when that happens, and we’re like, okay, let’s make sure that we divide all the responsibilities evenly among the team. So just from some of those situations, or being out on vacation, we’re like, Okay, well, we want to make sure everyone knows how to, you know, do each other’s job, or plan ahead. I mean, the team does a great job, if they’re going to be out on vacation, they say, you know, I’m gonna get all my content put in and scheduled before I leave, but in case something comes up, obviously, the rest of the team can step in and handle it. So yeah, we really do try to, you know, cross train them and, and make sure everybody kind of knows how each other’s roles work. Sure.

Mark Williams 16:19
So you’re a manager, or a mom, you have all kinds of responsibilities both in and outside work. How does Regina handle when Regina is starting to feel a little, little, little worn on both ends?

Regina DeMars 16:33
Yeah, I think I probably didn’t do a great job of this when I was younger, but really try to make time for self care. I think it’s it’s crucial if I’m burned out, not giving, fully have myself at work or at home. And I can tell right away, and I’m sure everyone else can and my family, you know, has an effect on my mood if I’m not eating healthy, or getting enough rest or exercising. And I do try to again, go back to I have like very little structure in my emergent attics. But I try to make it a priority to plan things out ahead of time. So I’ll look at my workout schedule a week before and say, Can I do this in the morning at lunch and evening. So it’s one less thing I have to worry about meal planning that helps everyone in our family, we try to like grill everything on Sundays, make sure that the fridge is full. You know, and then I tried to do something, you know, once a month that’s more like, you know, massage or yoga or you know, going to a show going out with friends just to make sure you know, I have that balance all around. For

Mark Williams 17:48
someone who’s not a planner, you plan quite a bit. So congratulations. I will say there have been several times in my life admittedly, even in my role that life and work have joined to be a little overwhelming. I went through a divorce years ago. Just recently a few years ago, I had to have the conversation with my parents about a nursing home, right and heading to a retirement community. And during that two or three months timeframe that we were doing that literally life was consuming me right I had work I had the extra responsibility at home. It was very difficult to break away and to find just a little bit of time and peace and quiet. I asked every guest it’s Saturday morning. And Regina can be wherever she wants to be and do whatever she wants to with whomever she wants to describe for me your perfect either Saturday or Sunday morning where you just get to unplug and relax. What does that day look like?

Regina DeMars 18:46
Definitely I would start the day out working out. It’s an hour of me time. And where I go to the gym. It’s also a strong community with lots of people in the neighborhood. So it’s also kind of my girl time and social hour. Sure. And so I love to kick that off. And then I go right next door to the coffee shop and probably with you know one of my best friends or my mother, my sister, if they’re in town and a coffee and just relax and I would probably still go home and get everything ready for the next week because it helps me it helps me set the stage for the rest of the week.

Mark Williams 19:34
You’re a closet planter, you are a closet planter. last bit of advice that you would give someone who’s considering getting into content marketing or social media strategy. Obviously you’ve done this for a number of years you’ve been at the bank for eight. What’s the best one or two nuggets of advice you could give a young person that was dying to get into the marketing field? Yeah,

Regina DeMars 20:01
I would say top three would probably be set realistic expectations. Don’t overload yourself all the time. Encourage open communication. Again, just capacity for overall well being, I think that’s really important. And also being flexible. Again, planning a lot, but it’s important to be flexible, because we can’t, you know, predict the future all the time things are going to be, things are gonna come up. So to reduce kind of stress, and, you know, I try to be as flexible as possible.

Mark Williams 20:44
Awesome. Well, Regina DeMars thank you so much for being on our show today. It’s Regina DeMars, who is Director of Content Marketing and Social Media Strategy for FNBO, which is the First National Bank of Omaha. So if you happen to stop by the bank, or you can visit them on social media, I’m sure Regina would love to have some, some communication or some contact with some of the things that they post. And if you’re a a consumer of First National Bank of Omaha, thank you very much for doing business with them. And please, a big shout out to Regina and her team who do all of their content marketing. So nice to have you. Thanks very much for being on the show with us.

Regina DeMars 21:20
Thanks so much,

Mark Williams 21:21
Mark. All right. Thanks again for listening in. This is Balance, Not Burnout Season Two. Take care everybody. Thanks for listening. If you think balance is as important as I do, at work and all throughout your life. Help the show out by leaving me a five star review following me on social media, or sharing the podcast with someone you think would appreciate it. If you have comments or questions. I’d love for you to join the conversation with me on LinkedIn. I want to thank OBI Creative for producing the podcast and Swells Beats for getting the music for me. Thanks for sharing your time with me today. And until next time, this is Mark signing off.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai