Role: Marketing Executive, Likely (social media agency)
Client: Handpicked London
Focus: Community, content, and local partnerships
Period: March – September 2014
The Brand
Handpicked London was built on a simple idea: London is more than just its landmarks. It’s the tucked-away garden you’d never find on a map, the museum with three rooms and a story behind each one, the café down an alley that only locals seem to know about. The page exists for people who want to actually explore the city, not just tick off the same ten photos everyone else takes.
I ran the social presence for Handpicked London at Likely agency, growing and managing a community of 145,000+ followers. It’s a brand I genuinely loved working on as there’s something different about building content for a page where the audience actually is influenced by what you post.
The Challenge
The tricky part of a “hidden gems” brand is that it lives or dies on trust. Londoners can spot a fake review a mile off. So the job was never just “post more”, it was about staying credible while still showing up consistently, and building a community that felt like it was made up of locals, not just a feed people scrolled past.
That meant every part of the job had to work together: what we posted, how we talked to people in the comments, who we featured, and who we partnered with, all had to reinforce the same thing, that this page genuinely knew the city.
My Responsibilities
Content & Scheduling
I planned and ran the content calendar across the three pillars that defined the page: Hidden Gems, Unusual Places, and Local Guides, building out a rhythm that mixed evergreen “spot” content with seasonal and reactive posts. Scheduling wasn’t just about frequency; it was about timing posts to when Londoners were online and in a browsing mood, rather than just filling a grid.
Community Management
This was the part of the job that never really switched off. Replying to comments, keeping conversations going, moderating the page, and generally making sure that when someone engaged with a post, they got a response that felt human rather than automated. With a community that size, this was as much about protecting the tone of the page as it was about being responsive.
User-Generated Content
Some of the best content on the page never came from us, it came from followers who’d found their own hidden corner of London and wanted to share it. I built out a process for sourcing this content, getting permissions sorted, and featuring it properly, which kept the page feeling like it was genuinely crowd-sourced rather than manufactured.
Local Brand Partnerships
This is the part of the role I’m proudest of. I built and managed collaborations with independent London businesses including cafés, event spaces, and other small, distinctly local brands that fit naturally into the Handpicked world rather than feeling bolted on. These weren’t generic sponsored posts; the whole point was that a partnership had to feel like a genuine recommendation, not an ad. That meant being selective about who we worked with, and shaping the content around what actually made each place worth featuring.
Paid Strategy
Alongside the organic side, I planned and ran paid campaigns designed to reach the right people rather than just more people. That included:
- Geo-targeting, to reach people actually in or near London, and to connect partner brands with audiences local to them
- Demographic segmentation, tailoring creative and messaging depending on who we were speaking to
- Behaviour-based segmentation, using how people had engaged before to prioritise spend towards the audiences most likely to actually care
Analytics & Optimisation
I kept a close eye on how content and campaigns were performing and used that to shape what came next, which pillars were resonating, which formats weren’t pulling their weight, and where paid spend was best placed. It wasn’t about chasing a single number; it was about using the data to keep the page’s growth aligned with the kind of community we were trying to build.
Why It Worked
The strength of the account came from how well all of this fed into each other. UGC shaped the content. Content shaped what partnerships made sense. Partnerships shaped the community’s trust in the page, and the paid strategy meant all of that reached the people who’d care about it, rather than just anyone.
Running Handpicked London taught me that growing a community isn’t really about output, it’s about consistency of judgement. Knowing what’s genuinely “Handpicked” enough to post, which brand fits and which doesn’t, and when to let a follower’s photo do more work than anything we could’ve produced ourselves.