Social media has never moved faster. AI is reshaping workflows, creators are becoming business owners, and the pressure to stay chronically online has never been greater.
But if Jayde I. Powell's first Chronically Online Virtual Social Media Summit proved anything, it's that the biggest conversations in the industry aren't just about platforms and algorithms anymore. They're about the people behind the accounts.
Bringing together creators, brand marketers, agency leaders, strategists, and social media professionals, the one-day summit explored everything from burnout and career growth to creator partnerships, executive thought leadership, and the future of social media. While each session tackled a different challenge, a few themes consistently emerged: community matters more than competition, creativity should remain human-led in the age of AI, and social media professionals have more opportunities than ever to build careers and businesses on their own terms.
For Jayde, those conversations reflected exactly what she hoped to create: a space where people working in social media could feel seen, learn from one another, and leave with a renewed sense of what's possible.
Following the event, I caught up with Jayde to discuss the biggest lessons from the summit (here was my biggest takeaway), where the creator economy is headed, and why she believes the industry's future will be creator-led.
Here's what she shared with me.
Ashley: You brought together creators, strategists, brand marketers, and social leaders for this summit. After hearing every session, what was the biggest theme that surprised you, or kept coming up again and again?
Jayde: A major motivation for creating this summit was to celebrate social media professionals and foster a sense of community, and the response confirmed just how deeply that need exists.
Between the live chat, the WhatsApp group, my DMs, and the post-event survey, I was overwhelmed by messages like "This healed me," "I needed that," “It’s nice to know I’m not alone,” and "I've never felt more seen." That kind of feedback tells you something important: this profession can feel incredibly isolating, especially for people whose entire job lives on the internet.
I started my career in social media in 2013, and I felt that loneliness even then. Over the past 13 years, I've had the privilege of building my own community of social media professionals, so it's something I've been fortunate to work through. But the summit reminded me that so many others are still in that place—feeling unseen, exhausted, and unheard in a field that rarely ever slows down long enough to check in on the people running it.
My hope is that this summit and the events I continue to host can serve as a safe space for social media professionals to vent, share resources, grow alongside one another, and simply feel like they belong.
Ashley: If there was one idea from another speaker that made you stop and think, "I hadn't looked at it that way before," what was it, and why did it resonate with you?
Jayde: One of my speakers, Olivia Jepson, said something during the "Is the Career Advancement in the Room With Us?" panel that made me completely stop and lock in. She noted that for some social media professionals, particularly those in corporate environments, career growth doesn't necessarily mean leading large teams. Something about hearing that out loud genuinely healed a younger version of me.
In my 20s, during the full-time era of my career, I felt stuck. I wanted growth, but I wasn't sure I wanted the weight of managing a team. For a long time, I carried a little bit of shame about that, not because I doubted my capabilities, but because I wasn't confident the environments I was in would set me up to succeed as a leader. So, I felt like my career growth was out of my control. That tension created a lot of anxiety that I never really had language for.
It's a little funny, because here I am in my 30s, an entrepreneur leading a team of seven people, and it took a single panel at my own summit to finally release that younger version of me from all of that. Hearing "it's okay to be an individual contributor, and it doesn't mean you're not excellent at your job" was simple, but I didn’t even realize how much I needed to hear that.
This summit was healing for the attendees, but it was healing for me, too.
Ashley: You've worked in social for more than a decade and have seen multiple platform shifts. What do you think people are getting wrong (and right) about where the creator economy and social media are heading next?
Jayde: AI has the entire industry in a chokehold right now. In the past year alone, I've attended over 50 industry events, from small networking gatherings to virtual sessions to large-scale conferences, and AI has dominated the conversation at nearly every single one. Everything is "AI-powered," "AI-backed," or "AI-led," to the point where it sometimes feels like it's sucking all the air out of the room.
I want to be clear—I'm not anti-AI. I use it regularly in my work, and I'm very vocal about how it fits into my processes. But as someone who came up on the agency side, I will always be a staunch advocate for keeping creativity human-first. AI is a tool, but it cannot replace the creative thinking that comes from our lived experiences as human beings. That's not something you can automate.
What I actually think we should be talking about more is the creator. In my lifetime, this is the first time I've seen creatives have the resources, the platform, and the cultural capital to genuinely lead the charge on what's next for this industry. Brands are tapping creators to direct and lead their campaigns, co-create experiences for their audiences, and serve as the authentic bridge between a product and the people it's meant for. Creators are launching their own media companies, building communities that rival traditional publishers, and redefining what it means to have influence.
The conversation shouldn't just be “AI-powered," "AI-backed," or "AI-led." It should be "creator-powered," “creator-backed,” or “creator-led”. That's where the real innovation is happening.
Ashley: What's the one thing you hope attendees change in how they approach their careers, businesses, or content?
Jayde: More than anything, I hope attendees walk away with a mindset shift. Social media professionals possess a skill set that brands, businesses, and people genuinely need, and I don't think enough of us fully internalize that. We've been conditioned to wait for opportunities to come to us, to prove our value to rooms that were never really listening, and to shrink ourselves to fit into structures that weren't built with us in mind.
But the truth is, these days you can have almost any career you want, and if it doesn't exist yet, you can create it. Your knowledge is your power. The expertise you've built, the communities you've grown, the content you've created—all of it has real, tangible value. More resources, more money, and more opportunity are available to you, but it requires being proactive, being a little strategic, and approaching your career with an abundance mindset rather than a scarcity one. That's the shift I hope people leave with. Not just "I learned something new today," but "I am more valuable than I've been giving myself credit for, and I'm going to start acting like it."
Ashley: Where do you think the social media and creator industries are headed over the next few years? What predictions do you have?
Jayde: The B2B creator is already gaining significant visibility, but I think we're only scratching the surface. Over the next few years, I expect to see a full explosion of B2B creator content, not just on LinkedIn, where it's already thriving, but spilling over into channels that have traditionally been reserved for lifestyle and entertainment creators.
What excites me most about this is the opportunity it creates, specifically for social media professionals. We are uniquely positioned to capitalize on this moment—either by becoming B2B creators ourselves, monetizing the expertise we've spent years building, or by offering services to the growing wave of executives, founders, and professionals who want to show up online but don't know how. Or, frankly, both.
Beyond that, what I find most exciting is what's happening at the ownership level. What it means to be a creator is being redefined in real time, and I think we're witnessing one of the most significant shifts in the history of media. I often say that being a creator is a gateway drug to entrepreneurship. Once you understand that your voice, your audience, and your expertise have real value, the natural next step is to build something with it. Creators aren't just focusing on content alone. They're building brands, launching products, founding media companies, and taking full ownership of their platforms and their futures. In my case, that looks like producing a self-owned virtual conference. The creator economy isn't just changing how content gets made. It's changing who gets to own what they build, and that's the part that keeps me most excited about what's next.
Ashley: What else would you like to add about the summit that people should know?
Jayde: Something I was very intentional about in building this summit was making sure creators and influencers had a real seat at the table. When we talk about social media professionals, the conversation tends to default to traditional brand marketers and agency folks, but creators are social media professionals too. They're building audiences, managing content strategies, negotiating brand partnerships, and navigating the same industry shifts as everyone else. I wanted that presence to be felt throughout the entire summit, not just in the sessions and on the speaker panels, but in the programming itself.
That's why I created the Chronically Online Creator Program, which brought together 16 creatives from diverse backgrounds—different platforms, niches, cities, and lived experiences— to attend the summit as part of an official cohort. I'm incredibly proud of the community that formed within that group. Watching 16 people who had never met show up for each other, hype each other up, and carry the spirit of the summit back to their own communities was one of the most rewarding parts of this entire experience. It's a reminder that when you're intentional about who gets access to a room, the room becomes something much more powerful.
My hope is that the creator program becomes a signature part of every future summit, because this industry is better when all of its people are represented.
Connect with Jayde on LinkedIn and/or subscribe to her Creator Tea Talk newsletter.