Elena Hansen is an entrepreneur and educator specializing in social media. She founded SWIM Social, a full-service agency, in 2015 and has since built a global client base spanning brands, public figures, and special projects — including Houseplant by Seth Rogen, Revival Tour by Selena Gomez, Erewhon, Alfred Coffee, Dear Moon Project with SpaceX, NBA All-Star Mike Conley, and films like National Anthem and Love, Simon. She also advises leaders in business and culture and serves as an expert witness on matters of social media and brand marketing. Elena teaches Social Media Strategy at the University of Southern California’s Marshall School of Business.
In a recent masterclass, Hansen shared a comprehensive framework for building an authentic and impactful digital presence. Drawing from over 12 years working with business leaders, brand founders, celebrities, and athletes, she addressed the shared vulnerabilities everyone faces about putting themselves out into the public sphere and offered practical strategies to move from fear to enthusiasm.
Hansen's most critical insight challenges how most professionals approach their digital presence: stop reverse-engineering your ideas to fit platform constraints.
"Rather than thinking about what works on these platforms, think about why you're active online, how these platforms can support your bigger vision," Hansen explained. Too often, leaders ask what kind of 15-second video they should post, then water down their ideas to fit those formats.
Instead, Hansen advocates for a mission-first approach: "Start with the mission and the message. What do you want to say? What kind of impact do you want to have?" This should be something bigger than any single platform.
Only after clarifying your mission should you consider platform strategy. If your message requires depth, perhaps you lean into long-form writing via Substack, then share excerpts through Instagram or LinkedIn. The final step is optimization, experimenting with different formats to see what resonates.
She encouraged participants to think beyond themselves: "How could your content serve something that is bigger than you? What is a voice or a perspective that you feel is needed right now?"
Hansen introduced a visibility spectrum that helps professionals identify where they currently fall and where they need to be without pressuring themselves to become full-time content creators.
She breaks this into two strategic approaches. "Field and industry first" positions social media as an extension of offline work, focusing on quality over quantity of followers. The goal is creating offline opportunities and staying top of mind with key people like executives and investors.
"Digital first" treats social media as the primary business driver, focused on mass reach and converting an online audience. This requires high-volume content production and what Hansen called "a content-centric lifestyle."
The exercise Hansen led revealed the diversity of goals among participants. Some aimed to move from 20% to 50% visibility, while others targeted 60% to 80%. "Not everybody wants to go from zero to 100%," Hansen emphasized. "A little bit goes a longer way" for professionals and executives compared to digital-first creators.
Understanding your position allows you to set realistic expectations and avoid the pressure to match the output of full-time influencers.
Hansen addressed one of the most common barriers: the cringe factor of self-promotion.
She normalized the discomfort that comes with sharing online but reframed it as integrity. "Confidence is really a muscle that strengthens with use and practice."
"What if we were to think about self-promotion simply as self-expression?" she proposed. "It's the act of being discoverable, adding value, sharing a point of view and really extending your leadership and vision and knowledge to a digital space."
Hansen shared her own journey of starting a separate Instagram account after years of doing this work for clients. "I remember it feeling so nerve wracking in the beginning." Now it's become natural: "I put things out there just so that I can see them and enjoy them, and it's created incredible connections."
Her advice for starting: give yourself permission, do the clarity work, curate before you create, experiment without pressure to share immediately, bank three to six pieces of content before posting, and then start sharing.
Hansen offered three approaches to content distribution, with the richest starting point being long-form content. "That could be you writing a thesis or essay on a topic," Hansen explained. Whether you publish it or not, that long-form piece becomes the foundation for graphics, short-form videos, and carousels.
A second approach is creating a multi-part series. You establish a topic or theme, select a consistent format, and release it in six parts. "With that first post, you can even say, I'm releasing this in six parts," giving you breathing room between series.
The most challenging approach is ideating per post, treating each piece of content as bespoke and custom. While some experienced creators can do this intuitively, it's often unsustainable for busy professionals.
She also emphasized mixing three content formats: editorial (professional, polished), lo-fi UGC (shot on phone, off-the-cuff), and trends (leaning into trending audio or styles). For those who want to remain faceless, Hansen offered strategies using images and text shared via video and carousels.
Hansen encouraged participants to curate before creating, building Pinterest boards and compiling the most impactful media in their lives. She presented five distinct creative directions: evolved minimalism, undone maximalism, cinematic story, youthful ambition, and creative curation.
This curation process helps build your "content lens," a clear perspective that goes beyond how you personally appear on camera to encompass the ideas and aesthetic world you want to create.
On AI, Hansen recommended using it for distribution strategy, research and insights, planning and cadence, and creative collaboration. However, she strongly cautioned against using AI for personal content creation. "AI content is not necessarily what people are engaging with and want to see coming from a person that they trust."
Most importantly, building trust and personal connection is critical as AI-generated content proliferates. "There is going to be a lot of distrust about content over the next year plus. So it's important that you start building that trust and really leaning into the human element."
Hansen closed with an example from working with Halle Berry in 2016, when the actress insisted on creating content through her own lens rather than simply reposting studio materials. "She wanted everything to be funneled through her own lens," Hansen recalled, noting that Berry did separate photo shoots expressing the essence of her characters in ways that felt authentic to her personal channels.
For professionals navigating the pressure to build a digital presence, Hansen's framework offers both permission and practical tools: permission to define success on your own terms and tools to create content that serves a mission bigger than yourself while staying true to your voice and values.
