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What started as creating one page has led to George Bacon, BA (Hons) Marketing graduate, running a social media agency with over 15 million followers.

If you’ve scrolled through your socials, seen a funny GIF and sent it to friends, chances are you’ve come across one of George’s pages.

Back in 2015, in his final year of school, George created ‘Secondary School Problems’. The page quickly amassed a following and by the time the Twitter account had reached 15,000 followers, he was approached by Social Chain founders Steven Bartlett and Dominic McGregor. They asked to buy the account, which George declined. This later led to a job offer.

From there, he balanced college and working life. After a few years, he decided he wanted to pursue a degree to gain the additional skills he needed. Alongside his university studies, he launched his own business, GBM Group, which has gone from strength to strength.

Read his story below:

Tell us about your journey to the ºÚÁÏÈë¿Ú

I accepted a job with Social Chain and my role was to grow and manage my selection of pages (which I had sole ownership of) and to support when needed across running campaigns. I was at college at the time - I found it very easy to balance my studies and working life online from my phone.

After college, I received a great offer to leave home and move to Manchester to work at Social Chain full-time. I decided I wanted to pursue a degree at ºÚÁÏÈë¿Ú to give me the additional skills I would need to be successful in the ‘adult’ world. I had a genuine passion for marketing and wanted to learn more about it, whilst growing my passion for digital marketing through the work I was doing outside of class. 

This enabled me to not only understand marketing as a whole, which has helped me in my working life, but also learn the theory behind it - some of the industry hasn’t changed, and ways of working seem to have stayed similar. 

How did the business grow from there?

In 2017, I left Social Chain and started going to university. I decided to create my own social media accounts. This totalled to over 15 by the time I graduated. Some of the brands which I created were Great British Memes, That Girl Page and Love Island Reactions, which at the time were created on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. These soon turned into TikTok, Reddit, YouTube and Snapchat over recent years. 

The pages weren't necessarily popular from the get-go. Love Island Reactions grew to 50K followers within the first season, however pages like Great British Memes and That Girl Page took a little while to get going in comparison. However, I remember Great British Memes grew to 100K within the first year of uni and by the end of second year it was at over 1 million followers.

I’ve always had the desire to do something for myself and have always shown a can-do attitude. I took inspiration from a lot of YouTubers who grew their own businesses on these social platforms, I just chose the route of creating multiple faceless brands rather than posting myself (under George Bacon).

What were some of the highlights from your course?

It would have to be the teachers/lecturers, in particular those who took an interest in what I was doing outside of university and gave me valuable advice. 

The optional courses were also great, I will never forget the professional selling module I completed. It’s been extremely helpful in negotiating deals and working around certain business situations. To this day, I use tactics from what I learnt and I am very grateful I chose this as an additional module. 

Another highlight was the self-employed placement year which really allowed me to lock in and grow the company to a scalable level. I used the year to build my business from home. Prior to my placement year, I was working on the business as well as studying, so I was unable to put all my time into the business. 

During this time, I was able to actively look for work while building key relationships with clients and potential prospects. It also allowed me to refresh from studying and put the skills I had learnt into practice, which was great to see! It also meant that in my final year, I practically had a working business while completing my degree.

What does a typical day look like for you as the agency owner?

To be honest, no day is the same as we are constantly doing different things, speaking to people or creating content to go out across our channels. We have over 15+ pages across multiple social media platforms, but on top of this we support a few brands with their social media content. 

My role has progressed a bit since building out our full-time team which allows me to focus on what I’m good at, leading the company and connecting with like-minded people within the marketing industry, however I’m still very heavily involved in the day-to-day running of the company. 

Over the years, GBM Group has been fortunate enough to work with a wide variety of clients, such as M&S, JD Sports, Unilever and more! We’ve run large campaigns across the board, however one in particular was our 2024/25 partnership with Bumble. We organically reached over 24 million people across our channels with their content.

So far, some main career highlights for me are working with some of the biggest social first companies in the world. A social first company is one that prioritises social media and its principles when developing a marketing strategy or creating content. Having our headquarters next to The Shard is also something I’m extremely proud of, as well as attending the Brits red carpet with GBM.

What emerging trends are you most excited about in social media?

Currently, I’m most excited about EGC (Employee Generated Content), you may be familiar with content that M&S and Matalan post. What excites me is that companies are getting onboard with this more and more, which is exactly what consumers are looking for - especially across social media. 

What does the future hold for you and GBM Group?

The future for GBM is looking bright, by the time this article will be out our full-time team would have increased from 4 to 6, with more roles hopefully being filled by the end of the year.

GBM are looking to solidify themselves in the marketing industry and continue the branded content we do for our clients that stands out from the rest. There are exciting things to come!