Leveraging Docusign for Intentional Growth: A Conversation with Elena Hansen, Founder of SWIM Social

Success in social media marketing isn’t about chasing trends—it’s about strategy, adaptability, and clear intentions. In this Docusign Community interview, Leah Breen sits down with Elena Hansen, founder of SWIM Social, to discuss her 12-year journey building a full-service social media agency. 

From managing client expectations to leveraging Docusign for efficient agreements, Elena shares insights on fostering intentional and sustainable growth in an ever-evolving industry where speed is king. 

Leah and Elena cover:

• Crafting content that stands out: Elena shares how SWIM Social’s approach is rooted in deeply understanding clients—their influences, psyche, and relationship with social media. By prioritizing authenticity over trends, SWIM helps brands create meaningful, lasting connections with their audiences.

• Finding the right client fit: Elena reflects on the importance of shared values and vision when selecting clients. She emphasizes how clear agreements help set expectations, protect creative direction, and ensure successful collaborations.

• Structuring agreements for flexibility and growth: Elena advocates for shorter, incremental agreements, such as three or six-month agreements, rather than year-long commitments. This approach allows for agility, enabling both agencies and clients to reassess needs and scale effectively as business goals evolve.

• Navigating the balance between free work and paid engagements: Elena highlights a common challenge for early-stage social media freelancers and small agencies: determining how much work to provide before securing a partnership. She emphasizes setting clear boundaries to ensure fair compensation while fostering trust with clients.

• Leveraging Docusign for efficiency: SWIM uses Docusign to streamline agreement management across all aspects of the business, from client retainers to influencer and content creator agreements. The platform’s mobile-friendly and centralized document storage capabilities help the team stay organized and ensure seamless execution, even for fast-moving campaigns.

• Why adaptability is key in social media marketing: Elena stresses the importance of staying open to new tools and innovations. She views Docusign as an extension of SWIM’s values—efficiency, clarity, and modern technology—helping the agency and its clients remain agile in a rapidly evolving digital landscape.

About Elena Hansen

Elena Hansen is the founder of SWIM Social, a full service social media agency based in Los Angeles. SWIM specializes in the creative expression of high-profile brands, films, and individuals in the digital space. They have worked across a range of industries, with clients like Houseplant by Seth Rogen, Revival Tour by Selena Gomez, Alfred Coffee, Erewhon, National Anthem Film by Luke Gilford, Dear Moon Project by Yusaku Maezawa and SpaceX, as well as global talent and visionary business leaders. Elena also teaches Social Media Strategy for business at the USC Marshall School of Business. Learn more about SWIM at swimsocial.com.  

Join the conversation

Share your thoughts on these questions or ask your own questions for Elena in the comments below👇

• How do you set expectations with clients to ensure smooth collaborations? 

• What are your tips for structuring agreements for flexibility and growth?

• If you started your own creative agency or work for one, what parts of this conversation resonate with you? 

Transcript 

Leah Breen, Docusign Community: Hey everyone, welcome to this Docusign Community Spotlight interview. Today we're talking with Elena Hansen, who's the founder of SWIM Social. Thanks for being here, Elena. I'd love to start with a quick intro on you, if you could tell us a little bit about yourself and what SWIM Social does.

Elena Hansen, SWIM Social: My name is Elena Hanson, and I founded SWIM Social back in 2013 with my first client, Alfred Coffee. We've grown a social media agency in Los Angeles over the years, servicing so many amazing brands, film projects, celebrities, and talent. We produce social media content, really handling everything from the strategy to the content production, creative direction, and the platform and community management.

So we were kind of early on just in recognizing the value of social media for businesses and have really leaned in and carved out a niche in the industry. 

Leah Breen:  I feel like you're being super humble because a lot of people have been exposed to your really brilliant work without even realizing it, like you've done the social strategy for Selena Gomez's Revival Tour and the “but first coffee” slogan, which is incredible. And so I wanted to ask you from your experience, what's your perspective on what it takes to create content that really stands out and connects with audiences in a meaningful and also valuable way?

Elena Hansen: Early on with SWIM SOCIAL, it was really my goal to get to know clients on a really deep level. So we have a lot of conversations before we even get started and it really is getting to know them and their influences, their psyche, and also their personal relationship to social media and how they perceive the space. So there's a lot of foundational work I think that's done before we even start strategizing and building creative direction. I like to say that SWIM's work is not a specific tone or aesthetic. So that takes a lot of work on our end to really step into these different worlds and kind of create the most authentic version and elevated version of each of our clients. So that's been our approach to content. 

Leah Breen: Fantastic. And as SWIM Social has grown over the years, I'm sure that your approach to agreements with your clients and partners has really evolved as you've grown as an entrepreneur. What are some lessons as you reflect back on what you have learned about what works or what doesn't when it comes to managing successful agreements?

Elena Hansen: Gosh, I remember when we started using Docusign. From the beginning we have worked with multi-generational clients. So sometimes it's a really young founder who's on-the-go and never at their desktop computer. And so they need to be reviewing things via mobile. Or it's an older client and we need them to download the document, reattach it properly, or scan it in. And Docusign felt like just the efficient, easy-to-use version of getting our agreements across the line. And a lot of times people come to us and social media is an urgent thing for them. They're launching their product in a week so this part of the process has to be so efficient and dialed in and accurate. And now we use Docusign across influencer and creator agreements on behalf of our clients, which could be 30-person campaigns. So it's been a partner to us in so many ways. 

Leah Breen: I know you've said previously that you're really selective about the clients you take on to make sure that there is that right fit. When you're doing discovery with a potential client, how do you go about determining if that right fit is there? And then how would you say, those formal agreements help kind of set the stage for a strong working relationship as you go about implementing the scope of work? 

Elena Hansen: Yeah, I think it comes down to shared values and shared vision. It's our job as an agency to be collaborative, but also lead the conversation around social media and what it can be used for. But I really look at how well a potential client knows themselves. How much do they care about brand identity and how do they show up in the digital world? I think we are really careful not to get sucked into just chasing trends all the time and really letting the platforms lead the strategy.

I think that that's where people get into muddy waters of kind of losing their own identity. And then six months, a year from now, they look at their social media and they don't feel like it's a reflection of who they are. So having those conversations really early on and being willing to walk away from business was a huge learning curve for me. 

I think as a solo entrepreneur and self-funded entrepreneur where our revenue was always driving the growth of the business, I think there was a time when we took on everything and it gave us a ton of industry experience working from on everything from a cool consumer product to an insurance company to a hospital to a celebrity music tour. We've done it all and there was an opportunity to learn in every space, but now it's really about okay, we have a decade of experience, who do we know we can make the biggest impact with, and it's less about product category or type of client, and it's more about that shared ethos and value.

Leah Breen: How do you leverage agreements to make sure that you're keeping everything clear in terms of protecting your creative vision and managing business expectations? And how are agreements a tool for helping to facilitate all those moving parts? 

Elena Hansen: Yeah, what we mainly use Docusign for is our standard social media agreements for the client that includes our scope of work. So that is our main formal agreement that we utilize and then for any kind of campaign work that we do, or say we work with a content creator or photographer on behalf of the client, we send agreements around those deliverables. And then what's great is that Docusign just keeps a clear record of those things. And so oftentimes we'll have to just take a look back to see when does this term end or what were the exact deliverables. It's a nice hub that everyone kind of can refer back to.

Leah Breen: Yeah, it's kind of like providing that transparency in terms of what's been done and what needs to get done. And now that your agency has been set up for 12 years, what have you learned in terms of structuring agreements that can help contribute to long-term successful partnerships? What have been some of the learnings that you've had for how to approach making sure that a partnership can last for the long term, if that's the intention?

Elena Hansen: I think oftentimes it's also about taking the next natural step with a client, which could be just focusing on the launch of their brand or project and then talking about a longer term partnership once that has been established and completed. And I think succeeding on a small scale and incrementally taking the next step works really well with social media marketing, especially because you can almost get into a bit of stagnancy if you think about having a client for a year. Plus it can actually kind of work against the partnership sometimes. So I have been really mindful of saying, okay, let's sign a three-month agreement or a six-month agreement with really clear deliverables. And then let's reset because at the six-month mark because we could have a totally new set of needs based on your content and where your business is at because social media can be such a driver for growth. So I really believe in betting on ourselves and looking at things a little bit more incrementally rather than someone feeling like via an agreement they're signed and locked in with us for a year.

Leah Breen: Right, and that enables flexibility to to look at things and assess how things are going, where to tweak things. And in the world of social media where there's so many external forces and those affect the work and the direction of the work, that seems really smart to take it incrementally over the long term.

Elena Hansen: Right. Yeah.

Leah Breen: For you as an entrepreneur, I'm sure that negotiating contracts is a huge part of running your business. What have you learned about negotiating strategies for making sure that your agreements are fair and also work well for both sides? 

Elena Hansen: I think as it relates to our business specifically, something I really dial in with our agreements is the expectations around the number of platforms, the volume of posts and the content production or output of content that you're expecting via the number of photos produced on a monthly basis, the number of videos edited, the number of graphics created. Because that is, I think, where there is a bit of tension within teams: the expectations of the content output of the number of platforms required to maintain the activity is maybe misaligned. So in our agreements I would say that those are three things that we never move forward without outlining in detail: The number of platforms, the amount of content, and the post frequency across those platforms. 

Leah Breen: Yeah, like being super clear up-front, what are the resources we need to actually achieve this vision? What is it going to take to bring this to life? To get really granular up front. 

Elena Hansen: Exactly. And then I think in the agreement, you can always state we're open to ideating and strategy as a part of this, but anything kind of beyond this becomes a conversation to have as a checkpoint on what kind of budget is needed to achieve these ideas. So creating something that is manageable as an evergreen strategy, but then knowing that you can ideate and maybe dream big on a campaign level, but a campaign might be a separate cost versus your ongoing social management. 

Leah Breen: Yeah, definitely. And looking back to your early days as a founder, is there a story of an agreement or client relationship that maybe you now have some wisdom, some learning, you would go back and tell an earlier version of yourself some advice for how to handle things differently, or advice to other founders of creative agencies out there, advice that you would give them in terms of how to structure their agreements for success?

Elena Hansen: That's a great question. I think that there have been a lot of learnings around —and any freelancer or small agency can relate to this—how much work do you provide before you start getting paid? I think that there are a lot of creative conversations that happen really early on, and even deck building and tangible materials that are generated before you actually get paid. So I would suggest just establishing on your end what you're willing to do, because we all do have to do things to get a client signed, but establish what you're willing to do. For example, I'm willing to put together a five page strategy deck just at a high level, articulating what my vision is or what my value would be for this business, but then really drawing a hard line and saying from that point on and making it clear up front, I can provide two weeks of back and forth and this material. But at that point, I would need an agreement signed to move forward. And that initial agreement again can be something short term. It could be that you sign them as a strategy-only client for another two weeks and that you provide those insights and ideas, but that you get paid for it.

I think there's a lot of that happening in the industry of people being taken advantage of because there's so many brands that need the support. I think I read a statistic that over 70 percent of businesses today use social media for their marketing. And so there's a lot of competition out there. And I think that just establishing that for yourself and understanding that you will attract clients that are aligned for you and that respect your work and that will abide by those standards that you have instead of spending three months without getting paid for your ideas.

Leah Breen: I think that's such fantastic advice, especially for women founders who are starting their own agencies where there is that pressure—especially in the world of marketing creative work—to prove that you can do the work by doing it for free. But yeah, it really comes down to knowing your worth and standing up for yourself and saying, yeah, this is where my line is. This is what I can provide to show that I am capable and I can do this. But then also saying, yes, I know when to put my foot down and to say, okay, now it's time to get paid for this.

Elena Hansen: Right. And I think it is indicative of what the relationship would be like. Are they going to respect you when you draw those boundaries and will they play fair? And if not, then that's an indication of what the whole partnership is going to be like. 

Leah Breen: It shows what the green flags or red flags are. One last question for you. So in this AI era, agreements are evolving too at Docusign. We're integrating AI into pretty much all of our solutions—what Docusign's calling intelligent agreement management. How do you see AI changing the way that agencies, like yours handle agreements, client relationships, and moving the work along?

Elena Hansen: Gosh, that's interesting. I think the value that I would lean into is AI for collaboration and optimization. To clarify, what is the nature of Docusign’s AI tool? 

Leah Breen: We’re bringing AI across all of our solutions and all of our apps. But as one example, some of it is to surface insights from your agreements, instead of having to read through hundreds of pages—that's certainly one use case. 

Elena Hansen: Yeah, I would imagine being able to input what the goals of the partnership are and what kind of working relationship you want to have with a client and then having the AI capability be able to tell you or highlight any kind of areas of concern or important information that you might need to know, or to question whether this agreement is exactly the type of working relationship you want to have with the client. I think that would be interesting and something I look forward to because we customize all of our agreements to each client. I look forward to having that to help streamline that process. 

Leah Breen: Is there anything else that you might want to share with the Docusign Community, especially for other founders of small agencies out there, like ways to leverage Docusign to help make their work easier and to get things done faster?

Elena Hansen: Gosh, I mean, I would imagine the Community is already thinking about a lot of these things, but I think what I really appreciate about Docusign is that it's a modern kind of touch point and way of working that is a reflection of our agency’s ethos and approach, which is efficiency and using modern technology and clarity and transparency. I think just all of us as entrepreneurs, freelancers, continuing to challenge ourselves to adopt new tools and to grow with platforms like Docusign and the added features and just making innovation a natural part of what we do and adaptability a natural part of what we do and just never getting stuck. So I think Docusign is an extension of those values. 

Leah Breen: Fantastic. Well, thanks so much, Elena. I really appreciate you talking with us. 

Elena Hansen: Thank you, Leah.