You’re In The Villa. Who’s Running Your Instagram?

There’s no better career boost for aspiring influencers than reality television: Show off your charisma, serve a few looks, maybe utter a catchphrase or two, and you just might become America’s sweetheart overnight and watch your follower count bloom. But as well-trod as the reality-star-to-social-media-star pipeline is, there’s still a lot for hopefuls to learn about how to capitalize on all the eyeballs tuning in — including how to do it when you have no idea where your phone is.

Many shows air months after filming, which means contestants can track their growing online audiences with each new episode. But other shows, like Big Brother and Love Island, require cast members to sequester as episodes air practically in real time. Totally isolated from the world outside of their manufactured reality show universe, they compete for money, love, clout, or all of the above — with no connection to the outside (and online) world.

That doesn’t mean their accounts go radio silent. Instead, many contestants choose a member of their inner circle to be their de facto social media manager in order to take advantage of all the eyeballs on them and, hopefully, cement their place in the cultural conversation. But whether you’re dealing with a fan favorite or an accidental villain, running socials is a job that can turn out to be much more complicated than contestants or their proxies imagine.

For many reality TV stars, choosing who will run their Instagram is a no-brainer. Charlie Georgio of Love Island USA Season 7 knew his cousin Emmy was fit for the job since she was already juggling accounts for herself, her dog, and the family business. “She smashed it,” he says. “She was getting up at 2 a.m., 3 a.m., because she was back in the U.K. while the show was airing.” Prior to filming, Georgio sent her a list of trending audio clips she could potentially use to pair with scenes from the show, but otherwise he gave her free rein to post what she felt was right — which largely included screen grabs of tweets about Charlie’s time on the show and reposts of fan edits.

For Ashley Hollis, who won Big Brother Season 27, the answer wasn’t as clear. “I had a pretty hard time trying to think of someone who had their finger on the pulse, who I trusted to say the right things and also not make me look bad,” she says.

She ultimately picked two close friends but gave them plenty of overarching direction. Hollis had a clear strategy going into the Big Brother game — downplay her threat level, play up her likability — and a persona to match: “I had studied Legally Blonde. I wanted to embody Elle Woods,” she says. “And that’s exactly how I snuck my way into a win.” That prefab personal brand guided her friends as they decided what to post on her Instagram during the show — like a picture of her head photoshopped on Elle Woods, with fellow contestant Keanu Soto’s face edited over Woods’s Chihuahua. “#HollisHive 🗣️🗣️ omg how do we feel about #TheBlackElleWoods new BFF? We DID NOT see this coming but we could be here for it,” the caption read.

“When people asked me to talk about your religion, your faith, your political affiliation, I didn’t know what to do.”

It’s not all fun and memes, though. Running a reality contestant’s socials means you’re often on the receiving end of immediate feedback from not just their fans but their critics, too. During the last season of Love Island USA, which aired during summer 2025, contestant Cierra Ortega tasked her best friend MJ Hedderman (an influencer in her own right) with maintaining her online presence; Hedderman quickly grew Ortega’s following from roughly 32,000 followers to 634,000 in the first four weeks of Season 7 by pairing beauty inspo with witty captions and stream-of-consciousness recaps.

But after a post on Ortega’s account using a racial slur resurfaced as the season aired, Hedderman was suddenly thrust into a crisis-PR role as viewers demanded accountability. Ultimately, Hedderman released a statement about the situation, in which she denounced racism, explained that she was unaware of the post, and said that she would no longer be running Ortega’s account — all while Ortega was still sequestered in Fiji. Ultimately, the post got Ortega pulled from the show, but their friendship seems to have survived: Hedderman started posting with Ortega again at the start of 2026, and the two recently attended Coachella together.

Gracyn Blackmore, a contestant from that same season of Love Island, says viewers are not shy about investigating a reality star’s values on social media. She remembers the debrief she had with her sister, who ran her Instagram during the show. “My sister told me, ‘I did the best I could. But when people asked me to talk about your religion, your faith, your political affiliation, I didn’t know what to do, so I just ignored it most of the time,’” Blackmore recalls. “Everyone who was in the villa was getting asked very tough questions about our personal beliefs and our personal lives, and [those running our accounts] didn’t want to speak for us.” In retrospect, Blackmore wishes she sat down with her sister ahead of time to plot out how to answer those queries. (The U.K. version of Love Island actually instructs Islanders to pause posting on their social accounts during filming entirely so their trusted friends or family members don’t have to deal with any immediate backlash, trolling, or intense scrutiny.)

“It’s so easy to talk on camera when it’s a big camera on your face, but when you have your phone in front of you? I just don’t know what people want to hear or see.”

Of course, one benefit of having family members run your socials is that they already know you and your intentions — which can help you get ahead of a particular perception, according to Big Brother Season 26 winner Chelsie Baham. “I have three siblings, and all of them were like, ‘Hey, we were setting the record straight on Twitter,’” she says of her time on the show, on which her edit in the episodes was rather positive, but watchers of the 24/7 live feeds thought she had “mean girl energy.” “I handed my socials off to my little sister. I said, ‘If [the hate] gets too bad, go private.’”

Fortunately for her, that didn’t have to happen. But if you’re looking for a social media surrogate to more actively shape your brand and image, consider hiring professionals. When Baham was asked to join The Amazing Race after her Big Brother run, she hired a freelance social media coordinator to post for her while filming. “There is a level of connection and engagement that I think rises when you have an agency that’s consistently posting, rather than my sister popping in every now and then,” she says of her decision. “A marketing agency does a very good job at staying engaged with your audience. It is thousands of followers of a difference.”

Once you get those followers, figuring out how to hold their attention is another story. After their shows air, many reality TV vets run into the same question: What do followers even want to see from me? “It’s so easy to talk on camera when it’s a big camera on your face, but when you have your phone in front of you, for me, I just don’t know what people want to hear or see,” Blackmore says. “It makes me almost insecure in a way, which is kind of weird.”

“I said, ‘If the hate gets too bad, go private.’”

This is where having someone mind your accounts comes in handy — you can take your cues from your audience. After her Big Brother win, Hollis noticed that fans had been really curious about her makeup and fashion choices while the show aired. “I wish I created a little photo set of all my outfits and wrote down the brands that they’re from and left it for [my friends running my Instagram],” she says. “That way, throughout the show when people had questions while it was happening, they could have been able to post it, tag the brand, all of that.” She plans to lean into that fashion and beauty content going forward.

Still, you can’t always predict what fans will latch on to. Jaden Ashley, another Season 7 Love Island-er, was pleasantly surprised to learn that her candor about living with type 1 diabetes was well received by viewers, who dubbed her a “dia-baddie.” “I’d never heard that word before. I definitely am still trying to figure out my niche, but I do want to focus on the diabetes space just because I had no idea what kind of impact that made,” she says. “It was kind of cool to let the public almost decide your brand if you didn’t have one already.”