Organic Social Media 101
Everything you need to know about running your brand’s organic social media channels
Written by Anna Sullivan
For most brands, you can’t avoid social media - and if you do that doesn’t mean your consumers aren’t posting about you (positive or negative). Typically being on social media helps propel brands forward - it brings community, and engagement, and aids in brand awareness. However, if you are a small team or especially someone who doesn’t use social media yourself (and you can’t afford a team) social media can be INTIMIDATING. This post will dive into EVERYTHING you need to know and do to make organic social media “happen” for your brand. So let’s go…
SETTING GOALS
This is the first thing anyone should do when they are thinking about social media - setting goals and then being realistic in terms of what these channels can bring (and accepting the fact that things take time). Organic social media is a LONG game - paid ads will bring you more immediate success/conversions, but seeing sales, gaining followers, and building community takes time. Some brands do see “overnight” success - some influencer may have posted about the brand, they had a video go viral, they got noticed for their branding by branding accounts - don’t let this blind you. It’s ok if it takes 2 months to see your first 100 followers.
Some goals to consider:
Brand Awareness
Brand Affinity
Conversions
DEVELOPING A STRATEGY
Once you are clear on your goals, it’s time to develop a strategy on how to meet those goals. Your social media strategy should be a guideline on how to approach social media, content creation, and your brand in terms of what is on brand for content. However, social media changes all the time - new channels emerge, algorithms change, etc. Keep this in mind - while these things change, so will your strategy. Not evolving your strategy and approach can KILL your brand. Always be testing and trying new things.
Here is what to include in your social media strategy:
KPIs - How do you plan to track your goals
Brand Analysis - Are you currently on social media? If so make note of what you are currently doing (i.e. what is working, what’s not, how many followers do you have, what kind of engagement you are getting).
Competitive Analysis - Now do the same for your competitors. Don’t worry about direct competitors who are not on social media or not really doing a good job. Look at who is. This can also bleed into looking at brands you really admire - what are they doing well? Do you want to emulate what they are doing?
Channel Approach - What social media channels do you want to be on? What is the vision for each? What content types are you going to dive into and how often should you be posting? What will your tone of voice on each channel look like?
Content Direction - This may be the most important part of the strategy - what content will you post? What is the theme/direction?
Another important thing to think about here is - how will this content get created? A graphic designer? UGC creator?
Moodboard/Visual Look and Feel - How do you want your videos, graphics, and images to look on social media? How does that align with your brand guidelines?
Tools - What tools can you utilize to help you develop content and track goals? This may not need to be a part of your strategy, but it’s something we include for our clients - we want to set you up for success. With that said, here are some tools (social media focused and some not) that we love and suggest often:
If you are a CPG brand - get listed on Thing Testing and CPGD
Influencer Marketing - What kind of influencers do you want to work with (if at all)? How do you want them to engage and show up for your brand? Another alternative is creating a Brand Ambassador program.
Brand Partnerships - How you interact with other brands should be a part of your initial strategy. Where do you allow room in your brand and through social media content to do so? This can be a fast track to growth.
Community Management Plan - It may not seem like this needs to be a plan, but outlining how you want to respond to people and engage on other accounts (social listening) can be a great thing to figure out upfront - especially if you are still defining your brand voice.
CONTENT CREATION
Typically once your strategy is completed it’s time to start developing your content library. This may look like reaching out to UGC creators, influencers, and photoshoot studios. Building a library (and graphic templates) can really help you when creating content for the first few months - an evergreen library. Then creating campaign content, trending content (typically last minute), and executing on new concepts won’t seem as scary.
We do offer all of these services, but here are a few other resources:
Typically it’s helpful to have content developed at least 6 weeks prior to needing it to go live.
EDITORIAL CALENDAR PLANNING
From your social media strategy, you will need to develop an editorial calendar. This is the outline to determine what you will be posting when. We typically like to build a skeleton for the year and work from there working to the quarter, then month. For most brands there will be things you want to create in real time (around trending topics), so leave room for that and know that will come (if it’s a part of your strategy of course).
STUDYING ANALYTICS
Once you start posting (aka your content going live) you should start paying attention to your analytics. Typically we look at analytics on a weekly and monthly basis. weekly we like to stay on top of follower growth and engagement. On a monthly basis we are looking at this too - but making changes to it. What is working well? What’s not? Typically in our monthly reports for clients, we are also looking at industry trends, new social channels, algorithm changes, competitors, etc. This is a great time to reset each month and revisit your strategy.
COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT & SOCIAL LISTENING
Just because you created content and posted it does NOT mean your job is done. It’s key (especially for early/growing brands) to engage with everyone who engages with you (tagged posts, DMs, comments, etc). Then you should be spending a considerable amount of time with social listening. Social listening is when you go and find relevant content (either one-off posts or relevant accounts) to engage with - people read the comments. Your comments can drive brand engagement just as much as your own content.
Interested in working with us this? A Mini Social Media Strategy may be the perfect place to get started. Check it out and take 24% off with coupon code: SUMMER24