Optimise your returns from social by rethinking your whole mix

Today’s winning (social) playbook is increasingly at odds with the financial interests of many in the (social media) industry. This tension is fuelling a lot of disinformation, feeding brand teams conflicting signals, and slowing down their progression.

The below principles are already adopted by the top 10% of brands outperforming on social, and a key reason they are outgrowing peers as a result.

What brands should upweight:

1. Tightly integrate social strategies with the rest of the marketing mix: all activities on- and off-social should be designed and deployed with community-building in mind, stimulating consumers to post about it on social. Top brands today get most of their (dominant) social footprints from organic, unpaid posts and comments.

   

   Poppi’s PR package doubles as a “guess the flavour” mystery game, opening the door to lots of playful posts and viewer reactions

2. Consequently, invest more in off-social activities that fuel spontaneous, community-led activity on social, whether it be in-store, outdoor, in the form of sampling, events, collabs, merch.

   

3. Double down on owned creative mastery. Understand how to trigger emotional responses that fuel discussions: content needs to engage deeply, and not dilute the response by also trying to convince — the hormonal kick drives viewers to the comments, where peers do the convincing.

4. Multiply affiliate relationships (offering creators competitive commissions): in most cases, their primary contribution is the incremental visibility they initiate more than the extra sales.

5. “Community manage” to spot new category and consumer insights, relevant trends and cultural truths, locate posts to build on (stitch, remix etc.), consumers to reward, creators to work with.

What brands should downweight:

1. Invest less in formal (paid) influence, or any relationships that consumers view as less trustworthy (#sponsored, #partner, #ad etc.) — keep paid influencers in the mix, but limit relationships to creators skilled enough to make consumers forget they are being sold to.

   

   Aim for more subtlety, creativity: avoid remunerating creators based on followers - reward deep engagement instead

2. Social ads/media boosts: there are circumstances when media boosts are warranted, but a majority of paid views today is sub-optimal. Don’t use paid views to compensate for poor quality: master today’s content codes first, and only then boost deserving content as required.

3. Lower owned frequency (esp. on TikTok, but increasingly on Instagram as well): while frequency does have some benefits (faster learning, more opportunities that the spaghetti stick to the wall), brands should double down on quality first: a few stellar posts land more impact (community growth, engagement) than a lot of average content.

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About the author: 20+ years experience in insights & marketing mix at P&G, marketing & media consultancy at McKinsey, head of Europe at L2, co-founder at eBench and Rethink x Social. Have worked with over 250 clients teams across 100+ companies in a dozen categories.

About Rethink x Social: we’re a boutique marketing consultancy, backed by our proprietary tool that tracks and analyses hundreds of thousands of accounts, surfacing insights on trends, best practices, category leaders, and content excellence. We help clients on everything from investment priorities, to social strategies. Our most recent R&D emphasis has been on video content codes, tackling tone of voice, storytelling/editing/pacing principles, the roles of subtext, sounds, protagonists, content big ideas.