2023 State of Organic Social Media
Ciao Ragazzi,
At its core, social media is all about connecting. It’s a moment, a connection, and an impact. It’s the way so many small and medium-sized businesses communicate with their audience.
So why is it so damn hard to do? To keep up with? To not get burned out by?
Because organic social media is a time and resource suck if you’re not doing it right. 😆
To truly scale and grow your channels, you need to pay to play. This is evident by all the platforms trying to upsell you to premium models or always trying to get you to boost your posts. This is another post for another day.
There is definitely a time and place for that, but that does not mean you can’t instill some new thinking into your organic social in 2023 because brands with small budgets need to miss out on the explosiveness of social media.
Let me explain. 👇
What steps can you take to be better than anyone else with organic social media?
First off, to win on social you don’t need to compete against anyone except your last month/last year self. This starts with establishing your right to win and asking some key questions about your organic social media strategy…
Does your content/brand fit the social platform purpose? Each platform is different and this should be used to your advantage.
Does the content you’re trying to promote fit the brand's voice and tone? This is your unique way to connect with your audience.
Logistically, can you activate on the strategy for the long term? Social media is a game of long-term consistency, not short-term sprints.
Winning on social media in 2023 depends on…
Defining & Differentiating
Differentiation is paramount in brand building and especially true in social media where we’re in a constant fight for eyeballs. As human beings, we’re hardwired to notice what’s different, and on social media, where the sea of sameness runs rampant, how can we make each brand stand out and be ZAG when everyone is ZIGGING?
Cultivating a Community
When we say cultivate a community, what we’re really saying is that consumers aren’t buying brands these days…They’re joining them. Each brand has the opportunity to create a 1 on 1 relationship with customers to create lifetime customer loyalty.
Define your community. Set some ‘ground rules’ and give to them consistently. And while we’re at it, use your 2 ears to listen more than your 1 mouth can speak. It’s how we’ll learn what is working and what isn’t. What we should create/post and what we shouldn’t.
Creating fun and relevant content
It should go without saying that creating fun, relevant, and highly shareable content is driving organic social. Just look at TikTok for more than 30 seconds and you’ll see highly consumable content that is almost addicting (there’s a great book I’m reading called Digital Minimalism that talks all about the addiction that is social media).
And while we’re at it, don’t forget the power that is ASMR — Not familiar? The full form of the term is Autonomous Sensory Meridian Response - and the response some people have to a type of extremely popular video content. The sensation is described as a relaxing feeling that has some sedative effect as well — Think food porn and cooking videos and the audio that seems to put us all in a trance.
Take advantage of the platform
Each platform gives us an opportunity to tell a unique story and we want to take advantage of these platforms to reach our audience and build our communities. The trick is, not all content should be shared on all platforms.
Think about your audience and where they live on social media. Think about the types of content they like to consume and match the platform + content to your audience.
There’s nothing more tone-deaf and lazy than a brand posting the same piece of content on every platform not taking into account design sizing, character limitations, and how it might show up on that platform.
Find Efficiencies
While creating this social media ecosystem, we’re constantly looking for ways to create efficiencies and redefine the playbook. It’s paramount to be quick and nimble in both delivering content and adapting the right-sized strategy as needed because every brand is different.
That said, every brand should work hard to establish this playbook and redefine it as needed because as platforms, algorithms, and your audience’s wants/needs/consumption habits change, your strategy equally needs to change.
While organic social media can be equally daunting, frustrating, and a time suck, leveraging it for your business can only help in creating your tribe. Your community.
If you need help with putting together. a social media and content strategy for your organization, reply to this email and shoot me a note.
I’m here to serve you and help your brand win.
✌️ Steven
P.S. I know I said last time that I was going to let you know about the studio I’m building. An announcement is coming soon so stay tuned.