Marketing Happy Hour - Social Media Rewind: The Truth About Social Media Virality, Effective Content Calendars, Top Tips By Platform + MORE!

Starting point is 00:00:00 you're listening to the marketing happy hour podcast where we discuss career and industry insights with our peers in marketing we're here to talk about it all like the ups and downs of working in social media how to build authentic relationships in the influencer and pr space managing a nine-to-five and a side hustle at the same time, how to be productive in your life and career without losing your sanity, and more. Ultimately, we're here to build a community with you because we're all trying to navigate the world of marketing together. Are you ready? Grab your favorite drink and join your hosts, Cassie and Erica, for this week's episode.

Starting point is 00:00:56 Hello, Marketing Happy Hour listeners. This week, we thought we'd try something a little different and hit the rewind button to take a look back at some of the best, most impactful social media tips, tricks, and predictions we've heard on the show. We'll start with Bree of Lyft, who shares the truth about social media virality and her top tip for each social media platform, then move to our conversation with Jacinth of Our Place to hear her thoughts on organizing your content and developing effective content calendars. After Jacinth, you'll hear from Jack Appleby of Future Social about testing trends and his thoughts on unhinged content, followed by Maddie of TLC, who addresses staying on top of social's ever-changing landscape. Finally, we'll close out with Jack of Chili's,

Starting point is 00:01:38 who shares his upcoming predictions for the future of social media. I hope as I've been talking, you've been grabbing your favorite drink and a pen and paper because you'll want to take notes in this episode. And if you enjoy these clips, head to the show notes for a link to each individual episode. Here we go.

Starting point is 00:01:59 I think a hard lesson that I've, no, I've had to teach my leadership at both Lyft and Adobe that like virality doesn't mean success always. It's warm and fuzzy and it's a great like serotonin feeling, but going viral on these platforms isn't actually what drives like meaningful interactions with your audience. Those things show up in smaller scale. It's showing up on a video of someone talking about a bad experience they had with a lift and being able to respond with a stitched video from your CEO telling them they're going to fix it. It's about, and maybe that gets like 800 views, but it's that important like brand connection moment. That's what I think is more valuable than the huge followers, huge views, although that might feel warm and fuzzy. I'm going to list a few social platforms and ask your top tip for each and then ask you to name

Starting point is 00:02:51 at least one brand that you think is killing it on the platform. Let's start with Instagram, since you just said TSA is killing it. What's your top tip? what's another brand that's doing a really good job on there um instagram top tip would be partner with um insane creators partner with the creators that your core audience is super excited about and have them make dope shit for your feed um i think that's like my favorite thing that i see brands doing right now. And a brand that's doing an amazing job outside of TSA and we're not really strangers is Duncan. I love everything that Duncan does on Instagram. They're amazing. Love that. Shout out to Duncan.

Starting point is 00:03:35 What about TikTok? TikTok top tip is find your niche. Find that unanswerable question that your audience has and answer it in a million different ways and a million different styles and tones, whatever that means for you. And brand that's doing an amazing job of that and more is Chipotle on TikTok. Chipotle is amazing there. Excellent. How about LinkedIn? LinkedIn, I think we have to learn to find unique ways to show up on that platform because it's already inherently really corporate-y. And I think the best way to do that is through community management, which we're trying to do more from Lyft. And I think a brand that's doing that amazing right now is Slack. Slack's community management game on LinkedIn is amazing.

Starting point is 00:04:23 Awesome. What about Facebook? Oh, Facebook, fuck Facebook. I haven't been, I know I almost didn't even include it. And I was like, I have to include it. We have to learn. No, that's okay. Um, I, I'm really thankful that at Lyft, we've actually just formally deprioritized Facebook. We're like, we're not seeing ROI there organically. I think that whatever brand ends up mastering groups will be amazing because I don't know about you guys, but groups and marketplace are like the only reason I'm on Facebook. I feel like if there's a brand that can just do something really cool with groups, that's what that platform needs. So whoever that is, they'll be my fave. I love that.

Starting point is 00:05:08 Okay, lastly, how about Twitter? Twitter, I feel like is the wild west right now with all the leadership changes that are happening and how it seems like success means different things every day on that platform. But I think the top tip for Twitter is just to sound as human as you can. That's kind of an overarching thing for all platforms.

Starting point is 00:05:31 So especially on Twitter, when you're competing for spots in people's feed on Twitter, you wanna sound as much like the people they're seeing already on their feed, right? So I think brands that do amazing at that are Duncan again, Duncan just has such a solidified voice. McDonald's is really great on Twitter. Well, what about content calendars? How do you guys kind of plan in advance and just keep up with what you have coming up to kind of stay on track as a team? What does that planning look

Starting point is 00:06:00 like for you guys? Yeah, I am very much a content calendar girl. Like me and Notion are like this, you know, and I feel like the key to having a good work day for me is just staying organized. I'm also one of those people that's like only organized at work. I feel like every other aspect, I'm very much like, oh, whatever. But I'm like very serious about work. Me, it's just like the Capricorn in me. But yeah, like having a calendar just makes things so much easier because you're able

Starting point is 00:06:27 to, you know, plan things out weeks or months in advance. Even if you don't have like those assets exactly locked in and those things can come more into focus as the weeks come on, it's good to have placeholders. And yeah, I think it also really helps other teams have visibility into what social is doing specifically in case they're like assets that we can share or ways that we can just like keep our messaging cohesive. Absolutely. And I'm curious too, what does that content calendar kind of look like? What are you laying out on those days? Like, is it just a topic or post a meme this day? You know, whatever it may be, post this product this day, because we have a lot of people that are listening who may never have

Starting point is 00:07:05 used a content calendar before and might be asked for one and don't really know what to produce so I would love to hear your perspective on that yeah absolutely I think um initially when I first started I was doing it in um like Google I had made like a Google sheet and that was just like a lot of work it's not super um intuitive like it's not easy to like move things around as a whole. So that was a struggle, but you know, I was trying to stay organized very early and green in my career. And then I feel like when I figured out like Notion was a thing, I was like, oh my gosh. And so, yeah, I use Notion and kind of will like map out like the month because they have like the calendar feature, which is super easy. And you can like create a board. So I think I have like a master like social page.

Starting point is 00:07:49 And then in there, I have like links to our Dropbox or links to, you know, our content strategy, social stuff, like that kind of thing. And then the content calendar is under that. And so, yeah, it'll like open up and then have, you know, all the months. And I think like for me when I'm starting a new month, it's typically like I will map out like, you know, all of the months. And I think like for me, when I'm starting a new month, it's typically like, I will map out like, you know, holidays are pretty set in stone. So I'll maybe like at the top of the year, go through like the list of holidays for 2024 or whatever and plot those in. Cause holidays are really, you know, important for our brand specifically because a lot of them tend to be super food centric. So, you know, mapping out that kind of thing. Then if there's specific brand moments or launches mapping out that, if there's sales stuff that we want to talk about, um, there's

Starting point is 00:08:29 also like the very silly holidays, like French Friday or pizza day. So like those like sillier things, um, whether that's going to be something that might be source content or something that we'll produce in house, that kind of thing. Um, yeah. And then filling in, we'll like, oh, we know we want to have like, maybe like two pieces of UGC this week, or we want to like make sure that we're adding in some source content, um, that kind of thing. Yeah. And then filling in like, oh, we know we want to have like maybe like two pieces of UGC this week or we want to like make sure that we're adding in some source content. That kind of thing is a bit more flexible. And I think like Notion is so great because you can just toggle that

Starting point is 00:08:53 everywhere. And like, you know, it's good to have an idea of what you want the month or the week to look like, but also understanding that, you know, social is so alive and so fast that you like need to be nimble. So it's easy that you can just like move things around if you need to that kind of thing. Well, you do have a lot of opinions that can sometimes ruffle feathers. Threads being an example of one of those topics that kind of caused a lot of conversation on LinkedIn and social media in general. More recently, we saw your post on unhinged social media. Let's talk about that. We, Cassie and I both are in agreement with you that the content

Starting point is 00:09:31 can absolutely go too far at times, but what's the perfect balance there, would you say? I mean, so for anybody that hasn't read the article, I wrote a piece on how I wish we would scale back on hinged content. And there's a lot of brands do a lot of different things that have gone pretty crazy. I mean, you were seeing like very explicit sex jokes coming from brands. We're seeing, for lack of a better phrase, bowel movement jokes coming like it's it's i mean brands participating in public controversies trials celebrity feuds everything um to me it's all gone a little too far um and i really wish people would scale it back for a couple reasons one for being honest you're just not gonna be as good as the other brands like the other one of the reasons the brands that do it see huge numbers is because they go so over the top.

Starting point is 00:10:29 They're so aligned with their legal teams. They have fully committed to this. And it's very hard to get a company to commit to that kind of approach. And I don't think most should. I also really worry that as the social media industry gets younger, like we're seeing the field blossom and grow. So we have more under 30 year old employees working in social than ever before. I think there's a lot of people who work in social now who love social media and don't love the brands they work for. They don't love marketing.

Starting point is 00:11:02 They don't love telling stories about those brands and it's creating this like false engagement where people get all these likes on things that like don't lead to to anything that would create you to become a consumer or fan i remember pandemic uh i watched a pro sports team tweet a connect four game from their twitter account i'm like how does this make me a fan of your what does this have to do with anything? So that's a very long winded way of saying, like, as far as the line goes, if you wouldn't want your kid to see it, probably not something that should be on the brand accounts. Yeah, that's, that's fair to say. I think, how do you think brands can test those different trends and things like that a

Starting point is 00:11:46 little push the envelope just a little bit without straying too far from their purpose, like you're saying on social and we know that shock value works a little bit to an extent. How can we kind of achieve similar results with a strong strategy instead of just throwing whatever they see to the social media platforms? You know, I don't even want to encourage ways to try to test being in that realm because I really don't think it's the way to go. I think there's so many different personalities you can use on the internet. And we talk like you see things thrown around like social agencies, like we speak the way the internet speaks. The whole world on the internet there's not one type of internet user like and on every social network like tiktok's not a bunch of kids like the average tiktok users might be even in their

Starting point is 00:12:35 30s at this point yeah um to claim that there's only one way to speak to people drives me nuts and it's not a binary the choices i somebody i see a lot in the social media community is we want to act crazy on our account or we feel like everything we have to do is really bland and boring like no guys like there's all kinds of content you can do you can be wholesome you can tell human emotional stories you can look up hero's journey and what that and how that's consumed psychologically by a viewer why it works in movies that can work in social media content uh casey nice that has a vlog where he explains how he vlogs how he always has a three-act structure you can apply that to social media content it can be about human achievement it can be funny without ever like even inching towards inappropriate nest so i think the goal shouldn't, how can we get edgier?

Starting point is 00:13:26 The goal should be, how can we tell more human stories and human relatable tales that have to do with our product? So good, so good. Well, Matty, shifting gears just slightly here, we wanna talk about social strategy. So as we all know, social is changing all the time. There's so many things going on with the platforms every single day, it feels like. So how do you stay ahead of social media trends and just changes on the platforms? Are there specific tools or approaches that you're using to ensure that your strategies align with the ever evolving landscape or what are you guys doing there? So we're working with our partners at, you know, specific platforms, knowing what they're prioritizing and seeing how that can

Starting point is 00:14:12 fit into our strategy. And, you know, we have a super specific area of the industry that we're in being that it's cable TV. But I, I just like having the conversations with people, especially with others that aren't in my industry, because if it's something that can work in my space, awesome. And if not, it's something that could inspire another idea. I also talk to my friends. I'm like, what's on your FYP? What are trends that I'm not seeing? Because I have a super sometimes interestingly curated algorithm on my TikTok and my Instagram that like, I'll look at over at my friend's phone. I'm like, what is on your for you page? What is happening? Where's your algorithm taking you? And I think, like I said before, being able to take a step back and like, it's not just

Starting point is 00:15:07 about your algorithm. It's not just about the trends that hit your phone. So knowing that it's going to look different across the board and what hits for one brand isn't going to work for another. And that's the case for us. What hits for one show isn't always going to hit for another show. And knowing how to roll with that, I think will save you a lot of headaches and it will save you a lot of procrastinating and figuring out why didn't this work? It's like, okay, it didn't work. Let's figure out for a small period of time and move on because chances are something will be different in the platform or with a trend within the week and no one will be thinking about it anyway. Yeah. Oh my gosh. I'm so glad you mentioned that though. Just like talking to people in different industries. I think that's so important because I feel like a lot of times

Starting point is 00:16:05 us in marketing, we can get tunnel vision with ideas or concepts or whatever it is, even in different industries, like just being in that marketing space all the time. I feel like you leave out a lot of interesting ideas and concepts. So having friends or mentors or network connections in different spaces than you just to see what they're doing in their brands or even in their day-to-day I think is so incredibly important. So thank you for mentioning that. Yeah. And then also I will say like specific industries that I love looking at, I love looking at brands that, because working in TV, it's about connecting with people, especially working in cable where a lot of our target audience doesn't have cable. So if we have five to eight seconds to grab your

Starting point is 00:16:57 attention with a social post, we better make it intentional and we better grab your attention if that's the only place you're getting our content. So I really like looking for inspiration in other industries that have that really close connection to their viewers and their customers. I love looking at, you know, personal or like healthcare brands or health brands and like the wellness space and also looking at sports because they have an awesome combination of original content, but hopping onto trends, but you know, their fans are the most important thing. So being able to, if someone writes in a comment, like, Hey, I want to see Tommy DeVito give a no, whatever one of these, I'm sure everyone listening can imagine what I'm doing. They're going to give it to you. So it's all about knowing

Starting point is 00:17:53 how to connect with the people who are receiving your content, because at the end of the day, they're the ones who are controlling your success. Do you have any predictions for 2024? Anything you could see potentially happening both on the content side of things, but also on the platforms themselves? I think my first prediction, I don't even know if it's a prediction, but I think if you're a really big brand and you want to break through on social, if you're not jumping into culturally relevant opportunities, then it's like, what are you doing at this point? I think you have to be in touch with what's going on and what your audience wants to see in order for you to break through and be successful.

Starting point is 00:18:31 So one, I think TikTok is just going to get bigger. Like it just has such a huge impact on just like culture day to day for everybody that follows the platform and like uses the platform a lot. And then I think influencer is going to grow into a space where like brands aren't necessarily going to post it organically, but use it more of like a, I'm trying to think of the word I want to use, use it more of like just brand recognition. So like you don't have to post an influencer organically to make it, you know, useful for your social. Like when we think about social here, it's like, okay,

Starting point is 00:19:10 how many people can we get the brand in front of every single day and be like, cause you could follow Chili's every single day. And then we post something great and people are like, oh my God, I love Chili's social. Or people could be like, I haven't thought about Chili's in 10 years, but this influencer just posted it. So I think, you know, I think utilizing, I think how brands utilize and leverage influencers is going to change. And like just the strategy behind that is going to break through like past organically and more into like, let's just pay them to post on our platform or post organically for themselves and not necessarily get the return.

Starting point is 00:19:44 So, yeah. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Marketing Happy Hour podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please remember to subscribe, rate, and leave a review on your favorite podcast platform. If you want more of Marketing Happy Hour, but don't know where to start, we invite you to download our free Marketing Happy Hour Starter Kit at marketinghappyhr.com forward slash starter dash kit. This interactive magazine style PDF

Starting point is 00:20:17 walks through who we are, includes helpful resources like a marketing term glossary and the printable daily planner sheet that we actually use ourselves and contains clickable links to our episode recommendations by subject area. Not to mention all the fun extras like a quiz, the link to our Marketing Happy Hour Insiders Facebook group, a word search, a playlist, a goal setting guide, content inspo by month, and more. It's our hope that you'll dive

Starting point is 00:20:46 into this resource and walk away more confident in your career journey with a group of industry pals that you can lean on for advice and support. Snag your free starter kit today at marketing happy hr.com forward slash starter dash kit for all of the info you need to become a marketing happy hour insider.

Marketing Happy Hour - Social Media Rewind: The Truth About Social Media Virality, Effective Content Calendars, Top Tips By Platform + MORE!

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.