Good evening and happy Sunday! Grab your fave bubbly bev, nighttime concoction, or other functional beverage and take a seat. Today’s newsletter is going to tackle a few things that are not only near and dear to me, but are a few of the biggest questions I get asked when it comes to social media, especially when it comes to how to build out a team and where to start for strategy.

Moving forward, Thursdays will be the day for sends! While you’re reading this, I actually just got back from being in Spain with the Graza team galavanting in the olive fields and eating my bodyweight in jamon, olive oil, and potatoes. Currently, I am reading this over while now on the way to (hopefully) sunny Siesta Key in Florida, which is a spot that my family has come to since before I was born. Guess 2024 will be my travel era?

BTW I am running on a few hours of sleep so please don’t judge me if you spot a typo.

Anywho, onto today’s agenda! Today, we’re chatting about:

1. is organic social media really that important for brands?

2. how to start being strategic on social

3. how to build a social media team - with or without the perfect budget

4. latest bevs you should try especially if you’re doing dry January (bevs are important information)

IS ORGANIC SOCIAL MEDIA WORTH INVESTING IN?

Organic social is still one of the most important departments for any brand, no matter how long you have been around. If you don’t put the time, effort, or needed resources towards it, you cannot complain if it’s not working for you.

In 2024, brand marketing, including social media, is going to make a huge splash. As seen in Business of Fashion, "72% of respondents to BoF and McKinsey's 2024 executive survey plan to spend more on brand marketing in the next year, compared with 45 percent intending to increase performance marketing."

Also, I could write a whole email on the topic of organic and paid media, but the relationship between the two should not be organic social media vs. paid social, but simply a co-existing relationship where they both work as one unit to support the campaign(s) that you have active or test new formats of creative.

In order to increase your efforts in forming an authentic community, engaging content, and impactful partnerships with creators, other brands, and more, you need to allow your team to have the resources they need to deliver the vision across your social channels.

Too many times social teams are put under the pressure of delivering on a vision that is unattainable, even if they are wildly successful in being scrappy.

They cannot execute what they actually want to deliver due to not being given what they need to succeed in the first place.

This is the year that changes.

GETTING STARTED WITH YOUR STRATEGY

Everyone has it in them to be a strategic thinker. However, for some and depending on your role, it’s not always an expectation, especially if you’re someone who is more in the weeds of the day to day.

So, in order to want your team to become one and operate efficiently, you have to tell them. Also, you have to be open to giving feedback about the work that is produced at the end of the day and what insights you can use to help inform the broader plan — whether it’s how a team is optimizing their video content, campaign planning, etc. Without proper communication and expectations in the land of social media, it can be the equivalent of navigating an airplane that you don’t know how to land or where you need to go in the first place.

Below are just some questions and statements to ask yourself as you revamp or start to grow you social media channels:

Examples:

• Always ask why. Simple and no brainer to most, but the more you get involved, the easier it is to overlook the basics. Why did a post perform the way it did? Why did the same video perform better on Reels than Tiktok and Youtube Shorts, etc? Stay curious.

• Why would this post and/or trend be good for the brand? Is this cultural trend good for us? If we don’t do it, what do we as a brand miss out on?

• How efficient is the content being produced? How will the content created be used across other channels such as email, SMS, and more? After all, distribution is king and repurposing is a skill. Maximize what you can for the platforms it may live on.

CHOOSING YOUR CHANNELS

“What platforms should we be on?” is the first question that comes with onboarding. In a world where there is a new platform or feature every single second, brands need to think through efficiently and realistically for what they can handle and the importance of that platform or feature in regards to their business.

As you know, you can’t give 4+ things in life 100% effort. The same thing goes for social media. Focus on 2 and do them well (with some help where needed), in my opinion.

Please note I know that not all brands can afford channel managers, but I am a huge fan of that approach as well to help increase content output, focus, and making sure you’re really getting juicy with your strategies per channel. Just because something lives on Reels doesn’t mean it would work for Tiktok and vice versa. You need to attack each platform with a different outlook and sometimes that requires different people.

There are so many platforms consumers are constantly scrolling on so which ones should you be on? Should you be on Twitter or Threads? IG or TikTok? YouTube or LinkedIn? Pinterest or Reddit? All?

Where should we invest our $? Into short-form design posts? Reels? Memes? A content creator or creators? Frequent photoshoots?

In order to come to a real answer, you have to think about a few things. Also, I will preface this that this is a bit of a brain dump that may go in a few different directions because I just have a lot of feelings.

1. Budget: Simply give your social media team a piece of the pie. Yes, being scrappy is a great and underrated skill, but imagine putting just a little bit of money alongside talent that allows them to make some of their creative dreams come true.
   
   In the new year, I hope to hear more social media teams being given a cut of the budget that they deserve, the resources (ex. video editors, content creators, designers) they deserve, and the respect they deserve for being on the frontlines of building a brand and a community.

2. Timelines: Does your brand have a launch date in mind? Note: if you’re in pre-launch, please give yourself a enough time to prepare and build out plans per platform and resources you might need. In order to launch, if you’re in that stage, you might have to bring on help with can impact your budget to help you get ahead on video content, design elements, and more. This goes into…

3. Your strengths and weaknesses as a team: To some this could look like a few things. If you have one person doing everything heading into launch or a rebrand, could you delegate something out such as design or content creation? Allow the people you hire, whether full time, part-time or consultants, to do what they are good at and enjoy. Sure, we all have done things we aren’t the best at in the hopes of learning and evolving, but everything has a result in the end. Usually, this looks like a one-person team putting all the time into the things they aren’t wanting to do aka being on camera, in photoshop, and therefore, the planning and community management takes a hit.

4. Where does your audience spends the most time: Depending on where your audience is the most active, that will play a role in understanding where to put more of your efforts from a budgeting standpoint. More times than not, the two platforms to select are Instagram and Tiktok, both requiring specific things depending on the type of brand that you are.

5. What kind of content you are actually excited to test? For example, if you are a food brand like Graza, you know you’ll need help with recipe development. In order to produce enough, this could look like needing to bringing on 2-3 people to help. If you are on Tiktok, this could look like bringing on 1-2 creators like Olipop has done to help execute on educational and entertaining content.

Everything goes back to budget. If you except outputs similar to brands that are already existing, but won’t supply the resources or are open-minded, you cannot complain.

When it comes to content strategy and as it evolves from your launch or even as you roll out, it all depends on your consumer. You cannot create for your c-suite. This is “OUT” in 2024. You have to create for your customer. End of story.

Example: If you know you sell a cooking oil like Graza, you could assume that folks love creators and watching long-form recipe content on Youtube like this and want to activate some creators before launch to integrate yourself in.

Once I usually have an idea of the platform selection, types of content I want to explore, then I love working to develop content pillars. Content pillars are what keep your brand clear in your communication across social. Sure, they may change over time or as your evolve, but without knowing what you stand on, you’ll be posting with no focuses in mind. They should hit on your unique selling proposition, but also be individualized based on your consumer and product.

SOCIAL MEDIA A-TEAM FORMULA

Relying on one person to do everything also isn’t the vibe. One person cannot do content creation, coordinate with creators, send out product to 100+ seedings a month, build surveys, manage ad comments, design graphics, upload to stories, respond to DMs and customer complaints, finding and reaching out to influencers, etc.  

(This is coming from someone who did it and was that person for years and loves to think she can do everything herself)

You probably can do this really well with 2-3 people. The setup I recommend is 1 person who’s focused on making sure the content, brand, and creators attached to the brand are doing what they need to do. This could essentially be a social and influencer manager. I am in the boat that influencer and social are very tied together when a brand is starting out. It might be easier for one to have hands on it, but if you’re doing a lot of seeding, paid partnerships and ambassador work, you should have someone to solely help on that front to work closely with your social manager.

The social manager should have a second person as a coordinator to help them and/or a community manager.

This person helps handle day to day responses with creators, customers and more across various touch points across social media and inserting the brand into other conversations and niches where that brand may not have a voice currently. When it comes to orders for seeding and sourcing, I am a huge fan of virtual assistants to help handle some of the extra handy and time consuming work because putting Shopify orders.

In a world where budget exists, this is how I would build out a small starting team. This is by no means the perfect equation, but it’s a format that has really helped unlock things for the teams I’ve been on who may not have budgets to have people with all the titles in the world.

A Head of Social/Social Lead: This person will oversee the organic social team and operations. Alongside the CMO or CEO, they’ll define the overall social strategy, select the channels and mediums your brand should focus on and how, hire and manage the individual content creators, and oversee all of the content and campaigns for your brand across platforms. 

A social media manager or channel manager: This is the person who actually presses publish on the content and lives inside the brand’s social accounts across platforms. Realistically speaking, a social media manager or “channel manager” can handle 2 platforms at once within reason. Any more than this, and you need to hire more help or be flexible in understanding that the efforts on one platform need to be prioritized. They should be looking at the data to help inform the larger strategy and where content should be narrowed in based on performance.

BTW, similar to what Nik Sharma said in my newsletter with him, “If you’re trying to grow on more than 2 platforms to start, you’re doing too much.”

A community manager: This person is responsible to helping insert the brand into conversations across platforms, getting to learn more about their current community, answering DMs and comments across ads and other touchpoints. They could also help with creator outreach and seeding.

Some creators/functional experts: Depending on your brand and needs, you want to think about building capabilities that will allow you to excel at different kinds of content formats and channels online. Typically, this means hiring a mix of graphic designers, video editors (when needed!), etc. To decide which creators and staff you want to hire, you’ll need to decide on which channels and mediums you want to pursue as a brand.

Every team is going to be different. A structure you thought would be best could change in a quarter due to higher volume in community interactions or realizing that a specific type of content is outperforming the rest. If you have any questions, please reply back to this email.

APP OF THE WEEK:

If you’re a brand with a heavy DTC presence or thinking through your social media and community strategy for your launch, affiliate marketing needs to be on your mind.The “affiliate” is not just publications anymore. It is influencers, ambassadors, and even your very own customers.

But, how are you expected to configure programs, track referral sales, send commission and rewards, and automate it all while literally doing everything else it takes to manage your business???

That’s where Social Snowball comes in. Social Snowball is one of the first affiliate platform for DTC brands like Fanjoy and True Classic that is laser-focused on enabling partnerships with modern day affiliates and is also today’s newsletter sponsor.

Whether you’re a brand wanting to start investing in this space or doing hundreds of thousands already (and just want a better solution), Social Snowball can help you unlock affiliate and referral growth with their:

• Customer referrals - Turn your customers into affiliates post purchase. Build a flow of post-purchase touch-points with customers in the click of a button whether through an email flow or “thank you” pages after their purchase.

• Automated segmentation - Social Snowball lets you build tiers and reward affiliates based on performance milestones automatically. For example, when an affiliate refers over 10 sales, you can bump their commission, send them a gift, and trigger an email in Klaviyo in the click of a button and fully automate your systems.

• No code leaks - Their Safelinks product eliminates the possibility of code leaks to those discount sites we know and love and help you avoid coupon abuse. THIS IS MAJOR as most platforms end up leaking. Social Snowball is the only one I have experienced so far where I do end up seeing a ambassador randomly have thousands in sales due to a code leak.

If you want to learn more and get a head start on community building, you can try a 30-day trial through Shopify right here or even talk to Noah and his team yourself to see if Social Snowball is right for you. Book a demo right here and tell him I sent you.

BRAND(S) OF THE WEEK

As someone who doesn’t necessarily drink alcohol that often, I am known for mostly having a bunch of tasty beverages taking up most of the room in my fridge rather than actual food.

If you’re partaking in Dry January or looking for some new solid N/A options, let me help. I love sharing brands I am crushing on so this section allows me to share them with 500+ awesome folks.

• TALEA’s Non-Alcoholic Strawberry Lemon Spritzy Sour: It’s fruity, it’s sweet and it tastes like summer in a can. If you love beer, TALEA is a New York City and Brooklyn staple. You can grab a 4-pack at their Williamsburg, Cobble Hill, Bryant Park, and West Village locations or around NYC. They also have a great NA flight available, too.

• Louie Louie: If you’re looking for a dry option, but want a little high (literally) then may I offer you a cold can of Louie Louie? With 5mg of THC + 5mg of CBD, it’s perfect to chill out with while binge watching Netflix. I also love their array of flavors from Satsuma to Blackberry Lemon.

• Ritual Zero Proof: Loved tequila or whiskey in a past life? I first tried Ritual at Expo West and was blown away. Zero proof, yet it stills finds a way to give you that good throat burn that liquor typically does. I love mixing their tequila or whiskey with an Olipop Vintage Cola for a late night work bev.

If you have any recs, send them my way so we can bond. kk cool.

THAT’S ALL FOR NOW

On Thursday, we’re talking TECH STACKS. I love working smarter, not harder so we’re chatting through my favorite apps that have saved my life across content storage, project management, influencer list building, and so much more.

As always, let me know what you want to learn more about and if you have any questions, just hit “reply” on this email. Enjoy the three day weekend and i’ll see you this thursday bright and early! Also, important to mention that we broke 500 subscribers - AH!! thank you, thank you, thank you to all who wrote to me the other week and to all the new faces. I am excited to be on this journey with you.

Peace, love, and jamon,

KD

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