3 Post Worthy Strategies From Social Media Week
Great brand social media moments don’t happen by chance. They are purposeful, repeatable, and shareable; making you excited to come back for more.
But you already knew that.
As a first time attendee at Adweek’s Social Media Week in New York City, I was one of many social media managers who understands the importance of a quality social media strategy and try to educate leadership and executives to look at social as a crucial part of their business. In a room of content creators, social media managers, CMOs, influencers, and brand strategists, there was much said about the business of social media, but here are my top three takeaways you might have missed that you can immediately apply to your experiential marketing social strategy.
Your audience is your everything.
Social media’s first job is to reach other people. Its second job is to make them stay, that goal is much harder to achieve. With niche becoming the new mainstream, your audience is more important than ever; they are your biggest fans and your toughest critics. You need to know who you are talking to and why, because throwing the same hook to a million archetypes will bring scattered results sending you back to the drawing board.
Curate your audience, or do like Brita and curate your ocean.
Brita’s Gen Z-literate singing shark campaign was not made for everyone, but after getting its audience’s attention, Brita was attentively listening and responding to the feedback. The tagline for their campaign was born from the comment section, and because of Brita’s willingness to listen and hear where its efforts were working, the initial campaign slogan was changed because the internet audience had a better one.
They weren’t tied into the brief or subject to their scheduled posts, but found their brand voice in speaking to a specific niche and gained momentum earning over 6.9 million views, (that’s just in 1 video btw.)
Brand voices are found, they aren’t forced.
The world (the internet) might be shocked to learn that these brand voices are built by a generation of young men and women who simply ‘get it,’ not by those who found one style of social and refuse to grow beyond it.
Evolving brands are meeting their social audience on their own terms and learning how to communicate with them through continued conversation and intentional engagement.
Speed + Relevancy > Perfection
Yes, technically the internet is forever and no matter how hard we try we can never outrun our digital footprint, BUT at the end of the day, your day should not be ruined by a post that was not “perfect.”
Perfection does not win the algorithm, speed and relevancy do. You will also have more fun if you let go of rigid control and treat each post like a low-risk experiment made with the intention of reaching people, not perfection. One of the top performing pieces of content at the Olympic Winter Games was a moment that no one could have prepared for, but that did not stop anyone at the NBC Sports team from capitalizing on this gold medal media moment.
In the cross country ski race, an unexpected athlete, two year old wolfdog Nazgul, joined the final stretch and crossed the finish line in record time. Rapidly NBC had his name, age, country of origin, and finish time all captured and ready to share with the millions of fans who had been watching since the opening ceremonies, and the dozens of new fans whose first experience was of Nazgul. It didn’t require a brief or rounds of client feedback, it was a pure spontaneous moment with live excitement that was posted instantaneously. You can’t plan virality. It was real and honest and all heart.
We can tie ourselves in knots making sure everything is accounted for in a post: a human face in the first three seconds, a shocking hook to draw you in, time constraints, etc. But this overcomplication can put you at risk of missing what might be the “golden nugget” you have. Putting what flows naturally first and inserting the “necessities” second. If you know you have to have something, write it down and set it to the side, then allow yourself to create for the excitement of your viewer instead of the approval of your client. (Obviously get your client’s approval but the sentiment matters most.)
Speaking of clients…
Make your client a collaborator
Feedback loops are a necessary evil, but that doesn’t mean they need to be prolonged.
What if you moved your client from an approver to a collaborator? Culture moves faster than feedback back and forth, and early client alignment is crucial so the relevance of the post is not sacrificed. If you are able to capture and amplify the live energy of something, everyone should be on the same page before, during and after the action to allow for that amplification to happen without it feeling rushed and uncontrolled. The VP of Social for NBC Sports, when speaking about managing the mountain of content for the 2026 Olympic Games in Milan said, “Don’t get caught off guard by a predictable event.” The separation is in the preparation and if your team and your client are on the same page before your content is captured and goes live, you are expediting your post-production time dramatically.
You can look at social media like a black hole: endless, unknown, frightening. It’s also the largest real time intelligence system in human history where you have the potential to reach thousands of people known and unknown on a daily basis, and there are tools you can leverage to promote, educate, celebrate, and grow your brand. It’s a gold mine to a brand that’s trying to grow relevance, reputation, and reliability to a constantly changing market because of the accessibility it brings between itself and its consumers.
In my nearly two years of social media work at RED VELVET, our strategy has always remained flexible, up for evaluation and feedback, and compassionate towards our long time and new audience. We keep ourselves at an advantage by trying to stay knowledgeable about what is working, changing, and how to adapt to maintain our spot in the media marketplace.
As we further integrate these three pillars: audience, timeliness, and client collaboration into our strategy, we become more real and ready to engage with our following on a closer level.
Press post.