Normally, these case studies are hidden behind a paywall for Social Studies PRO members.

But as I write this on a Thursday, I’ve had far too much coffee and the caffeine is telling me to drop this one for free.

So without further ado…

Dana Jensen

Social Media Manager @ Atomic Coffee Roasters

What is the structure of your social media team? Based on your content, it seems like you have a lot of creative freedom.

It’s just me! I was the first person to be hired for a social role at Atomic back in August of 2022. I definitely have a lot of creative freedom, for which I am extremely thankful. It also has played a part in the success we’ve seen as we aren’t afraid to test different things out and either double down or pivot and move on. 

How much time would you say you spend working on social and what other areas do you oversee?

I spend most of my time working on our social channels. This includes Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and Threads. I also create ads for our paid social and do a little bit of our email marketing. 

What changes have you overseen in audience size and engagement?

We have expanded across different platforms including TikTok and YouTube and were quick to get on Threads like many other companies. I essentially built our TikTok from the ground up, and we currently have 31.5K followers. Our growth on Instagram hasn’t been as drastic, but in the past six months there has been a significant increase. This is correlated to the vast increase in engagement with our posts and having certain ones go “viral”.

Who is your audience and what is your main goal with social?

Our main audience are coffee drinkers and baristas. My main goal with social is to either entertain or educate our audience with the content that I create. Views are obviously great, but what excites me even more is a post that performs exceptionally well with shares and saves. This helps get new eyes on our account, which hopefully leads to a follow and then someone going to our website to purchase. 

How do you plan your schedule to maximize your results on social without eating up too much of your time? (Where do you get content ideas? What does your content creation process look like? How do you incorporate reporting/data?)

Every day tends to be a little different. I build out the social calendar on Notion, that way I have at least a two week look ahead on what needs to be done. Depending on the content that needs to be filmed, I’ll block off time throughout the week with different coworkers. Then I try to batch edit as much as I can in one sitting. My schedule can revolve heavily on the schedule of my coworkers since they also play a huge role in the presence of our social channels. I try not to get caught up on the set schedule for the week since social moves so quickly. Trends also come quickly, and I’m always ready to drop scheduled content for something else or sometimes have a better reel idea than what was planned from a few weeks prior.

We also have limited release coffees throughout the year which I’ll build campaigns for their duration of being available. This means I have a goal number of static posts and reels that I plan to incorporate that coffee into. This ranges from memes to educational content.

I get inspiration from all over. I’ve gotten ideas from old commercials that I grew up loving, scrolling through feeds (of course), or they just come to me naturally! Sometimes the creative juices aren’t flowing, and the worst thing I can do is get in my head and spend more time doom scrolling. I focus on other priorities when this happens and find myself coming up with my best ideas when listening to music, at the gym, or even going on a walk. 

On the first of every month, I pull analytics and put it in a Google Sheets document and highlight where we excelled in the previous month and what improvements could be made. I do look at data on a daily basis to see how posts from that week are performing because that will help me in my content brainstorm to see if I should try a different approach or double down on something.

Why do you think that your accounts stand out?

I try to put myself in the shoes of someone who is consuming our content. What would make them follow us? What would make them share or save a post? Having the creative freedom that I do has allowed us to be different. I also work with an incredible team who went from never having a camera in their face to constantly having one in their face. They’re team players and add character to our profile. My job would be incredibly difficult if they weren’t such great sports about it. 

Check out Atomic’s coffee here. (Not an affiliate, just a fan of their coffee.)

Follow Dana on LinkedIn here.

If that was helpful, there are currently 12 of these case studies available with the PRO subscription and we’re adding (at least) 1 per week.