Should I be doing XYZ?

Here's how to decide:

Author

Jacob Shipley
December 06, 2023

Good morning!

Welcome to Social Studies.

Here’s the agenda for today:

  • Does strategy XYZ actually work??

  • Looking for a job?

My inbox:

The most common question I get is “My boss said/My friend told me/A video on TikTok was like… does this strategy actually work?”

How many hashtags should I use? Should I post once a week or 12 times per hour? Should I use gifs?

For the record, I love answering emails.

If you have a specific question, always shoot me an email. (Fair warning: I might have zero idea on the answer, but I’ll give it my best shot.)

However, I thought it would be beneficial to walk through a process you can use to decide if you should invest in a strategy.

Should I invest in XYZ??

1. Test it

9 times out of 10, there’s not a blanket answer. What works for a faith-based nonprofit is probably wildly different than what works for a B2B SaaS startup.

Another 9 times out of 10, it’s probably low risk to test. (Not talking to the former SMM of RadioShack.)

Unless it poses a huge risk to your brand, test your idea a few times.

When it comes to organic social it is so incredibly difficult to determine exactly what factor determines success. You’re moving so many variables (posting time, day of week, content style, content theme, content format, etc.)

So try your best to keep other variables constant and test multiple times so you have several data points to go off of.

2. What are your competitors doing?

This might not apply if your industry consists of a couple 100 year old companies run by people who think TikTok is the sound of the grandfather clock in their office.

Usually though, you can get a vibe by looking at your peers. (And let’s be real… SMMs pretty much just roll off vibes all the time.)

If your brand account is sitting on 437 followers and a .03% engagement rate and the average of your top 3 competitors is 9,735 followers and a 2.4% engagement rate then you should probably perk up and pay attention to how they’re approaching the strategy that you’re curious about.

3. What is the platform saying?

Pro tip: If Instagram tells you they’re going to prioritize a certain type of content… you should create more of that type of content.

Here’s some links that might help:

Looking for a job?

Here are a couple:

  • Pathfinders Advertising is a remote social media manager with the ability to travel for photoshoots and agency summits. This role will lead a team of creatives and strategists.

Hey! You’re still here!

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