Would you rather 20,000 or 200,000?

Welcome to Get In My Basket, the newsletter that will tell you everything you need to know about digital marketing for direct to consumer brands. In this newsletter, you will find insider knowledge, tips and tricks to get your brand into more baskets.In this issue you will find:

1. What’s better, 200,000 or 20,000 followers
2. The platform that is upgrading its parental controls
3. How Tiktok is reacting to the rise of the podcast

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What’s HOT?!?! This section of the newsletter showcases brands and businesses doing something innovative in their space. With the goal of bringing the Aprés to the everyday, Jubel is a beer brand with a difference. Offering a low sugar, vegan and low ABV beer with a splash of natural fruit flavouring (inspired by the demi-pêceh found in the mountains) their consistent messaging, thorough branding and engaged community ensures they’re front of mind when looking for alternative beer brands.They are a brilliant brand when it comes to finding a community and tailoring organic content to them (we explore the importance of this in the bulk of the basket). They have identified their target customers to be lively, outgoing and conscious 20 somethings, and make sure that their content appeals to them or people who want to be like them. It is clear to see through the entirety of the customer journey (from social, to website) that this is who they are communicating with.

The relevance of social media is a topic of discussion that many brands constantly debate as the landscape continues to evolve. With platforms, regulations and user preferences developing continuously, it is something that is important for brands to evaluate in conjunction with these progressions.Questions are increasingly surfacing as, over the past couple of years, many brands have seen a decline in the return on investment of using social platforms. Questioning the value of platforms, whether customers can be found on these platforms, and whether brands can still communicate with customers and gain insights regardless of regulations. If ROI is decreasing, is there still value in utilising social media in your marketing strategy? Is there still value in it? For us, there is and this lies in one thing.Community Management. We are all aware that the effectiveness of using social media platforms has decreased. They are still great at showcasing your brand and its products, but the overall effectiveness on possible conversions from an organic social platform isn’t what it used to be.Many people see this as a downside, and to be honest, we can understand that. But this isn’t the death of organic social platforms, we just think it is the next step in its evolution.That next stage is community management. Social media platforms are no longer about mass awareness for brands. You don’t need 1 million followers to make an impact or be classed as a success. Ask yourself how many customers a month do you need to make an impact on your overall business. Do the maths and see what number you end at. Chances are, it’s not in the millions, and therefore, your followership doesn’t need to be either.Do you really want 200,000 followers who are unengaged and uninterested in your brand? Or you want 20,000 followers who are brand champions and care about every aspect of what your brand represents. Who will spread awareness about your brand and act as ambassadors to you.What are we getting at here? You’ve probably guessed, but we believe that in 2022 there is much more strength in nurturing and caring for each and every one of your followers than worrying about hitting numbers by any means possible. Followers has turned into just another metric that doesn’t really have a commercial impact on your business. Although it can act as a great social proof - which we are not denying, still has weight - it should not be the ultimate goal of your organic strategy.Our thoughts are clear, look after the audience that needs and wants you and work out how best to communicate and appeal to them. Honing in on this, and not trying to be a jack of all traits appealing to everyone, will ultimately strengthen your brand identity, improve your loyalty which in turn, will relate to the audiences that you need and are more likely to convert.How can you do this? Have clear content buckets that appeal. Know what your audience wants to see and show them why your brand is right for them. Get to know this by talking to your customer and angling your USPs to be aligned with their preferences.Don’t focus purely on driving follower growth. Don’t post content in the hopes of drastically increasing followers, to just loose them. The classic example here is giveaways. Appeal to the masses who are looking for a freebee, boost followers momentarily but ultimately, entrants unfollow you as soon as its over. Now these can of course be done the right way, but mass scale can have reverse long term effects (after disengaged entrants unfollow for not winning and your loyal followers become more distanced as the reputation of the brand in their eyes could be damaged).Creative. As much as we like to think that consumers don’t judge books by their covers, they do. So make content that is going to spark their interest visually. Engage directly with your audience. Spend time speaking with them on the platforms. Not only will this give you insight into what they are like and what they relate to, but remember people buy into people and bringing this type of customer service to the social space goes a long way.🤳🏽 Instagram stories are for engagement. Users love being engaging with content on stories. There are more features to stories on Instagram than ever before, and we think most brands don’t make the most of any of these features. It takes time but its worth it.Be real. Like we have said above, people engage with people, there are many opportunities to engage with audiences directly, whether it be comments or directly in DMs. Try to be approachable, go the extra mile to make a difference to them and make an impact.Organic platforms will continue to develop in many different ways and we won’t stop talking about how the algorithms, engagement rate or audience will change. The one thing that won’t change, is how taking care of the people who love your brand will make an impact.

1. Twitter has a new test underway to make podcasts a bigger focus on the app via a dedicated Podcast tab
2. Meta updates its parental controls
3. Clubhouse launches new elements to encourage more engagement on the app, including a display to show which of your connections are online
4. Instagram launches new moderator option for IG live streams
5. Instagram helps to shed a light on collaborators whose contributions are often behind the scenes with updated creator tags

To finish off our newsletter we want to highlight some of the best creatives that we have seen recently, and tell you why we think they are a slam dunk win.

✅ Making use of in-feed sponsored posts ✅ Subtly promoting interaction - screenshot and share with their experts CTA✅ Simple but well-executed