The Social Content Strategy Top Brands Use

3-min read

Are you trying to grow your Instagram followers or get a more engaged, bigger social audience? Are you trying to build a true community and emotional connection around your brand?

Content strategy has to come from somewhere, and, drumroll, please…it comes from brand. Here’s a simple framework that I see used by the most successful social brands that you can start working with immediately.

1. Map out your brand pillars. Ask: What are the legs on the table of my brand? What’s the world that I’m trying to create? Write down three to four brand pillars.

For example, Ralph Lauren’s pillars might be:

1. Aspirational American lifestyle

2. “Gentleman” sports

3. Heritage, quality, and craftsmanship

And then there’s a 4th pillar that almost every brand has, which is “World of” — the brand personified and brought to life as a world you can walk into — where you eat, gather, vacation, and entertain…who’s in your tribe…what you listen to, etc. You personify a fully dimensional life that is totally, thoroughly brand-appointed — a world and life that people want to tag themselves into, and that specifies and “ratchets up” their own idea of themselves and what they are aiming for. (What a gift to all of us btw, those visionary brands that help us all specify the idea of ourselves that we are aiming for. It’s so awesome.)

Defining your brand pillars crisply is so important as a company because it is the blueprint for the world-building and storytelling you’ll do in your content and marketing (and also in your product strategy and everything else). Everything roots back to these pillars, you want to get them right.

2. Brainstorm 2 to 3 content franchises that bring each pillar to life. A content franchise is a reoccurring series, basically an archetypal content idea that you do over and over again because it’s engaging, it works, and it translates your brand world to the user.

For Ralph Lauren, within their Sports pillar, they clearly have a series that is celebrating and translating elegant global sporting moments, and the traditions and people associated with those. For example — Wimbledon. Why do they sponsor Wimbledon? Because it’s bringing to life their brand pillar of sports and heritage and offering it to their audience as an aspirational, emotional, visual story that people can transport themselves into and “aim for.”

If your brand pillar is Downtown NY (as so many are btw!) — you could test a content series of “At the Dog Park” or “Lunch at Balthazar” or “At the Knicks,” etc.

3. Write/produce chapters. For each content franchise, try some installments, and see how they work. These chapters are the actual videos or carousels that you’re producing within that series as an “installment” of that series.

This entire framework is a cascading flow: 1) brand pillars, 2) content franchises/series for each pillar, and 3) chapters or “installments” of each series that are the actual produced executed concepts.

To use myself as an example, under my Brand Pillar of Marketing and Business Expertise, I have a Content Series of How-To and Tutorial Content. So this Substack article is a Chapter in my How-To Series within my Marketing Expertise Pillar.

4. Flip the mirror. Look at each Content Series and ask: is that framed for user engagement? Is that something I care about saying — or that the user cares about hearing? To frame this for the user, it’s got to fit one of these criteria:

• Does it help them solve a problem or achieve a goal?

• Does it trigger a deep intense emotion? (Positive or negative.)

• Does it entertain? Does it make someone laugh or pull them out of their life for a minute?

• Does it edutain, which is to teach, but in an entertaining, fun, and socially native way?

Once you have these building blocks, you’re ready to map out your monthly content calendar and start trying things.

So that’s it — this is how I see the best brands organizing their thoughts and their resources, and doing it in an intentional effective way that drives emotional and commercial outcomes. They do it this way because it works. It anchors you in strategy and ensures that you build the brand world and impression you’re trying to create. And it helps orient to the user’s needs and become a brand they engage with and want to pay attention to and tag themselves into as a community — so that the content actually gets reach and does its job.

If you don’t already have an organized framework for approaching your social strategy I’d really recommend this. To make it easy, here’s a detailed pdf I’ve created to give you an easy worksheet-based approach.

As always, good luck out there!

Emily