How we think about… Social

We often say, quite simply, that social is social. It’s in the name. And yet so many brands still treat social media as a broadcast channel rather than what it really is: a two‑way relationship between a brand and the people around it.

For us, social is the drawbridge into your brand.

It’s where people step into your world, look around, join the conversation and decide whether they want to stay. People don’t come to social platforms to be sold to; they come for connection, entertainment, reassurance and belonging. Social should feel less like a billboard and more like a party you actually want to attend.Arguably though, what we prioritise is  finding where that community is - maybe it's not IG/TikTok but on Reddit, or Facebook communities.

We call this the Magazine Metaphor.

Your socials can behave like a catalogue: static, transactional, easy to skim and forget. Or they can behave like a magazine, carefully designed to meet people at different stages of interest, balancing content that engages and prompts action. 

Community is everything. If your use of social isn’t two‑way, you’re falling at the first hurdle.

“But what if community isn’t my goal?”

Then social can serve as a prospectus, if you’re willing to accept the trade-off. You can choose for it to be a place for people to learn what you offer without expecting high engagement or viral reach. It’s efficient and low-maintenance, but it comes with a cost. Your brand will exist in people’s feeds, but it won’t live in their minds.

Social earns its value by doing different jobs at different moments, and being clear about which job matters most right now.

Get obsessed with your audience 

One of the biggest myths in social media is that consistency alone is a strategy. It isn’t. Posting frequently without listening is just shouting into the void.

The way we approach social is audience‑led, not brand‑led. That doesn’t mean brands don’t matter. It means recognising a simple truth: nobody cares about your brand as much as you do. If you want people to follow, engage and stick around, you have to give them value first.

Our social strategies start by getting under the skin of the audience, using real customer insights wherever possible to understand what people are doing in real life, why they’re online, and what they’re actually looking for from the platforms they use. From there, we build around what genuinely engages them: content that helps, entertains, reassures or makes them feel seen, rather than what the brand wants to promote that week. Output has to be fluid. Social platforms shift quickly, formats evolve and audiences will tell you what’s working, if you’re prepared to pay attention.

Many brands struggle with this. They want to control exactly how they’re seen and stick rigidly to brand guidelines. Social doesn’t work like that. Audiences notice authenticity and relevance far more than polished perfection. It’s time to rethink the old-fashioned view of brand guidelines: they should guide, not constrain. Social thrives on allowing your audience to shape the conversation as much as you do. Community management is one of the most under‑valued social listening tools there is. We don’t post and ghost. We get into conversations, listen closely, learn fast and feed those insights straight back into strategy and content.

Conversation is how attention turns into familiarity, and familiarity turns into action.

The commercial role of social

Social plays a clear commercial role, even if it rarely sits at the bottom of the funnel. Its real power lies at the top of the funnel: driving awareness and planting seeds of curiosity. Done right, it builds credibility and gets people to take notice long before they consider buying.

Lower down the funnel, social can educate and nurture your audience so that when the moment to sell comes, it doesn’t feel cold or forced. But here’s the truth: social is multi-purpose, but you can only do one thing really well at a time. Trying to be everything to everyone dilutes impact and wastes effort.

Be ruthless with your goal. Pick one stage: awareness, consideration, conversion or loyalty and measure it relentlessly. The metrics you track will change depending on your focus:

Goal	Typical Metrics	Key Focus
Awareness	Reach, impressions	Getting seen
Consideration	Likes,  comments, follower growth	Building community
Conversion	Watch time, video completion, saves, link clicks	Influencing sales
Loyalty	Shares, mentions, user-generated content	Driving advocacy

Social media management and content creation are not the same thing

Another common mistake is treating social and content as the same discipline. They are not.

Social media management and content creation are two distinct roles that should work in tandem. You need a Social Media Manager’s lens to set the strategy, define the role of each platform, manage the community and interpret what the audience is telling you.

You need content creators who can be properly briefed to produce best‑in‑class work that brings that strategy to life. Most importantly, your audience should be able to see themselves in the content creators. As UGC has exploded, content creators are now real people skilled at making your brand feel more native and relatable. 

When these roles blur, your community suffers and consequently so do results. Strategy becomes reactive. Insight is lost. Listening doesn’t scale neatly, and that’s exactly why it matters. If your audience is talking, you should be answering.

Social Strategy ≠ Content Strategy

We also draw a clear distinction between social strategy and content strategy.

Social strategy answers: who are we talking to, why, when, where and how are we engaging them?

This is how we decide what role social is playing in the wider funnel at any given moment.

And it’s not just the idea, it’s the reality of the execution. That means considering budget, resources, and timelines from the outset. Ambition matters, but it has to be matched with a delivery plan. The best strategies are built to be executable, not aspirational on paper.

Content strategy answers: what are we putting out into the world?

Even then, we prefer to move away from rigid content pillars. What matters more to us is content purpose. What emotion are you trying to trigger? What should someone feel after watching, reading or interacting?

Stories outperform schedules. Instead of filling calendars with predictable pillars, we focus on storytelling with a beginning, middle and end. Stories that provoke curiosity, humour, reassurance or inspiration. That’s what people remember, and that’s what brings them back.

To do this we use the Social Compass.

The Social Compass™

Purpose-driven content that moves people, not just metrics.

Social isn’t about ticking boxes or sticking rigidly to content pillars. It’s about purpose, emotion, and impact. Every piece of content should answer three questions: Why are we making this? How should it make people feel? What should they do or remember afterwards? The Social Compass™ gives us a repeatable way to answer these questions and ensure every post has direction and meaning.

The Social Compass™ Template

Field	What to Fill In	Example
Goal / Funnel Stage	Where does this content sit in the marketing funnel?	Conversion
Content Purpose	What are we trying to achieve?	Drive pre-orders, showcase special features, entice fans to take action
Emotional Trigger	What should the audience feel after interacting?	Excitement, nostalgia, urgency
Key Message / Takeaway	What should stick with them?	Hammer’s restored classics are a must-have collector’s experience
CTA / Desired Action	What should they do next?	Link click through to pre-order the boxset

Where ideas really come from

Great social ideas don’t come from staring at a blank content calendar.

We look to:

• DMs and comment sections

• Trends within the category AND categories unrelated to yours

• Trends within the customer’s wider world: what they’re worried about, excited by, or already engaging with elsewhere

  
  

We build your feed intentionally. We follow who your audience follows. We comment where they comment. We make your brand visible in the spaces that already matter to them.

Good social doesn’t happen in isolation. It’s built when social is part of the wider brand and commercial conversation from day one. We plan social alongside campaigns, launches and business priorities, not as an afterthought, so every piece of content is timely, connected and doing a job.

A funnel, not a feed

Follower count is a vanity metric unless it drives behaviour. Everything above is why we think about social as a funnel, not a feed. Organic social isn’t there to be filled,  it’s there to move people, from first exposure to familiarity, to intent, and sometimes to action.

We use the marketing funnel to define what organic social is really there to do. Most people don’t actively follow brands anymore. The job of organic social is to break through, reach people where they already are, and guide them down the funnel. Community management, retention tactics, and deeper activations then do the work further down. This thinking shapes how your social presence behaves at every stage.

This is where the magazine metaphor earns its place.

Bringing it all together

We think about social as a jigsaw. Each piece matters, and none of them work properly in isolation:

• Audience insight

• Platform goals

• Key messages

• Content formats

• Content purpose

• Community management

• Creation logistics

  
  

We use a cascade approach to define the right mix. We start with the overarching business goal, which informs the social goal, which then breaks down into platform‑specific objectives.

From there, we define the balance of content. For example:

• 70% awareness‑driving

• 20% educational and consideration‑led

• 10% conversion‑focused

  
  

There’s no universal formula. The right split shifts with the business, the moment and the ambition. What matters is that every decision is deliberate: made to serve a clear objective, not to satisfy a posting schedule.

Social is where brand and growth are felt in real time. It’s the fastest feedback loop you have.

Treat it like a broadcast channel and they’ll scroll straight past.Treat it like a conversation and people will respond.

That’s how we think about social.