As a marketing professional… and a millennial who has spent too much time on their phone, I have seen the rise and fall of social media platforms starting with Myspace in the early 2000s and the massive cultural wave that TikTok has become. Throughout this time, I have seen a handful of great social media campaigns come out of the corporate space but I have also seen hundreds – if not thousands – of boring, failed social media campaigns. Why is that? Why do so many social media campaigns flop? What is the secret to an objectively good social media presence? All that and more below.

Reason 1: People Don’t Typically Follow Corporate Social Media Accounts

One of the biggest hurdles that businesses and organizations need to overcome when approaching social media is the cold reality that even though billions of people use social media, very few of them will go out of their way to follow business accounts – even those businesses which they frequent and love. Many times, people won’t even search for a business until they have an immediate need for that product or service.

That’s because social media is very transactional in nature: you give me good content, I reciprocate with likes, shares, and follows.

In other words, people won’t follow your business’s social media accounts unless you are putting out valuable, interesting, and engaging content. You need to stay relevant to your audience if you want them to engage with your content. This leads nicely into point #2.

Reason 2: Brands Aren’t Creating Enough Good Content

Often in the world of social media marketing, many brands fall into the habit of creating posts only for the sake of publishing on a routine schedule because that is what they have been told makes for good social media management. While it is good to post frequently and consistently, it is really important that those posts make for good content. In most cases, good content can be anything that is entertaining, informative, engaging, or that connects with the viewer. This is why video content on TikTok will out-perform an inspirational quote thrown together on Canva any day of the week.

Reason 3: Not Enough Video Content

Another reason why brands fail at social media is that they don’t use enough video in their content. We wrote a blog about how video marketing is taking over. It’s a quick read.

That’s because, across all platforms, video content outperforms other mediums in engagement, reach, and conversion metrics. This is because video is a more stimulating format that activates multiple senses and makes for easy-to-digest content.

That being said, so many people are still very camera shy and the idea of recording, editing, and publishing video content can feel so overwhelming that it doesn’t get adopted into most social media strategies.

Bonus Point: For Better Organic Engagement, Adopt New Features Early

To end on a positive note, we wanted to share a strategy that we found helpful for increasing organic reach, which these days is a lot more challenging than it used to be.

Our tip is this: when a social media platform rolls out a new feature such as Reels, Live, or Stories – you should create as much content with the new feature as possible while the feature is still new. Social Media platforms want users to adopt new features and the algorithm (I’ll take buzzwords for $500, Alex) will prioritize this organic content above all.