Digital Atmosphere

Incense makes for a good atmosphere. Photo by Erica Viana on Unsplash.

See the previous post for a good idea of what not to do. But knowing that you shouldn’t treat your account like an announcements board doesn’t really cut it. How do you actually make social media work for you?

Well, on a technical level, it’s always changing. You’re serving the algorithm, which is in turn serving the audience. So it’s not as easy as “post what the audience wants to see”. It’s more like “post what the algorithm thinks the audience wants to see”, and then the algorithm shows it, whether the audience actually wants to see it or not. This trend is most prominent when social media services add new features, they’ll usually change their algorithms to promote those services (like what Instagram did with reels). That’s the low level technical stuff, the trend tracking. You always need someone tracking platform trends, especially when creating a new account.

Beyond that, it’s a matter of creating content that can generate interest within the constraints of the app, and then making sure it matches your brand. Notice the order there: you make interesting stuff first, you make it work for the algorithm second, then you talk about yourself. The audience and the algorithm come before you.

Creating a Digital Atmosphere

What you really need to be thinking about, however, is the overall atmosphere of your accounts. In the same way that you’d plan out the atmosphere of a bar you own or a party you’re throwing, you have to plan out your social media account in terms of the impression that it leaves. It’s its own little art form.

If you look way back to my fighter branding articles, you see that for MMA fighters, I recommend a more macho version of “just be yourself”, because if you’re authentic on social media, your natural personal atmosphere will bleed through. Of course most fighters never do that, and instead try to pretend they’re the best-ever-next-connor-mcgregor while they have a 2 and 1 ammy record, and no one cares. That annoys me, but it’s not important. What’s important is that as a business, you can’t just “be totally authentic” perfectly with your viewers, because in your case looking tacky is a detriment (for mma fighters it’s an advantage but only if they lean into it like Strickland does). You need to look professional, but you also need to look fun. And of course, you have to stay out of canva hell, you need to be posting interesting content and not just photos and templates.

What that looks like for your business specifically depends heavily on your business (woah). You should try to match the atmosphere of your digital profiles with the atmosphere of your real-world presence. This may be easy, it may be hard, but it will probably cost at least some money. You don’t want it to look unprofessional, you don’t want it done with a phone (unless you’re hiring Claudio Miranda to shoot with the phone, then it’ll probably come out OK)

Video is essential for your profiles. You cannot get by on photosets, you absolutely cannot get by with Canva templates. You need reels. Shooting for social media is a specific type of shooting (when done professionally) and requires some thought.

You should seek to highlight and share all of the interesting things that happen in and at your business through video, and not Canva templates. So instead of showing a picture of a band playing, then adding a text box mentioning that they’ll be at your bar tonight, you wait and film the actual performance, and show a live recording of their set with a caption advertising the next date they’ll be there. The latter post is practically guaranteed to get much more attention and reach than the former.

In addition to all of this, you need to be seeking out content which matches your vibe and commandeering it for your account. Some accounts can work entirely off of reposts (usually less serious, less aesthetically driven, more comedic accounts). Continuing in the bar example: in the same way that you would find random trinkets that match the aesthetic of your venue and put them on your walls, you should find other digital content that matches your vibe and share it (with proper credits, of course).

Thinking of your social profiles as separate venues, instead of just auxiliary avenues to your main business, is really the key to all of this. You wouldn’t go around stapling self-promoting flyers and calendars to the walls of your bar, don’t do that with your Facebook or your Instagram either. When people decide to get a drink at your bar instead of simply buying Jägermeister from Kroger, there’s a chance they’re doing it because you’ve just got the best bartender ever who can make drinks like no one else, but more likely it’s because there’s something special and unique about the experience of being in your establishment, something that they appreciate and relate to. You just need to transfer that over to your social media.

A final note: as a case study, look at Donut Media’s Instagram account. They’re a YouTube brand that specializes in comedy and car modifications, and they make more money doing that than you do right now. Their Instagram is pretty much 100% stolen memes. They have 1.8m followers. Why does this work?

• Memes are a type of post (a general format and style) that are very easy to make and have intrinsic entertainment value in and of themselves. Usually they’re funny, sometimes they’re depressing, but you don’t really need to change them to make them interesting or worth sharing. People who see them will also often share them with others, creating a feedback loop of growth. Memes also almost never have copyright lawsuits filed against their use (it is a gray area though).
• Donut Media is a comedy/car brand. Both the comedy and car cultures are ones that tolerate lower-quality produced content. So memes (lowest quality) fall within the spectrum of acceptability for them specifically. If a luxury brand such as Gucci started posting memes nonstop, the backlash would be terrible, which is why Gucci’s Instagram account uses mostly professional photography. Your business likely falls somewhere in-between these two extremes, you need to know where before you start posting.
• Finally, Donut Media does spend money on their account… when they have something to advertise. Most recently this was for a meet-and-greet event they were holding, and they clearly spent effort (their main business is video, so they likely did it in-house) on it. You should have some idea of what events need to be filmed, what can be just a photoset, and what can be made into a meme.

Or hire us. We already know all of those things, and have done them successfully multiple times. If you do decide to go it alone, I hope I helped you understand what you’re getting into.