Takeaways from the session:
1. Define Clear Roles within the Social Team
- Insight: Innocent splits their social media team into proactive and reactive roles. The proactive team manages content creation and strategy, while the reactive “People’s Champions” handle customer engagement and feedback.
- Takeaway: Structure your team (even if it’s small) into separate roles for strategy/content creation and customer engagement. Having clear functions helps each area focus on what they do best.
2. Content Strategy: Entertain Beyond Your Product
- Insight: Innocent embraces “branded entertainment,” with posts on relatable, everyday topics that are only loosely related to smoothies. This approach builds a relatable brand voice and draws people in without hard-selling.
- Takeaway: Try a mix of content: 80% entertaining and 20% product-focused. Use humour, cultural references, or funny polls to keep your audience engaged. It makes your brand feel like a friend rather than a sales pitch.
3. Maintain a Consistent, Relatable Tone
- Insight: Innocent’s tone is witty and self-deprecating, never directed at the audience. Strict brand guidelines ensure everyone on the team sticks to this voice, making interactions feel genuine.
- Takeaway: Create tone-of-voice guidelines. Include examples to show how your brand should sound when being humorous, empathetic, or straightforward. Remember: jokes should be at your own expense, not at the customer’s.
4. Collaborative Brainstorming with Wider Team
- Insight: Innocent includes team members from other departments (e.g., Finance, IT) in brainstorming sessions. These chaotic but productive sessions often produce the best ideas.
- Takeaway: Invite different departments to contribute to creative sessions. Fresh perspectives from other teams help broaden your brand’s viewpoint and can bring in unexpected yet valuable content ideas.
5. Be Selective with Trends and Avoid “Forced” Content
- Insight: Innocent doesn’t jump on every trend. Instead, they assess whether the trend feels genuinely relevant to the brand’s identity before participating.
- Takeaway: Before chasing a trend, ask yourself, “Does this fit our brand naturally?” When participating in trends, keep it low-cost and low-effort so you can stay agile without overspending on short-lived trends.
6. Use Data to Inform Content Strategy
- Insight: Monthly performance reviews guide Innocent’s strategy, including analysing engagement rates, follower growth, and feedback. They adjust their content based on which posts and formats perform best.
- Takeaway: Regularly review your performance metrics and use them to tweak your content strategy. Identify which formats resonate most with your audience (e.g., short videos vs. longer posts) and adjust accordingly.
7. Maintain Human Touch in Customer Engagement
- Insight: Innocent’s reactive team replies to every comment manually, avoiding chatbots to maintain authenticity.
- Takeaway: Dedicate time each day to respond to followers yourself. If time is limited, prioritise loyal followers or influencers, but avoid automated replies—they can make your brand feel impersonal.
8. Tailor Content to Each Platform
- Insight: Innocent doesn’t post the same content everywhere. They keep TikTok short and snappy, while Instagram Reels allow for longer videos.
- Takeaway: Adapt your content to fit each platform’s strengths. Test different formats (e.g., shorter videos on TikTok, longer storytelling on Instagram) and use data to see what resonates best on each.
9. Turn Mistakes into Opportunities
- Insight: Innocent openly addressed their “conker milk” mistake with humour, which became a memorable brand moment.
- Takeaway: If you make a mistake, use it as a light-hearted social moment. Transparency with a playful twist can turn potential negatives into positive engagement.
10. Stay Informed on Trends Through Active Listening
- Insight: Innocent’s team spends time each morning scrolling TikTok and Threads to see what people are talking about. They also encourage team members to flag trends or cultural topics.
- Takeaway: Spend a few minutes daily on platforms where trends emerge, like TikTok or Threads, and ask other team members to share anything interesting they come across. Staying actively informed can inspire fresh, timely content ideas.
Transcript (AI generated, may contain errors)
[0:00] – Introduction and Welcoming the Audience
- James welcomes attendees, noting the range of locations represented, and encourages everyone to introduce their favourite Innocent drink in the chat. He also gives a brief introduction to the session’s special guests, Anni and Ellie from Innocent’s social media team.
[4:06] – Overview of Innocent’s Social Media Team Structure
- Anni explains the setup at Innocent, where social media is divided into proactive (content creation) and reactive (community engagement). Ellie’s team manages the “People’s Champions,” who focus on leaving customers happier than they found them through interactions.
[7:17] – The Creative Process and Brainstorming for Content Ideas
- James and Anni discuss the process of generating ideas, with examples like the “stapler going to Taylor Swift” post. Anni describes how ideas can arise randomly and are refined in collaborative sessions, often involving the creative team and People’s Champions.
[10:29] – Branded Entertainment and Innocent’s Approach to Relevant, Non-Product Content
- Anni talks about Innocent’s “branded entertainment” strategy, where posts explore relatable topics like the weather or life hacks, creating an approachable and human voice.
[14:46] – Trend Involvement and Staying Authentic
- Anni shares how Innocent is selective about which trends to join, making sure they align with the brand’s tone. They look for trends that allow them to bring the Innocent “dude” character into the conversation naturally.
[16:39] – Tone of Voice and Humour in Responses
- Ellie explains the tone of voice used in replies, ensuring humour is directed at themselves rather than the customer. Innocent’s responses are often witty but stay empathetic, with jokes designed to make people smile.
[20:26] – Training New Team Members in Tone of Voice
- Ellie details the training process for new members, including shadowing and progressive exposure to public replies. New team members begin by responding to emails to get comfortable with the tone before moving on to social media.
[23:43] – Handling Crisis or Sensitive Comments
- Ellie and Anni discuss escalation procedures for sensitive topics, like Innocent’s ownership by Coca-Cola, and how they respond transparently to questions about sugar content or ownership.
[25:22] – Reviewing Campaign Performance and Learning from Mistakes
- Anni talks about the importance of analysing both successful and unsuccessful campaigns. The team uses metrics to learn from each campaign and improve future strategies, with a strong focus on data-driven decision-making.
[27:13] – Tailoring Content for Each Social Platform
- The team uses different approaches for each platform, keeping TikTok short and snappy, while longer, story-driven posts are more suited to Instagram. Anni explains the need to tailor content to each platform’s audience.
[30:05] – Planning Campaigns and Content for the Year
- Anni explains their recent improvement in long-term planning and how they’re starting to look ahead for key 2025 moments. However, they remain flexible to join conversations as they emerge.
[36:19] – Example Campaigns: Big Blue and the Conker Milk Story
- The team shares stories of campaigns that evolved organically, such as the Big Blue drink where customer feedback sparked an extended joke around its “blue” colour, and the Conker Milk mishap that turned into a humorous disclaimer campaign.
[38:04] – Balancing Content Across Multiple Platforms
- Anni and Ellie discuss balancing content creation across platforms, the challenge of resource limitations, and the importance of prioritising platform-specific content based on what performs best.
[41:22] – Data-Driven Decisions: Metrics that Matter
- Anni talks about the metrics they use to measure success, from engagement rate to follower growth. Innocent uses data to decide which content types and platforms to prioritise, adjusting based on performance.
[46:10] – Responding to Pushback and Dry Industries
- Anni offers advice on managing pushback for more “fun” content in traditionally dry industries. She stresses the importance of educating stakeholders and using data to justify creative ideas, as well as looking to competitors or industry leaders for inspiration.
[51:42] – Engaging Team Members in Content Creation
- Anni shares tips for getting hesitant team members on board with social content, like approaching people informally and involving them in simple, quick video tasks to help ease them in.
[54:19] – Hiring for the Right Tone and Skills
- Ellie describes how Innocent assesses candidates for the right emotional intelligence and ability to convey the brand’s tone in interviews, often testing with sample responses to customer queries.
[56:11] – Listening and Staying Current with Trends
- The team emphasises the importance of actively listening both online and offline to identify trending topics, using platforms like Threads for rapid updates on cultural conversations.
[58:04] – Closing Remarks and Thank Yous
- James wraps up the session, thanking Anni, Ellie, and all the attendees, and gives a shout-out to the sponsors who make the webinars possible.