The Social Media Creative Companion
26 helpful ways to approach the creative process of working in social media.
A few years ago I came across The Creative Companion by David Fowler. It’s a guidebook filled with thought starters and short ideas that frame the creative process in ways that feel both approachable and inspiring. Fowler, who spent twenty years at Ogilvy & Mather, wrote it in 2012 but it feels just as relevant today. Reading it rewired my brain.
In 2023, I wrote a newsletter for paid subscribers about how I’d apply Fowler’s thinking specifically to the creative process of working in social media. What’s the recipe for a shareable post? Or the rules for an engaging video intro? Or words of encouragement for sitting down to build out a content calendar?
It quickly became one of my most popular newsletter sends.
Today I am expanding that post with more ideas and making it available to all subscribers. Below are 26 ways to approach the creative process of working in social media.
So you want to “go viral”
Going viral starts with a foundation.
Brands that go viral have:
A company culture of trust.
Appetite for calculated risk.
Oftentimes the same bosses that ask their social media managers to “go viral” are the same ones creating the environment that doesn’t allow for it.
Creative ruts lead to creative solutions
Imagine if Frida Baby never asked “What if we used fruits to demonstrate how our baby products work?”
Or Prevent Cancer Foundation never thought “What if we used cookie dough to show how to do a testicular self exam?”
Hold a brainstorm. Throw out ideas that seem impossible. Try them.
Hold up a fun house mirror to your audience
Some of the best brands on social media hold a mirror back up to their audience. But it’s not just any mirror. It’s a fun house mirror.
When brands take user behavior and fun-ify that behavior—that’s the magic.
Like when McDonald’s got in on the joke about their McFlurry spoon being a straw. Or when Liquid Death made an outrageous commercial with kids drinking their water.
Take a consumer insight and bend it.
Don’t try and swim upstream
The internet is a current, don’t fight it.
Ignoring how people talk about your brand online doesn’t make it go away. Get in on the joke. Wink at your audience. Let them know you see them.
Just ask HBO Max how well that can go.
Understand why you like a post
Don’t just bring your boss a post you liked and say “it’s good”. Force yourself to articulate why.
What made it resonate? Why did the intro work? How did humor play a role?
Answering these questions out loud will make you a better marketer in the process.
Be patient
Original social strategies take time. That’s why most brands revert to the quick dopamine hits of trends. Stay the course.
Alexis Bittar, MERIT, and Gant might not be going viral every week—but they’ve built a sustainable, engaging presence that consistently delivers on its promise.
People say “I love this brand on social” not “I love this post on social”. That’s worth the wait.
The weekly ritual
Every Monday (or Tuesday), first thing, insist that the social team get around the table. You’d be amazed at how many creative groups stumble along without this meeting. This one meeting will replace five others, and eliminate dozens of emails from people trying to sort things out.
This meeting is the one place where you can talk about the week ahead, bubble up any cultural moments worth tapping into, and pitch a wacky idea.
Do this meeting at the same time, every week, without fail. No matter what. Do this meeting.
(The above idea is adapted from the “The Creative Companion”.)
Throw spaghetti at your notes app
The best social ideas often come to you when you least expect it. Watching a tennis match. Browsing the cereal aisle. In the middle of the night.
When one of those ideas comes, don’t expect to remember it 24 hours later.
Use the notes app on your phone as a scratch pad for those half-baked thoughts. Come back to the note during brainstorms—bake until the knife comes out clean.
You are a social salesperson
Not everyone speaks the language of the internet, as a social salesperson it’s your job to translate it to get buy in.
When pitching a social idea, bring your manager or client into your scroll. Explain a trend with excitement. Talk about the mechanics of why it works. Share how your brand will bring it to life in a new way.
It’s not “‘this and yap’ is a trend happening right now”. It’s “creators are sharing very specific scenes and experiences where they are catching up (or likely gossiping) with friends using ‘this and yap’—this is how our brand can find its way in…”
As Fowler says, “Noodle out three reasons why you believe your idea is powerful, from the client’s perspective. Set up your work with those three points, then lay it out on the table and take your chances.”
Social can be unserious but you still need to pitch ideas in serious ways.
Don’t get stuck in the past
If something that used to work on a platform now doesn’t, don’t be afraid to ditch it.
Ever since this newsletter about the success of text-only Facebook posts, I’ve heard from countless brands saying this was a huge unlock for them.
If photo posts don’t work anymore, try sprinkling in some text-only prompts.
It’s easy to get stuck in autopilot. Small tweaks can lead to big results.
Tell the same story over and over and over again
Attention spans are short, stories can be repackaged one million different ways.
Scrub Daddy has told the story of “other sponges are our enemy” countless times. Sometimes they tell it in a meme and other times they tell it in a video. It always resonates and no one ever comments “we’ve heard you say this before”.
Identify your brand’s universal truth
When trying to decide “who” your brand is on social media, establish a universal truth that your brand is speaking to.
YETI’s universal truth is that the right gear can help you stay out longer, travel farther, and live harder. Their social media content focuses on all of the adventures that are possible when you’re equipped with good gear.
Duolingo’s universal truth is that learning a language is hard, so they make it fun. Their social media content focuses on the silly, lighthearted aspects of learning a new language.
Figma’s universal truth is that they make design accessible to anyone. Their social media content focuses on breaking down any intimidation around design and creating playful educational videos.
It’s nearly impossible to make good social content without first establishing a universal truth. This is your content north star.
Build out a bad content calendar. Then make it better.
There’s nothing more daunting than sitting down to build out the next few weeks of social content.
But the key is knowing that the best version of those posts isn’t going to come from that one session. Create a bad idea and then use your bad idea as a premise to make better ones.
Maybe it starts as “weird motivational posters for ingredients”. And by the fifth round of edits the idea it turns into this.
Just get the idea on the calendar.
Does it feel “familiar”?
Format familiarity helps your brand find common ground with audiences before they even know what you’re selling.
Place your message into a recognizable setting—infomercial, movie trailer, court room, late night show—to increase the chances that someone will stick around to the end.
When you are brainstorming big posts or campaigns, an important question after “what’s our message” should be “what’s the surprising-yet-familiar format we might deliver it in.”
“Me” makes people feel seen
How do you make people feel seen? Use “me”.
Brands should optimize their own content to be shared. A meme from a brand becomes a relatable meme for the consumer with the simple use of “me”.
“Me when”. “My face when”. "My favorite.”
Is “me” referring to the brand? The customer? It’s blurry. And that’s the point.
Dunkin’ does it here. Chipotle does it here. Reformation does it here.
Story rules
If story is what you’re trying to do, Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling is a brilliant road map.
(The above idea is from the “The Creative Companion” and is one of my favorites.)
Think outside your feed
It’s easy to use your own scrolling as a reference point for “what’s in”. In reality, your feed and who you follow is a tiny slice of what’s actually popular.
Some of the biggest campaigns from brands feature influencers or references that you won’t understand. And that’s okay.
Create a group chat or Slack group with other coworkers to see what’s going on outside your scroll. Every Monday have them drop a video from a creator they love or a trend they saw popping on their FYP. You never know what you might discover.
Give yourself permission to post less
Working in social media can sometimes feel like one big sprint to fill a calendar. An endless pursuit to find the “perfect” amount of times to post per week. Sharing something, even if you know it’s not the most engaging, because of some imaginary quota you’ve made for yourself.
I think a big question to ask is: what kind of creativity could we unlock if we gave ourselves permission to post less?
It’s a strategic shift—operating from a scarcity mindset (“we have to say something today”) to an opportunity mindset (“do we have anything to say today?”).
Don’t overcomplicate your campaign
If you have to explain your social campaign tagline, it’s too complicated.
Reporting isn’t for you
As a social manager, you know what works and what doesn’t. You see the numbers every day. You know which posts did well and which didn’t.
Whether you know it or not, those insights guide you.
So why put together reports?
Because reporting isn’t for you.
Make entertaining and fun-to-read weekly, monthly, and quarterly reports for your bosses and your bosses bosses. These help build excitement around your work, give you a chance to build stories around your strategy, and consistently remind management just how important social is.
And yeah, you’ll probably learn something too.
Does your post pass “the share test”?
Shareable content is a huge driver for organic growth.
Posts that make you want to add to your story, DM to a friend, or tag someone.
Knowing this, I run everything through “the share test”. It goes as follows:
Will this post make our audience “feel seen” in some way? Will they feel an emotion (love or hate) when they view the content?
Will this post help facilitate connection with other audience members? Will it make them feel like they are part of a community?
Will this post provide some sort of service? Is the post communicating information in an entertaining way?
If two of the three bullets are a YES, then it passes “the share test”.
Solve the first five seconds
The most important part of any social media video is its opening, the first five seconds.
That’s the part that hooks, intrigues, explains or builds up the next twenty-five, thirty, sixty seconds. If you’re not clear about the first five seconds, you’re not clear about anything, because that’s where your premise gets introduced. If it’s not interesting, people will scroll.
Write the first five seconds before anything else.
(The above idea is tweaked the “The Creative Companion” where Fowler says to focus on the last five seconds.)
Your brand’s ordinary is your audience’s extraordinary
There’s this video of an employee at Wild Rivers Waterpark Irvine showing how they walk the slides each morning to make sure they are safe. It has 400K views.
Or The Natural History Museum posting a video of Exhibition Maintenance Manager, Trenton, vacuuming the 21,000-pound blue whale model.
The Ritz Paris has a video titled “The Art of Room Service”.
This video about what it’s like to be a guard at The Met is filled with comments like “Best job in the whole world ❤️” and “What an ambassador you are. Just delightful.”
As Dan Titmuss, host of CI to Eye, put it when he first told me this phrase: “When we are enthusiastic about the weird and wonderful everyday occurrences that have become so normal to us, it's infectious—people love a behind-the-scenes moment. It invites them into our world and makes them feel like an insider.”
Feel the brand
A brand is the way a person feels about a product or service. It’s created not by advertising or social media, but by a set of experiences. Think of a brand like an art museum. How you feel about the pictures is what makes them matter. Otherwise, it’s just a room of sailcloth stretched on frames.
When you get lost in all the noise around you, stop and see the brand like a customer. What do you feel? There might be an idea in there.
(The above idea is adapted from the “The Creative Companion” and is one of my favorites.)
Phone a friend
Working in social media requires us to make lots of decisions, very quickly.
Find a coworker who can be your gut check, your spell check, your moral check.
Best practices don’t matter if the idea is bad
I’ve seen plenty of good content go viral that didn’t adhere to best practices.
I’ve never seen bad content go viral just because they adhered to best practices.
Idea first. Best practices second.
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Here’s how Red Fabbri, Global Head of Editorial, Group Social Marketing Manager @ YouTube, describes the newsletter, “Rachel is ‘one of us’; a social media manager forged in the fires, turned astute observer of the trade and the tools. She has incredible interviews with those doing the work at the best brands in the business, and finds some of the best examples of good (and bad) work you need for competitive analysis.”
I’ve worked in many social roles and the only ones I’ve seen real success in is when I have full autonomy in the creation process
Please re-share the rules of storytelling link it won't open for UK readers