What does "social-first" even mean?

Alice Chen, Senior Director of Social and Influencer at Away, is taking over today's strategy newsletter.

Hello from Copenhagen! I’ll be traveling and taking some time off over the next two weeks—trading out screen time for smørrebrød. While I’m offline, I’ve lined up a handful of stellar guest writers and interviews. Today Alice Chen, Senior Director of Social and Influencer at Away, will be taking over the strategy send for paid subscribers. My interview with her last year remains a favorite. I’ll let her take it from here! - Rachel

Hi all! Alice here. I’m the Sr. Director of Social, Influencer, and Community at Away and am stepping in for Rachel while she takes some much-deserved time off. I’ve got big shoes to fill.

Before we dive in, I’m still riding the high of our best-performing organic post of all time. Away collabed with Darshen and Samuel—two friends who went viral back in April for doing the “My name is” trend. Here’s a little BTS: when we first started concepting with the two of them, the default was to lean into the exact format they’ve been going viral for. It had been a few weeks, though, since their first video took off. So we made a small adjustment—flipping the script to have Darshen be the Samuel. That tweak is what likely contributed to the over 1M views on the video.

Here’s what I’ll be getting into today:

• What, exactly, does “social-first” mean?

• Five creators I want to work with

• My favorite post format this week

• The Away social team’s core values

• How brands are speaking out right now

• One creative hot tip