/ THE SITUATION
Back in 2011 Nature’s Path made its first foray into Social Media. At that time, the Social Media team consisted of an Event Planner, a Webmaster and myself. I created hundreds of pieces of content for their social media accounts, including online contests, grant programs like “Gardens For Good” and sub-brands EnviroKidz, Qia, and Love Crunch.
/ THE SOLUTION
Our earliest posts on social media happened before the “pay to play” model came into effect. Back then, anything we posted was seen by ALL of our Nature’s Path followers and our audience grew more organically. As the rules changed, post sizes changed and competition for viewers increased, the expectations of social content continued to evolve as well.
Like any good relationship, we needed to bring value to the conversation. We needed to:
- Align with the views of the audience
- Be topical and/or somewhat newsworthy
- Provide some sort of call to action
- Not be overtly branded
It was and continues to be a unique medium. Like traditional advertising, the payoff is not immediate, but unlike traditional advertising, it’s the start of a conversation and a relationship. (when combined with commenting, blogging and timely, personable responses). As our social media team grew we added substantial content to that dialogue in the form of blog posts, content and helpful content (videos, guides, recipes and more).
/ THE RESULT
When I left Nature’s Path in 2015 we had grown our online community to over 300,000 Facebook followers and 60,000 Twitter followers eclipsing much larger brands like Kellogg’s and Post. Our followers were very active, posts were often shared and for many people transitioning to a healthier organic lifestyle, Nature’s Path was a reliable and important source of information.
