Building a Brand's Social Presence from Zero
This post originally appeared in my Substack newsletter, The Work Behind the Work. Subscribe here.
I once began managing a brand’s social media, but it didn’t have social media yet.
There weren’t any accounts, no followers, nothing in the way of content already made, and – truthfully – no real belief inside the company that social media was even a good use of time. All there was was a really good product, a growing business, and a feeling among the people in charge that “we ought to be doing something on social”.
If you’ve had a job like that – to create a social presence for a company, with no help, and be told to report back when it’s making a difference – this is for you. The advice people usually give about social media marketing is about making things that are already going better. Starting from zero is a completely different problem, and you need a different plan.
Photo by Mariia Shalabaieva on Unsplash
The stage of having no audience
The most difficult part of making a social media presence isn’t making the content. It’s putting it out there when no one is seeing it.
You’ve created the accounts. You’ve written what the accounts are about. You’ve made a plan for the first month of posts. You publish – and nothing. No likes, no comments, no shares. Perhaps a few follows from people who work at the company. The numbers showing how people react to your posts are, for all intents and purposes, zero, and the urge to think that “social media doesn’t work for us” is very strong and comes quickly.
This is where most attempts fail. Not because the plan was bad, but because the people doing it wanted to see results within a timeframe that doesn’t fit social media's behavior. A social media presence is something that grows, and then grows faster. But the first part – the first three to six months – is mostly about sowing seeds. You’re creating a store of content, getting into a pattern of posting, finding a way to sound like a brand, and giving the systems that run social media enough information to start working out who your content is for.
The teams that get through this stage are the ones that judge their success by things that happen before results, not by the results themselves. Not “how many potential customers did social media bring in this month” but “are we posting regularly, is the content getting better, and is the number of followers going up?” These early signs are what you have to control. The good things for the business come afterwards.
What to do first
When you’re beginning with nothing, you can’t do everything. You must deliberately decide where to put your energy, and, equally important, what to put off for the time being.
Choose two platforms – not six. Each platform you’re on means a promise to deliver content made for it, delivered regularly. If your group is small – or if you are the group – being on every platform will mean doing a poor job on all of them. Pick the two places your audience is most likely to be, and do well on those. For businesses selling to other businesses, that is nearly always LinkedIn and one more – Twitter/X, Instagram, or Threads, depending on what business you’re in. For brands that sell directly to people, it depends on who those people are and what kind of content you’re making. The idea is to be really good at two before you attempt to be only okay at five.
Give value first, not advertising. The quickest way to stop a new social media account from growing is to use it only to promote yourself. Announcements of products, company news, and press releases rewritten as social posts – these are all needed, but they shouldn’t be the only thing you post. At the start, you’re trying to get the attention of people who have no reason yet to be interested in what you sell. You get their attention by being helpful, by giving them insight, or by being fun – not by telling them how good your product is.
I found this out very early. The posts that got us our first followers weren’t about our products. They were looking behind the scenes at our work, thoughts about our field, and content that made people feel as if they were getting a special look. The product was always there – but as part of the setting, and not as a sales pitch.
Create a voice, not just a list of posts. A social media account without a clear voice is just noise. Before you begin posting, decide how your brand will sound. Is it serious and careful? Is it like a conversation, and easy to get along with? Is it clever and quick? The answer should fit the brand’s overall image, but social media lets you show more personality than a website or a sales presentation. Find the version of your brand’s voice that feels natural for social media, and stick to it.
That voice doesn’t need to be perfect on the first day. It will change as you learn what people respond to. But beginning with a clear idea – “we sound like this, and not like that” – avoids the common problem of an account that feels plain because no one decided what it should feel like.
Getting people inside the company to support you
Starting with nothing usually means starting without the full support of the organisation. Leadership allowed the work, but they aren’t sure it will succeed. The sales group doesn’t see how social media can help them. Other departments see it as “the social media thing” – a side thing, not a main part of what the company does.
This is a problem of managing change as much as it is a problem of making content, and the way to solve it is with small, clear proof, not big promises.
Show, don’t try to sell. Rather than give leadership a presentation with thirty slides about your social media plan, show them a month of posts you’ve made, and the early data about how people reacted to them. Show them a competitor who is good at social media, and explain what you are doing to do the same or better. Things you can see are more convincing than predictions.
Include the other groups. Ask the product group for interesting details about how something was made. Ask the sales group which questions people who might buy from you ask most, and create content based on those questions. Ask leadership if they’re okay with being in a post. When other groups see themselves on social media, they will begin to feel as if they own it, and owning something creates support for it.
Report on what’s happening, not just numbers. At the start, your follower count and the number of reactions to your posts will be small. That’s what you should expect, and that’s okay. But if you only report the raw numbers, they won’t look very good. Instead, report the story: here’s what we posted, here’s what people liked, here’s what we learned, here’s what we’re doing next. This way of reporting makes social media seem like something that’s growing and learning, and not just a cost.
When things really begin to take off
In all the social media accounts I’ve created, there’s a point where growth really starts to accelerate. It isn’t tied to any specific number of followers or to following a particular promotion. It comes when the account has been active steadily and for a sufficient period, so the benefits of that consistency become clear.
People begin to tag the company in their own posts. Potential customers say they’ve been watching your content. The sales force begins sending social media posts to customers to start discussions. Publications in the field mention your social media work. Staff members share the business’s content because they are pleased with it, not because they are told to.
This is the stage of gaining traction, and it feels very unlike the period when you have no audience at all. But it isn’t a different plan; it’s the same plan – regularly providing useful content, and in your own style – that has at last been in place long enough to build on itself.
How long this takes varies. Some companies in lively fields with active audiences see this within six months. Others, in more specialised or restrained areas, may need a year. But it does happen, predictably, for groups that remain consistent during the quieter period.
What I would do differently
Having put a few of these together from the beginning, here’s what I would alter if I were beginning again:
I’d put more effort into getting content from day one. Pictures, short films, and glimpses from behind the scenes – getting these in real time isn’t expensive, and the content can be used for a long time. I did not early on understand how much of the content difficulty is simply a lack of basic material to use. Make the habit of getting content from the start, even before you know how you will use it all.
I’d begin the email list sooner. Social media reach is borrowed. An email list is yours. The earlier you begin to turn social media followers into email subscribers, the more secure your audience becomes. I wish I had given this a higher priority in every social media build I’ve done.
I’d more carefully agree on what success would look like with management from the start. The biggest problem for social media projects is having expectations that don’t match. If management expects leads in the second month, and you are building awareness, you will be defending the project instead of developing it. Setting sensible steps at the beginning – what success looks like at 3, 6, and 12 months – protects the project and allows it to build on itself.
I’d be less concerned with getting things perfect. In the early stages, consistency is more important than being polished. A good post, published on time, is better than a perfect post published three days late. The audience you are building is attracted by dependability and style, not by how well it is produced. You can raise the quality as a team, and the process becomes more mature.
The long view
Creating a social media presence from nothing is a test of patience. The first months are not glamorous. The figures are small. Critics are vocal. And the temptation to give up or move to something that gives quicker results is always present.
However, once built, a social media presence is one of the most lasting marketing resources a company can have. It builds on itself in ways that paid advertising never will. It creates brand value that lasts beyond marketing campaigns. It gives your business a voice in the market that doesn’t depend on advertising or a schedule of events.
Starting from nothing isn’t the difficult thing. Remaining consistent during the period when no one is watching – that is the difficult thing. And it’s the thing that makes everything that follows possible.
