What does "social-first" actually mean? A framework for marketers
"Social-first" is one of those terms that sounds like a brief but works as a way of avoiding one. I've been working with a production studio on a pitch, and part of my role is cultural and comms strategy for what the client expects to be a social-first campaign.
The first question we had to answer: what do we actually mean by social-first marketing?
Because asking a room of strategists to define "social-first" is like asking them how advertising works. Everyone will have a slightly different answer. And lo and behold, we did. So some codifying was necessary.
I took the question to the Salmon Crew community and got some cracking responses. Here's what we landed on.
Why "social-first" needs a proper definition
We need to stop using social-first as a catch-all term. Are we talking about culture as the starting point for ideas? Adding value to an existing community? Involving people rather than broadcasting at them?
Each of those requires a different creative approach, different success metrics, and a different campaign shape. Being specific upfront saves enormous headaches downstream.
The two audiences a social-first campaign must serve
Your actual audience
Basic, but worth saying: everything should represent what the audience will care about in their own time. Assume you have zero paid media behind it. Assume you need to earn attention and invite people in. Hooks feel tacky until you don't have one and lose people in the first two seconds. And then all that work goes to waste.
The algorithm
The other thing you need to design around is distribution itself. The algorithm isn't your audience, but it decides whether your audience ever sees the work. The algorithm may or may not reward certain tactics. And yes, it's a black box. But signals exist.
The challenge is articulating how to keep a creative concept alive while also making it algorithm-friendly. I've been calling this "technical creativity", i.e. the discipline of keeping a concept alive while making it distribution-friendly. Format, pacing, hook structure, audio choices. The idea doesn't change, but the engineering around it does.
TikTok vs YouTube Shorts vs Instagram Reels: Why just using the same video probably isn't enough
One of the more nuanced discussions in social-first strategy is whether to adapt content for different vertical feeds. The format may be identical (9:16, short-form video), but the consumption context is not:
TikTok: Entertainment-led, immersive discovery, audio-driven, endless swipe, high active engagement. Make things people choose to lose time in.
YouTube Shorts: Information-seeking, search-driven surfacing, long-tail viewership. Make things people find when they're looking for something specific.
Instagram Reels: Aesthetic curation, close-network sharing, passive feed browsing, DM-sharing behaviour. Make things people send to specific people.
This doesn't mean you need drastically different ideas per platform. It means the same idea needs slightly different execution to maximise consumption and shareability, which in turn drives longer-term recall.
"Lots of littles": The campaign architecture model for a fragmented media world
One of the best answers to building incremental reach in fragmented media comes from the work of Dr. Grace Kite and Tom Roach on the concept of "lots of littles." You still need a central idea to create cohesion, but the job is to stretch it across time, space, and channels.
That stretch can happen in several ways:
Treat the central idea as a premise and execute it episodically
Develop behind-the-scenes content, bloopers, Q&As off the back of hero material
Use creator talent to react to different aspects of the main execution
Commission reaction videos, brief aggregator accounts and clipping accounts
Give audiences ways to interact with the central idea beyond the original footage
Create exclusive private social spaces for deeper engagement, then use those conversations as collateral for broad-reach media
The philosophy: campaign shape isn't just dictated by media channels over time. It's also determined by variety of execution within each channel over time, all anchored to a consistent central idea.
Social-first campaign and content examples worth studying
In-feed: How luxury brands show up in social-native formats
One of the biggest myths in social-first marketing is that "social = lo-fi." These examples show how high-end brands can adhere to platform cultural codes without losing brand equity.
Porsche:Sarcastic facts, painting content
Mercedes-Benz:Product ASMR, retro gaming
Lexus:Product POVs
Lamborghini:Surrealism
Ferrari:Birth month content
Loewe:Comedy, challenges
Jacquemus:Interviews
Stella McCartney:Unboxing
Alexis Bittar:Vox pop
Out-of-feed: When social content is earned, not published
Some of the best social-first content doesn't originate in the feed at all. But it requires thought, intent, and architecture, it doesn't just happen organically.
The Severance Union Station activation. A physical stunt that generated organic social content people actively wanted to share.
A24's character wedding announcements. Extending fictional worlds in ways fans could participate in and spread.
Bandit Running's Unsponsored Project. Using the absence of sponsorship as the creative idea itself.
M&S's viral product drops. Rooted in social listening feeding directly into product development. A perfect example is how Dubai Chocolate became Big Daddy.
What these have in common: they give audiences something to do with the content. They create an excuse for people to post.
How to score a social-first campaign: A five-point checklist
Use this as a mental audit for any campaign you're defining as social-first:
Culture Test. Does the idea start from something observed in culture or a specific community, rather than a top-down brand brief?
Threshold Test. Would people find it interesting with zero paid budget behind it? Does it have earned potential?
Algorithm Test. Does it thread consumer interest, brand interest, and algorithmic reward simultaneously? Would it hit technical performance signals while still having a real idea behind it?
Platform Test. Does it feel native to how people actually consume a given platform — or is it a lazily reformatted 9:16 produced at the last minute?
Architecture Test. Is there a cohesive core idea supported by audience-specific executions in orbit around it? Can you stretch it across time, space, media, and formats?
You probably don't need all five to call something social-first. But you should be able to answer most of them.
The more rigorous we are here, the better our work performs over time, and the less busywork we create for ourselves and our clients. Rigour here isn't bureaucracy. It's how you avoid building campaigns that only work with budget propping them up.
Frequently Asked Questions about social-first marketing
What is a social-first campaign? A social-first campaign is one where the creative idea, campaign architecture, and success metrics are designed with social media behaviour at the centre, rather than treated as an adaptation of a TV or OOH idea.
What's the difference between social-first and social media marketing? Social media marketing can mean simply having a presence on social platforms. Social-first means the campaign is designed from the ground up to earn attention, spread natively, and perform within platform-specific contexts.
Does social-first mean lo-fi content? No. As the luxury brand examples above show, social-first is about cultural fluency and platform-native thinking, not production quality.
Should you create different content for TikTok, Reels, and YouTube Shorts? The format may be the same (short-form vertical video), but the consumption context differs significantly. At minimum, the same idea needs different executions per platform to maximise relevance and shareability.
The brain trust behind this post
I couldn't have updated my mental model for this stuff without relying on the brain trust of the Salmon Crew. There are 290+ smart global strategists in our private group chat, a curated swipe file, monthly events exclusive for members, and a growing list of exclusive deals from the likes of 42courses, Trajectory, BrandStruck.co, Okay Human and more. Join us and get the strategic conviction your competitors lack.
Massive props to the smart, tuned in and kind brains of Salmon Crew members Jared, Sheeza, Pollyanna, Amber, Monse, Suzanne, Eve, Lara, Nicole and others I missed for helping me update my mental model for how to keep playing at the edge of this game.
