A strategic social media function for an education start-up.
edX, a global ed-tech company founded by MIT and Harvard, underwent a complete rebrand in December 2020. This meant the social media strategy was up for a refresh, too. As social media lead, I led the research, development, and execution of the brand’s first organic social media strategy.
Key audience: Adult learner.
What I did: Develop the brand's first organic social media strategy as part of a greater brand evolution, defining specific approaches and personas by channel and leaving room for innovation.
RESEARCH
Goals.
The who, what, where of our social media audiences.
The who, what, where of our competitors.
Primary research
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Audience demographic data
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Competitor audits on performance, voice/tone
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Existing brand persona attributes and behaviors
Match audience demographics to existing brand personas.
What do people look for on each social network?
Secondary research
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User trends across social media networks
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How social media algorithms work
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Industry-related social media trends
PERSONAS
Persona names and attributes are omitted for confidentiality.
After looking at the demographics of our social media audience, I mapped edX's existing brand personas and their attributes to the best matching social media network.
Why personas?
✨ Build empathy for our social media audiences
✨ Understand their needs + start to map out a content strategy
✨ Build a channel specific-approach based on user needs
Persona one
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Persona two
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Persona three
COMPETITIVE ANALYSIS
Competitor logos are omitted (and replaced with clouds ☁️) for confidentiality.
An audit of our competitors' brand accounts brought us to four categories of voice and content, mapped out below.
I found that most of our competitors were focused on outcomes and real human stories. Seeing edX there was a good sign — but we saw an untapped opportunity in combining outcomes, human stories, and conversational content.
THE SOLUTION
The landscape analysis uncovered three key opportunities.
01
Shift in voice and tone
One untapped opportunity to meet our users where they are and build brand affinity was a shift toward being more conversational and talking with, not at, our audience.
02 + 03
Channel-specific approach
Anchor content stream
I created a content stream consisting of one main anchor piece which then gets repurposed into social-first content, depending on each channel's specific approach.
IN PRACTICE
MEASURING SUCCESS
Organic social media at edX was used as an awareness and engagement-driving channel. To measure that, I decided on the following primary and secondary KPIs.