Why Your Social Media Content Isn't Performing

The algorithm is an incredibly convenient colleague.

Whenever something goes wrong, it gets the blame.

Sometimes platform changes genuinely do affect performance.

But if your content consistently isn't working, we'd start with a slightly more uncomfortable question.

Would anybody actually choose to watch it?

Your content might be solving an internal problem

A lot of brand content makes complete sense to the people who approved it.

There's a product that needs promoted.

A campaign message that needs delivered.

A stakeholder wants a particular asset used.

None of those things guarantee that somebody scrolling Instagram cares.

Good social creative has to translate a business priority into something that's worth somebody else's attention.

That's the difficult bit.

You might be getting to the point too slowly

This is particularly important with video.

People make decisions extremely quickly.

If the first few seconds consist of a logo animation, an establishing shot and a title card before anything actually happens, you've asked a lot of the viewer.

That doesn't mean every video needs someone screaming into the camera.

It means respecting the fact that attention isn't guaranteed.

It might look too much like advertising

Sometimes an extremely polished piece of content performs poorly precisely because everybody immediately understands what it is.

An advert.

And people have become exceptionally good at skipping adverts.

This doesn't mean brands should make everything look amateur.

It means understanding the visual language of the platform you're entering.

Maybe you're just making too much

More isn't always better.

When teams have to fill a large number of predetermined content slots every month, quality can gradually become secondary to output.

Eventually the calendar becomes the customer.

That's usually when we'd question whether everything being produced genuinely needs to exist.

Shaka in practice

When global watch brand Time & Tide came to us, they were entering a new era, and needed socials to reflect this. 

What they were doing before wasn’t reflecting the true spirit of their brand. The staff were in suits and stayed behind the scenes.

Although they were the voice behind new products, opinions and expertise in their studio, this wasn’t showing up on their socials.

We brought the social element back into focus - the team began wearing more casual uniforms to better reflect their audience, and we got them in front of the camera to share their opinions and passion for watches with the friendliness and knowledge that came through when chatting to clients in-person.

Combined with consistent editorial-style graphics, watch-culture insights, and product storytelling the performance improvement proved that changing up their creative approach and format was well worth it. 

Time+Tide Watches grew by 150,000+ followers organically in less than 24 months, driven not by trends, but by the consistency of their new creative approach.

On Instagram alone, the brand now reaches 20 million+ organic views every month. So if you're considering shaking things up, take this as your sign to do it!

Don't panic over one bad post

Not everything works.

That's normal.

One underperforming video isn't evidence that your strategy has failed.

Look for patterns.

If ten pieces using the same format consistently lose viewers at the same point, the audience is telling you something.

That's one of social's biggest advantages.

You get feedback incredibly quickly.

The brands that improve fastest aren't the ones where every post works.

They're the ones that actually listen when something doesn't.