Rachel Karten
@milkkarten
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creator of link in bio newsletter. social media consultant. former social lead at @bonappetit .
Los Angeles, CA
Joined March 2009
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Every quarter I release my Brand Social Trend Report. It recaps the the formats that took over and the themes that felt inescapable. It’s a little bit of science and a whole lot of gut. Kind of how I approach social strategy in general. Here's what's in the Q2 2024 edition:
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perfect brand response to a viral video tbh. great use of stitches, earnest, and had a feel-good ending.
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it pains me to admit it but
@skims
marketing is very good. they’ve got a budget and they know what to do with it!
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A car dealership in Ballston Spa, NY is turning out Emmy-worthy videos on TikTok. The best way to describe Mohawk Chevrolet’s strategy is if The Office took place at a car dealership. I interviewed the (very funny) woman behind them, Grace Kerber. Here’s what I learned:
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a lot of praise on here for cetaphil’s super bowl commercial, but tiktok user sharon mbabazi (and her step dad) are claiming the brand stole the concept from their real story/viral content. here’s one of their original tiktoks (2.6M views) and then the response to the commercial.
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Boy Smells released a candle inspired by poppers. Someone commented on TikTok “I would’ve did anything to sit in on the first pitch meeting for this”. Boy Smells replied to the comment with a video of a Zoom recording of the whole marketing team trying poppers.
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you know your packaging was a problem when your announcement on tiktok that you changed it gets over 2m views
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i found as many people as i could who work on
@KamalaHQ
's social strategy (total of five) and averaged their graduation year. it's 2020.
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First, some background. Back in January, Mohawk Chevrolet tested a mockumentary-style TikTok post. It took off. Since then they have published nine “episodes”, which have a cumulative viewership of 5.7M on TikTok alone. Here's a clip from one of their most popular episodes:
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Memes work. Earlier this year,
@nypl
launched a meme campaign to get library funding restored. It was a success, with people attributing the restoration of over $58M to the social team's strategy. I chatted with NYPL’s social manager about it, here’s what I learned:
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Today is my last day at Bon Appétit, Epicurious, Healthyish, and Basically.
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lol to be clear i don’t think the photos are great or groundbreaking! i just think getting mia and lucia from the white lotus for the valentine’s day collection was smart!!!
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The worst part about working in social media is understanding a trend is lame but knowing your brand should participate anyway
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Great social ideas die in overbearing approval processes. In
@washingtonpost
and
@drewharwell
's latest reporting on the
@KamalaHQ
social strategy, the team talked a lot about how they get content approved. Here are a few operational insights for your brand to steal:
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society has evolved past the need for more sweatshirts like this
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i often talk about the importance of marketing leadership trusting and empowering gen z employees. impressive to see it at this scale.
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@jsstansel
FYI! Pretty sure a competitor made this and intended it to go viral (like it currently is).
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The series is helmed by Grace Kerber, who is nine months into her first job out of college. She partners with Ben Bushen, who has shot video for the dealership’s marketing team for the past 5 years, after offering to edit a video a few weeks into a job as a delivery coordinator.
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the original tiktoks from sharon and her step dad have 400k up to 2.6m views. my guess is that it’s likely whoever pitched the commercial idea saw them. what do you think?
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One of my favorite things I worked on while consulting with west elm. Wanted to see what humor could look like for them. Ended up making a few videos that spoke to home-related universal truths. The three videos in this mini series have 2M views on Reels alone.
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A recurring theme in my newsletter is this idea that brands should treat TikTok like TV (cc
@adamfaze
). Like with every good TV show, there are fans of Mohawk Chevrolet.
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Seeing a lot of people share this deleted post from Microsoft Edge today. Only problem is that it was never tweeted by them. It was photoshopped and tweeted by a competitor of theirs.
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"giving up smoke". he's definitely building press/hype for a line of edibles or something.
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my favorite brand social account this year might be ssense. most multi-brand retailers lean too aspirational on social (curation of nice clothes) while ssense provides relatability/community (they make people feel seen).
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Really into how the J.Crew Men's Instagram has been casting influencers/celebrities/cool people instead of traditional models. People relate to real people. People share real people.
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Here’s how the Mohawk Chevrolet team makes an episode of “The Dealership”
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🗣 Invest in social media teams! 🗣
@travislylesnews
oversees a team of ~9 people who ONLY work on
@washingtonpost
’s Instagram. The team has 1 assignment editor, 3 social media editors, 1 vid producer, 1 copy editor and ~3 designers.
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In my Brand Social Trend Report: Q2 2024, I called out the return of flat lays as a trend. I then learned that many of the flat lays we are seeing on brand accounts right now are actually curated and shot by one person: The Millennial Decorator. I asked her about her work below.
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Chevrolet corporate has commented on one of their TikToks. So far, no other communication has been had.
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looks like the cco at the agency that developed the commercial really believes in the message!
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Went full investigator mode in today's newsletter. Reformation has been paying creators to re-make their personal viral videos for the brand's Instagram. The only difference? They are now wearing Reformation.
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Despite people just now discovering
@NutterButter
's social, the brand has been dedicated to their cryptic strategy for over a year. I spoke with former employees, went down an Aidan deep dive, and dug into why their lore is finally breaking through. This is what I learned:
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We love to see it. Mohawk Chevrolet has had people come in after seeing their TikToks.
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people on tiktok are using broccoli to apply fake freckles
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The other day someone alerted me to a bunch of influencers like Emily Mariko, Rachel Mansfield, and more posting "the viral
#RoastedFetaSoup
". Weird. I am very online and hadn't heard of any viral Roasted Feta Soup?
That’s because there isn’t one. Let's dig in.
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This sums it up. As a manager, I’d always prefer to have a strategy that takes risks and makes a few mistakes than a strategy that plays it safe and never makes an impact.
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Also thought this stat about the SEO for the dealership was particularly fascinating.
A reminder that SEO does not exist in a vacuum. Mohawk Chevrolet was able to increase the local searches for a new vehicle from their TikTok campaigns.
Their local SEO was impacted by doing great marketing **shocked Pikachu face**
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still thinking about the before and after of emma chamberlain’s kitchen
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i need to talk to whoever is running marc jacobs’ tiktok
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In terms of what’s next for “The Dealership”? Grace knows the audience wants more.
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You can read my full interview with Grace Kerber, Digital Branding Creator at Mohawk Chevrolet, here!
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Their social team is organized by platform versus medium or function
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If you’re seeing Chili’s everywhere, you aren’t alone. Their Triple Dipper going viral on TikTok accounted for roughly 40% of the chain’s sales growth this past quarter! I talked to Jack Hailey, Social Media Manager at Chili's, about their strategy. Here's what I learned:
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i love this instagram account where people just rate photos of sliced chives
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They operate like a news room—every day at 9 a.m. they break down trends and pitch social ideas
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How did brands get so funny on social media? They hired a comedian.
For this week's newsletter I wrote about the comedian to social media manager pipeline and why so many comedians are running brand accounts.
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Posts are approved through Slack and often within 15 minutes
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For today’s newsletter I asked a bunch of social manager friends for hot takes about working in this field
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“You cannot and will not talk to me any way you want, and I think that all social managers should be allowed the grace of telling people that.”
For today’s newsletter, I spoke with
@sassyblackdiva
, the social media editor behind *that*
@EW
tweet.
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If the trending audio has more than 200,000 uses, they won’t use it
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noticing a lot of brands utilizing a specific intro style on tiktok that i am calling “shock and sell”. start with a shocking viral clip and transition into a hard sell. examples here from reformation and aeropress.
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The best brands on TikTok treat the platform like TV. They create replicable formats, introduce characters that their audiences become invested in, and build a clear point of view that is agnostic to whatever may be trending that day.
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lots of people wondering "who" pop crave is. on linkedin, there are six employees associated with the company. the woman people are claiming "is pop crave" is wilnette ortega, their brand ambassador and content creator.
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Wow!
@washingtonpost
hired an in-house social media coach to work with reporters. Super smart.
Yesterday, I started at
@washingtonpost
as the first-ever social media coach!
I’ll be growing connections between reporters and audiences in this new role. I’m so grateful for the opportunity, and I’m excited to make an impact at a publication I’ve long admired 🌟
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Yesterday I published my Q1 brand social trend report. It’s a little bit of science and a whole lot of gut. Kind of how I approach social strategy in general. Let’s break down five trends mentioned in it.
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imagine if wes anderson duetted all of the wes anderson-style tiktoks gordon ramsay style
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cool use of the edit tweet feature from
@netflix
to tease who will play uncle fester in their new series
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In my 10+ years working in social, I've found that I get the most inspiration from brands *outside* of the industry I work in.
When I worked at Bon Appétit, I'd study brands in beauty, sports, and fashion to get inspiration for our channels.
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i can’t believe i am going to tweet about the bachelor but absolutely no one did it like maria. vintage mcqueen and d&g? in a sea of princess polly? i love her
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How to find TikTok videos you watched but didn’t save:
Go to the TikTok search bar. Type in what you remember about the vid (think: lemon pasta). Tap three dots on the top right. Select “filters”. Select “watched” from video category. The video you’re thinking of should show up!
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@julesterpak
I can’t stop thinking about how this trend might be the thing to make smart glasses mainstream/cool/relevant.
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in high school my family adopted a dog and we later found out dakota johnson adopted our dog’s sibling and i’ll never forget seeing her dog in paparazzi photos for the first time and it looking exactly like ours 🥹
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"We see a direct correlation between when a post on TikTok hits and an increase in new learners who choose ‘TikTok’ in our ‘how did you hear about us’ survey.” I spoke with Zaria Parvez, Sr Global Social Mgr at
@Duolingo
, about their strategic use of chaos. Here's what I learned:
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In today’s newsletter I interviewed
@flynnslick
about her role as Social Media Manager at
@letterboxd
. She gave me a behind-the-scenes look at their wildly successful social strategy. Here are a few things I learned:
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Last week I asked social managers to share one brutally honest thing they wish they could tell their boss. I included them all in today’s newsletter. These are a few favorites.
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@mattstasoff
Totally! I asked Grace why dealerships often have such good social and she said "They all just happen to have lots of big personalities, maybe? (LOL)".
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it would be kind of funny if the actual ray ban account announced a sale like this
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One of my favorite reminders working in brand social:
Your ordinary is your audience’s extraordinary.
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thinking about the time i was given the responsibility of managing an intern at c*nde n*st because he was part of the n*whouse family and they apparently have to work there to get access their trust fund
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thinking a lot about the concept of being "overinfluenced". it's when you see lots of sponsored posts for a product, but never see it used/worn/talked about organically.
example: i see lots of cool people doing ads for rothy's but i have never seen a person wear rothy's irl.
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404 by L.A. Times is easily one of the most innovative social presences from a news org. I have always been inspired by their ability to tell complex stories in approachable ways online. Devastated to learn their team has been impacted by today's layoffs.
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Their competitor photoshopped a fake deleted post with the below text and tweeted it with "what did edge mean by this?". The original post from the competitor has almost 2M views. There is no disclosure that this is parody or fake.
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How can brands write better captions or smarter VO scripts for social media? In today’s newsletter, I asked FONZIE, a copywriting duo that has worked with brands like rhode, A24, and Netflix, exactly that. It’s one of my favorite conversations. Here are a few things I learned:
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wow. kind of wild to see
@BusinessInsider
distributing an article on r/NYCinfluencersnark which has over 81k members. i know a lot of media lurks there but fascinating to see them directly engage.
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this video from food52 announcing their new ceo is one of the most awkward brand videos i’ve ever watched
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Yikes if your immediate takeaway from this is "Update your passwords when someone leaves!" and not "Wow. Those are bad working conditions and social managers deserve better."
Former NBA employee goes rogue on their last day and lays into Adam Silver on the league's official Facebook page
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Do Reels perform better when you *don't* post them on grid? I did a very informal investigation into what AXE has seemingly been testing on their page.
Reels posted to grid average around 200 likes. Reels not posted to grid average 16,233 likes. You can see the views below.
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Something I've been thinking about a lot:
For a social media strategy to be "good" does it need to perform well? Like, can a social media strategy that's weird, unique, and interesting be "good" if the engagement rate sucks?
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This tweet alone got over 7M views.
SO BASICALLY PUBLIC LIBRARIES ARE JUST 0.4% OF THE NEW YORK CITY BUDGET, BUT THE MAYOR IS TRYING TO CUT THE LIBRARY'S BUDGET WAY BACK. I’M TALKING $58.3 MILLION! LIBRARIES ARE ALREADY CLOSED ON SUNDAYS BECAUSE OF PREVIOUS CUTS AND MOST BRANCHES WILL BE OPEN FOR JUST FIVE DAYS A
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if putting text on ig posts ruins engagement then explain THIS
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