New: 📱 What's Working on Social #8

Hey friend,

I’ve been thinking a lot about the concept of flywheels lately and how it applies to marketing, especially for a social media program.

Currently, I’m a social media manager at a media company with a limited budget. Organic growth has been our primary strategy, and it’s helped us grow by about thirty percent so far this year.

Looking ahead to 2025, if the budget remains tight, I’m asking myself: how can we attract new followers and keep existing ones engaged so they become repeat viewers of our social posts?

That’s when the idea of creating flywheels really clicked for me.

For those unfamiliar, flywheel marketing is an approach that puts the follower at the center. It focuses on delighting them from their very first interaction, turning them into repeat viewers and advocates for your brand.

I’ve been considering how to use this concept to not only attract new followers but encourage them to recommend the brand to their friends. This way, we gain one more follower, and the flywheel repeats itself.

In the past, our mistake was attracting as many followers as possible without adequately introducing them to the brand’s various content pillars. When they repeatedly saw content they didn’t sign up for, they churned. Instead, we should have welcomed them properly, informed them about the range of content we offer, and kept them engaged by meeting their expectations. Flywheel marketing can address this issue by nurturing relationships with those who genuinely want to stay connected to the brand, keeping them engaged and turning them into repeat viewers and advocates.

Here are some benefits I’m seeing with flywheels:

1. Sustained Growth with Less Effort

Flywheels create a self-sustaining loop on social media. Each post, share, or interaction contributes to long-term growth. Engaging content encourages shares, attracting new followers who engage with future posts. This reduces the reliance on constant paid promotions.

2. Compounding Engagement

Growth flywheels build relationships over time, where each interaction strengthens loyalty. User-generated content (UGC) or feedback loops foster a sense of community, encouraging more participation and engagement, which amplifies reach further.

3. Scalable Influence and Reach

Social media flywheels leverage tools like influencer collaborations, viral content, and referral campaigns to exponentially increase reach. As the audience grows, their actions—sharing, commenting, tagging—fuel the system, making it scalable without a proportional increase in effort.

I’m documenting my experiments with the growth flywheel, but here’s a sneak peek of what it will look like:

Step 1: Create content inspired by popular blogs or accounts in our niche and related verticals. This approach increases our chances of going viral because we’re using proven templates of success. We’ll adapt this content to fit our brand and tie it to our goals.

Step 2: Once we go viral or gain a good number of followers, we’ll actively DM them with a simple welcome message. We’ll ask questions like, “What are your top three accounts in [niche]?” or “What [niche] problems keep you up at night?” This gives us insight into their preferences, allowing us to adjust our strategy as needed.

Step 3: After establishing rapport with a new follower (let’s call him Jake), we’ll send him a clear breakdown of our content pillars and what to expect as he continues following us. This aligns expectations and actively reduces churn.

Step 4: At this stage, we’ll secure their buy-in for the long term. We might share our goals or ask them to recommend the brand to a few friends, adding an incentive that resonates with them and aligns with our brand.

These are the flywheels we’ll be experimenting with, especially given our tight budget. We’re looking for every cost-effective way to become the go-to brand in our niche.

Now, you’ll notice I alternate between speaking in certainties and making assumptions. That’s because much of this strategy has been tested in previous roles, where it generated tremendous results. Now, I have the chance to bring everything together into one comprehensive approach.

Talk soon,

Darius ✌🏻