How Pegipegi Combines Multiple Strategies to Increase Organic Reach and Followers
Over the last couple of months, we have experimented with many different types of social media content in order to find out which ingredients work best.
To give you some context, I joined Pegipegi in 2019 and at that time the number of followers we had on Instagram was 140K. In late 2022, it increased to 173K, or a 23% growth for almost 3 years.
As a result of a relentless team that eagerly experiments and optimizes content, we saw a significant increase in social media organic reach and followers.
Today (29/08), we have 209K followers. Over the course of just 8 months, we have grown our followers by 21%. The organic reach of our content also increased 217% YoY, an all-time high.
We have found that certain types of content are more successful than others. We have also uncovered some unexpected insights into our target audience, which will help us create more engaging content in the future.
With these findings, we are now better equipped to craft content that resonates with our audiences and ensure our content stands out from the competition.
Here are 5 key ingredients that we think make up the perfect social media formula 🔥.
Make it clear and simple
Since our brand belongs in the travel industry, most people would expect our content to inspire viewers with aesthetic places or destinations with video production. Generally, people think that way because, well, it seems like it’s the best practice since most travel brands do it that way. It turns out it’s just a myth.
We debunked that myth by focusing on “low effort, high impact” content or in another way a content easy to produce and has a clear message and more importantly resonates with the audience.
It only takes a few minutes to create this type of content, but the impact is tremendous. The following are 4 content pillars in which we consistently publish on a daily basis.
- We created a short video that quickly recommended places to travel to certain destinations. It had over a hundred of thousands views in just a few days.
- We created Pegimin content that displayed copy-based content which we want to trigger our audience to comment on our post. It had dozens of comments quickly minutes after we posted the content.
- We summarize current travel news to provide quick information. The audience is also very engaged with it.
- We make sure that our audiences are entertained by bit size video content that we call ‘meme videos’ so that they won’t get bored.
Know your audience
Understanding your audience is the first step to creating clear, simple content. Knowing your audience’s demography, their interest, and their problem is essential.
Crafting content for your audience is like using a puzzle piece to complete a larger picture — you have to know the size, shape, and color of the piece in order to make it fit perfectly.
In early 2023, the Marketing team set the positioning of the brand as the champion of frugal travel. As a result, it’s easier for us to create content that is perfect for them because we have a clearer picture of what our customers look like.
When we realized that our target audience values value for money or what people call “kaum mendang-mending”, we created content that recommended certain destinations and provided budget information. This type of content helps our audience to calculate their budget for their upcoming trip.
Translating business objectives into actionable content that resonates with our audience is an essential part of achieving the business objective.
Maximizing the feature on the social media
From the point of view of social media giants, all of their features are designed to keep users on their platform as long as possible. How? They will add more features and prioritize content that uses their features in their ranking prioritization.
One of them is the video reply.
When a video becomes viral like this one. We received tons of comments in that specific post. We saw that our audience wanted to learn more about other recommendations for different destinations. It’s not rocket science for us to utilize this opportunity so we can sustain our post performance and create our own trend/style.
As this feature makes people more engaged in our content, we use it multiple times and find out that it also makes our job easier so we don’t have to worry about upcoming topics.
We just need to monitor the comment section. They ask, we answer.
Bonus: Here is the recent post where we replied from the blue tick account Pesona Indonesia.
Engage the audience
Replying to the comments of our audience is crucial to making sure they are heard. Our brand will appear more human to them.
We also go the extra mile by making an outbound engagement. Hence, we not only reply to comments on our content, but also comment on other celebrities/brands/KOLs content/posts.
The strategy is not as difficult as it seems, but it is not as easy either. Executing a reply-oriented strategy takes a dedicated social media professional who understands:
- Nuances of platforms
- Key influencers in your niche
- Your niche’s language and inside jokes
- Possess ‘trigger discipline’ and can decide when not to hop into a conversation
It also just takes time. Replying to your community can’t be automated with AI. However, when done well, it gives the impression that you are “everywhere”.
Evaluate your work
Evaluation of our work is essential to ensuring our progress. You need to keep an eye on your progress regularly and understand the metrics you’re aiming for. Here’s our team discussing things we’ve done well and things we need to improve for the next week.
The process is like tuning a musical instrument — small, incremental adjustments to find the right balance between various variables to achieve the best possible result.
As a result of this process, we have a better understanding of the performance of each post that we create, which we then analyze on a weekly basis, allowing us to adjust our strategy accordingly.
🧠 Final thoughts
The above strategies only cover a few things that we did to increase our organic reach and followers. There’s a lot more things that we cook in our kitchen.
Copying best practices from your own industry or your competitors is easy. It’s important not to get sucked into industry or competitors’ best practices. You need to search and find your own best practices.
Remember, getting results from organic content is not an overnight success. It requires discipline, patience, and perseverance.
Lastly, you will face many challenges on your way up. Don’t let things you can’t control interfere with your ability to focus on what you can control. Use your strengths and opportunities to your advantage.
