Why strategy needs to move at the speed of social media marketing 

Opinion

True social-first thinking means re-engineering how strategy moves, how creative is made, and how performance is measured. SocialChain’s group strategy director explains.

Marketers talk a lot about being social-first, but few have restructured their brand planning to match.

The shift isn’t just about what you post or how often you show up. It’s about how you plan, make decisions and measure progress. Social has reshaped how audiences behave, yet many marketing teams still run on systems and processes built for a previous media era.

The first step is understanding why social needs to sit at the centre of strategy. The next step is building organisations that act as it does. 

Many brands change the language, not the logic. 

They swap the channel order but keep the same process. 

True social-first thinking means re-engineering how strategy moves, how creative is made, and how performance is measured.

Data that drives better judgement

Social provides a level of insight no other channel can match, yet many teams still treat it as a reporting tool. 

The most forward-thinking brands use social intelligence to understand the gap between what they intended to say and how audiences actually respond. That real-time view allows them to refine the message, shift tone and adjust timing before momentum fades.

This doesn’t mean reducing creativity to numbers. It means giving creative instincts a sharper focus. Data should be a conversation starter, and when teams use it to learn, they become more agile.

Measurement should be less about proving success and more about fuelling it. If something isn’t landing, it’s a signal to change direction. If something resonates, it’s a reason to build on it. This rhythm of testing and adaptation turns analytics into an engine of creativity, not a bureaucratic burden.

Strategy that moves at feed speed

Traditional brand and communication planning runs on fixed cycles and static playbooks. Social doesn’t. Instead, it changes and adapts. So, when teams still work to fixed timelines and outputs, they can end up chasing the scroll with tactics that fall out of sync.

Brands that succeed in social have learned to think smaller and faster. Instead of waiting for perfect campaigns, they make continuous adjustments that reflect what people are saying and doing right now. 

Strategic communication management becomes an active process rather than a document. The direction remains consistent, but the route is flexible.

This shift isn’t about sacrificing direction; it’s the opposite. It is about knowing what matters most and prioritising.

When everyone understands the brand’s strategy for winning, decisions can move quickly without losing their way. That shared understanding becomes the compass that keeps speed from slipping into chaos.

The best social-first plans behave more like systems than fixed schedules. They absorb new signals, adapt quickly and move in rhythm with the audience rather than against it. Agility isn’t a tactic; it’s a mindset that connects creative intent with commercial and cultural reality.

Creative that evolves in public

When social is the starting point, creativity can’t be an occasional event; it has to be a continuous practice.

The brands that win attention and trust aren’t the ones chasing the next big campaign; they’re the ones showing up every day with ideas that feel alive, relevant, and unmistakably theirs.

Always-on creativity builds brands by staying both fresh and familiar. It creates a rhythm that keeps audiences engaged and algorithms responsive, where every post, story, or short film does more than entertain; it reinforces recognition.

Each moment of engagement compounds into reach, and each repetition lands a distinctive brand asset in a new, unexpected way.

In this model, effectiveness isn’t measured in isolated spikes but in accumulated presence. The creative process becomes agile, a loop of insight, action, and feedback that keeps the work responsive without losing strategic focus. The idea stays constant; its expressions evolve.

This approach demands confidence. Not the polish of perfection, but the assurance to experiment in public. In social, relevance comes from participation, not control. The brands that grow fastest are those that treat creativity as an ongoing process that keeps people watching, sharing, and remembering.

Building systems that behave like social

Becoming truly social-first isn’t about producing more content. It’s about designing organisations that mirror how social itself works: fast, connected, and value-added. 

Everyone behind the campaign strategy needs visibility of what’s happening and permission to act on it. It also means collapsing the boundaries between creative, media and comms so they all operate from the same audience insight. The social-first mindset is not a department; it’s a culture that runs through every part of the brand.

The brands that lead will not be the ones with the biggest budgets or the loudest posts. They will build systems capable of thinking, reacting and improving as quickly as the people they serve.

If your strategy still relies on committees, calendars and slow approvals, you’re not building a brand plan, and you risk being outmanoeuvred or overlooked.

Ric Hayes is group strategy director at SocialChain