The Genius Behind Graza's Social Media 🫒
An Interview with Kendall Dickieson, social media and influencer marketing consultant.
Good morning everyone, hope you had a nice July 4th. Today I am pleased to interview the social media and content genius behind Graza and many more of your favorite brands: Kendall Dickieson.
Kendall is a social media and influencer marketing consultant, and she specializes in helping brands create organic connections with their audiences and customers via social content, brand activations, and influencer partnerships.
She also writes No Filter, a weekly newsletter providing insights on social strategy.
I spoke with Kendall on her career in social media thus far, tactical advice for brands to create compelling social content, her favorite brands, and more—
INTERVIEW WITH KENDALL DICKIESON
Jake Bell: Can give me a bio of yourself and career thus far?
Kendall Dickieson: My name is Kendall Dickieson, a born and raised new yorker often found roaming the local supermarket for new beverages and snacks. I am a social media and influencer marketing consultant helping brands become best friends with their consumers through thoughtful social media and community strategies and creator partnerships. I have been working in space for 4+ years, but consulting for 8 years as of this August (eek!). I started in hospitality originally working with small family-owned or bigger restaurant chains around New York, such as Gregory's Coffee, with their social content, influencer partnerships, and creative since I used to shoot photo and video.
I was a one-woman show doing shoots, managing accounts, talking to creators, organizing events, and A LOT more. When COVID hit, I pivoted to the brand side and was given the opportunity to work closely on a product with an agency I always admired named Doris Dev. The project was a brand called Canopy, a humidifier made for skincare. I led the push on social pre-launch and stayed on managing their social and creator partnerships for just about 3+ years. While there, I consulted on other brands in the DTC and CPG spaces helping manage their accounts end to end, auditing their current strategies, and more. Some of these brands included Verb Energy, Barcode, Chubby Snacks and more.
JB: Tell me about your experience managing social for Graza.
KD: Man, a dream. It's rare in social to have complete freedom. Although the world is moving towards the thought of "oh wow! organic social is super important" more and more in my opinion, it is usually the department of a business that is more so told how to do their job, informed last about big things, etc. Graza (and pretty much all of my clients!) trust the person who is running their channels.
So, when I started, I was scrappy, BUT I was given the keys to do what I wanted with whatever I had at my disposal. I have never worked on a brand that has not only taken off this fast, but has an audience who just even goes above and beyond for the brand. It's been a learning along the way and at the same time a challenge because you just want to get more and more and more creative. It's been a team that I have seen develop to 14 people when I started. It was just me, the founders, and of one my best friends, Grace Clarke, who led more of the omnichannel strategy and is the person I owe for introducing me to Andrew and Allen. It has just shown me every single day that community is everything and that organic social can do wonders for a brand when done correctly and when the person/team is trusted. As a result of our social efforts, I have now been able to see what a functional marketing team looks like to truly unleash creativity, collaboration, effective systems for recycling, creating, and distributing content and more.Â
JB: What are some high level pieces of advice you would give to any brand trying to make an impact on social?
KD: The sooner you start, the better off you'll be - whether it's launching a social account or big influencer initiative.Â
If you want a good social media presence, invest in it.
Learning to repurpose and recycle content is an underrated skill. Get good at it.
Build a community (active), not an audience (passive).
Trust whoever you hire to run your accounts. You hired them for a reason.
Be Scrappy. You don't need all your content to be shot on a $4,000 camera for it to perform.
A graphic designer and a content producer are two people who need to be on a team for social success.
As a brand, cannot expect one person to be your graphic designer, content creator, social strategist and community manager.
JB: How can brands craft memorable storytelling as opposed to just selling on social?
KD: They need to establish an actual strategy and content pillars to be able to stay close to their own story, efforts, and highlighting the product and differentiation of their brand against others in their market. A lot of brands that I talk to usually say they can't obtain a community or get them engaged, but most of these accounts just promote the product. When asking about their pillars, they usually don't have any (which is fine!!), but it helps to put stakes in the ground to therefore make sure you hold yourself accountable to talk about all aspects of the brand from the product itself/benefits to broader/higher level topics that may relate to your product to user generated content from people who enjoy your product. I would also say that just because organic social can be successful, it doesn't mean it's a brand's main sales channel and it should not be. If sales is the number 1 KPI for your organic social channels, you need to change that.
JB: What social media insights/trends have you noticed in the first half of 2024 and what lessons are you carrying into the second half?
KD: Hmmmmm - this is a good question!! First off, I think keeping yourself educated is extremely important no matter how long you've been in a field for. I definitely am focusing more of my time for the second half of the year in holding myself accountable in taking time every week to learn more, read more about the industry, trend reports, and just taking more thinking time.
When it comes to trends/insights, I would say the brand collaboration on the content front is reeeeeal and we have Instagram to thank for that with their collaboration feature. It is one of my favorite tools for exploring new niches, getting in front of new potential customers/consumers whether it is a collaborative post with a creator or brand. I spoke with Digiday about it all here. I would also say that overall brands are moving out of focusing just on content around their product even if it's more entertaining or educational, I just think you need to create broad content that relates to your niche or a bigger education/relatable point so that it can get to new eyes and phones.Â
Other insights are actually on the influencer front for myself. This is an insight from August of last year, but still holds true. Youtube is underrated. It's my favorite place to invest in creators right now if you're a brand with a great product and good branding that is a commodity that people will use or have been using for years, but trust their favorite creators. It has had the best ROI for my investment, converts for months after going live, and more.
JB: What advice would you give to readers who want to get into running social for brands?
KD: You have to learn by doing so it might be great or you might run into a few snags and that's okay! I would say take time and run social for yourself or get comfortable with creating content and testing things on yourself. I actually had a food account for years, but I took a lot of what I learned as a creator to brands/restaurants. I would also say to be open with what you like to do, don't like to do, and want to get better at.Â
JB: What brands are you loving right now? (Whether that be for the product itself, their social, etc.)
KD: This is always so hard as you can imagine. Similarly, I get heads down on my own accounts, that I need to do better at scrolling and exploring. When it comes to brands I love, here are a few for both their social and product:
JB: Where can readers find you?
KD: You can find me writing my newsletter, No Filter, right here which is filled with tactical and helpful tips for founders and operators in the CPG/DTC space when it comes to social media marketing, content creation and production, and influencer marketing.Â
You can also find me on Twitter, Instagram and Linkedin.
Thanks to Kendall for coming on Who Do You Know?
Make sure to go follow her on social and subscribe to her newsletter. If you work in this space, her letter is required reading.
Okay, have a great weekend and I’ll talk to you all on Monday!
Jake Bell is a content marketing, creative strategist, and designer based in NYC. He specializes in brand building, content creation, branding, art direction, creative strategy, and making things cool.
Want to chat? Email me: jake@jb.studio
Hi Jake!
I really like how you go about your interviews, this one was pretty great. Really appreciate Kendall giving lengthy answers to you very good questions.
(My first time interacting within the comments section. I do intend to appear here more often.)
Love the letter!