Scrolls #4, not quite a milestone but getting closer - our weekly social media round-up, with links to what's popped into our feed over the last seven days. 

This week we have Hollywood romance, gravy gold and bad hair 👇

Greggs X KFC and the collab we didn't know we needed 🍖🤤

Heinz X Smoothie King and the collab we knew we didn't need 🍅🤢

TikTok breaks livestream record with Tomorrowland 🎵🚀

Graza master the sensorial 🎧🫒

Pringles show off see-through merch 👜

The best barnet in Ibiza 🪮💇

Liam and Pam 4eva ❤️✨

Across marketing, not just social media, we’ve talked about the importance of story-telling since before the internet. Building a narrative, taking audiences on a journey - it’s been common lingo for ages.

But...

Social media is still dominated by one-off swings and content pillars that mean brand feeds jump around from one content idea to the next.

What is clear now though is that episodic content consistently outperforms one-off posts on both Instagram and TikTok for key metrics of reach, engagement and audience retention.

How?

Episodes on social media build momentum by creating anticipation of where the stream/story is going next. Becoming sticky, making viewers come back.

When users know a creator or brand is releasing content in a 📆 series - such as “Part 1 of 5” or “Day 3 of 7” - they are more likely to return for future instalments, encouraging repeat visits.

They increase discovery, as algorithms spot the repeat engagement and start to promote the series - building that momentum.

Follows go up as users make sure not to miss future episodes. Making sure to not miss out. So audiences grow more consistently than with one-off posts.

Episodes often see higher engagement too as users speculate on the storyline. Commenting on what they’ve just seen, but also on what is coming next. The conversation can move from post to post, boosting the series up the algorithm.

Catch-up behaviour can continually increase total plays, as people who are new to a series scroll back to binge-watch previous episodes - increasing watch-time and demonstrating the series is surfacing to new users.

So...

The net result is that episodic streams of content build deeper engagement. The story is told over time, hooking viewers in and creating something memorable. Viewers are part of the journey, making it far more likely they will engage and (most importantly) share.

If going viral is the goal (and really, when isn’t it?), building a story over a series of episodic content and formats has a better chance of success than trying to hit a home run with every one-off post 🚀