We caught up with our Head of Digital, Chris MacRae to understand how he ensures our clients not only stand out online but thrive in the digital landscape, reaching the right audience with impact and precision.
What does your role involve, Chris?
In my role as Head of Digital, I primarily oversee social media activity both for our clients and own brands (Muckle, Spey and Taste). Day-to-day this mainly includes social media strategy, content creation, Google Ads, SEO and Google Analytics.
What are some common misconceptions that clients or brands have when it comes to social media?
When it comes to social, people often misunderstand metrics such as followers – that is, how many you should have and the importance of this. What will be much more important in 2025 is building tight knit, engaged communities that believe in your product and actively engage with your content.
People see social media a bit like a shop window – shouting loudly at everyone who walks by. While it’s true that social gives you a platform to speak to thousands of people at once, it’s often forgotten that social media is a one-to-one interaction, not a one-to-many interaction. I recommend moving on from the ‘shop window’ perspective and instead, imagine you’re speaking directly to a customer that’s walked in your door. Your focus should be on building a human connection with users and treating them with the same respect and patience as you would in real life.
Finally, it’s best not to get too hung up on the frequency of your posts and instead focus on the quality and consistency of your content.
What are some social media best practices?
Organisation is key. When we build a social strategy, we always look several months ahead. This means having a well-planned out social media calendar, but don’t forget to allow some flexibility for reactive or trending content.
It’s also important to consider the platforms you’re using and why. Think about the pros and cons of each, as not every platform out there will be perfect for your brand, and you don’t necessarily have to show up on all of them. While Tik Tok and LinkedIn provide strong platforms for brands, they serve very different purposes.
How do you make sure that you and the team keep on top of trends?
We have a robust social listening process in place. We’re also all frequent users of social media so can make sure we’re keeping on top of the type of content that’s out there and the type of content that’s working well.
Something I encourage anybody to do, especially if they have a role in content creation or strategy, is to scroll social media with a purpose. Think about every post that you see and ask yourself why these posts have been successful. Most of the posts we’re fed nowadays is viral content from accounts we don’t even follow, so if you want the same success for your business think forensically about what these posts are doing right. How did they grab your attention in the first few seconds? Why did you stick around in the middle? Did they end with an emotional pay-off? All things to consider when consuming other people’s content.
There’s a trend happening now that we’re calling the death of the follower. Followers are nowhere near as important as they were five years ago because most often, content appears on our feed not because we follow an account, but because the algorithm thinks we’ll be interested in it. By working to understand the algorithm, you can begin looking at content from a completely different perspective.
What is your advice to brands or companies that want to jump on a trend?
Some brands have successfully jumped onto trends and done so in an ironic way, like museums and art galleries who hopped onto Gen Z trends and adapted in a really clever and self-aware way. However, the general rule is that if you’re seeing a trend on a viral post, it’s usually already too late. Customers are savvy and can tell when you’re making inauthentic content just to try to be trendy.
Instead, why not try to create the next trend? Think about the features that make certain pieces of content successful, turn that into formula and build on it with a twist for your own business or your own brand.
Where do you get your inspiration from?
From following brands that are doing social really well. Duolingo are fantastic at what they do, for example. In many ways, they create content that is nothing to do with learning a language. They’ve built a social brand around the Duolingo bird and comedy has become their entire formula.
Brands like Ryanair, Aldi and Lidl are also brilliant at taking the comedic route. They play on their perceived flaws and turn them into positives, doubling down instead of pretending to be something they aren’t. Authenticity is key and will always be appreciated by users.
How do you get somebody to like and trust your brand?
You need to show up and you need to show up consistently. The more human you can make your brand feel, the more successful it will be. At the end of the day, it’s called social media for a reason. We log on to engage with other human beings, so stay far away from the corporate and salesy content, because – frankly – nobody cares.
Get involved in conversations, engage with customers on their own posts, connect with other similar business accounts and respond efficiently to those asking questions.
What top three things would you recommend to a new client coming to you for advice on how to manage their socials?
- Carry out a social audit and competitor analysis so you can analyse what is working well (and not so well) for you and competitors.
- Don’t be afraid to try things and fail. There is no one-size-fits-all formula for social media and some types of content will work for one brand and not another.
- Make sure that any content posted aligns with, and incorporates, your brand’s values. Customers will resonate with authenticity and consistency much more.
- One final one, because three is hard! Don’t let social media exist in a silo. It may be the very first aspect of your business that people will ever see, but it has to align with all other aspects of your business – and that includes the experience people have when they use your product or visit your venue. For example, if your social tone-of-voice presents one way, but your day-to-day staff act oppositely, something has to change, because somewhere down the line you’re breaking customer expectations.
Is AI a help or hindrance when it comes to social media?
AI is very much here to stay. It’s 100% going to change the world in the next few years and in ways that are hard for us to even predict.
For the time being, I’d say AI is best used to enhance the knowledge and expertise that you have already. It can be a fantastic brainstorming partner to flesh out ideas, for example.
No matter how good AI gets, people are always going to want to deal with human beings and, and until it comes to the stage where we can’t tell the difference between AI content and human content, that will always be the case.
Having unique thoughts; how we construct creative ideas and execute them is what makes us special and that’s also what makes your business or your brand special. We don’t ever want to lose that.
What are some big social trends we should look out for?
I think we’re going to see a lot more in-house ‘influencer’ content created by businesses, whereby individuals and employees build their personal brands to highlight their expertise. The traditional influencer model is getting tired and overused, so I can see 2025 being a year to encourage core staff members and employees to share their thoughts and advice across business social platforms. It’s all about showing that your business has thought leaders in your field and being proud that these are the people who make your brand different from all the others. I also think having fewer faceless businesses can only be a good thing.
Have you seen anything recently in social media that’s caught your eye?
This year’s Coca-Cola Christmas Ad – made entirely by AI – was brilliant. There’s been a lot of discussion and to be honest, a lot of outrage about it. I think Coca-Cola was willing to sacrifice on quality this year to instead create chatter and debate. We see a very similar Coca-Cola ad launched every year and, frankly, doing the same again would have been a non-story. This way, they’ve cut above the Christmas noise and created a huge PR story out of it. And don’t get me started on how Jaguar achieved something very similar…
Contact Chris and our Digital Team for advice on your digital strategy or to chat about an upcoming project: [email protected]