Growing & nurturing the online community for a sustainable cleaning brand
The backstory
method are on a mission to fight dirty. They want to make your home cleaner and greener with plant-based, biodegradable cleaning products, designed with the planet in mind. But, they don’t only have the planet in mind, they also have home interiors in mind… method’s founders knew people wanted cleaning products they didn’t have to hide under their sinks, so they created the most visually appealing cleaning products on the market.
When method got in touch with us, there were a lot of internal changes within their social team; they needed an extra pair of hands to help with strategic content creation and planning. We got started but soon realised they had a community on Instagram that were being neglected. There was a huge opportunity to use their current community to grow their Instagram, so that's what we focused on.
How it went down
method had the most glamorous looking cleaning products on the market that many already loved offline. The challenge now was to elevate their online community, who care not only about cleaning but also about having fun and spreading joy without harming the planet.
Building a community is not just about growing your following through an aesthetic feed. It’s about creating a safe space for your supporters to engage with each other.
The aim was to create a community of people who…
Create UGC content for the feed that aligns with method’s strategy. We knew that this would increase overall reach and positive sentiment with the brand.
Engage with our feed content. We knew that this would strengthen relationships with our followers.
Share our content. This was important. Creating content that’s highly shareable isn’t easy but totally worth it. We knew that it would lead to more people discovering our profile and joining the journey.
Using Instagram’s ‘close friends’ feature
By using the data insights from the close friends list, we were able to communicate directly with method’s most loyal fans, identify the hottest topics of interest and feedback to method to create strategic content.
Instagram offers a feature called ‘close friends’ which allows you to share stories to a few chosen accounts. It is not heavily used by brands on Instagram, but it should be. It’s a great way to increase user engagement, inspire user-generated content and gather data about your audience. This then can help to create more strategic content.
With the upcoming launch of method’s new product, we knew that it was the perfect time to launch the method close friend's list. We identified over 80 cleaning accounts that regularly tagged method in their posts and stories and ensured that each account offered something different and aligned with method’s brand values.
We then shortlisted 20 method VIPs who could be our social media advocates. To create a sense of exclusivity, we…
shared exclusive content with them on the close friend stories
sent them any new products ahead of launch as well as their favourite products to create content with
invited them to VIP events
involved them in product development by asking them about new scents and products
consistently engaged with all of their posts and stories
