Last month, Redpoint had the pleasure of co-hosting our inaugural Scaling Climate Tech Summit alongside our friends at Climactic. The event built upon our belief that to drive outsized impact across the climate tech ecosystem, we must leverage go-to-market, product, pricing, and organizational design learnings from the world of traditional tech. With so many of the brightest minds in our respective networks gravitating towards careers in climate tech, we believe that the coming quarters will be transformational in bringing these two worlds closer and closer together – and we couldn’t be more excited about it.
As we look to continue these conversations heading into Earth Month, we’re excited to share a series of videos over the coming weeks that feature speakers from our summit who break down the nuts and bolts of scaling go-to-market efforts across social viral, product-led growth, and enterprise sales. Our hope is that by sharing these cross sector perspectives, we’ll be able to shine a light on the intersection of two of our favorite worlds.
We’re kicking off this series with a lesson on scaling social viral from our very own Rashad Assir (or @corporayshid for those of you on TikTok/IG!). Having grown up in more traditional GTM roles at companies like Looker and Google, Rashad now spearheads all of Redpoint’s content efforts and works closely with our portfolio companies on their own in-house social strategies. I personally like to think of Rashad as our in-house King of Cool, so I hope you learn as much from him as I do everyday!
Ten Takes on Scaling Social Viral:
It’s no surprise that over the past 5-10 years social media has changed from being following-based to interest-based and an emergence of creators has occurred. With algorithms driving most of the discovery, you no longer need to be co-signed by traditional media or have highly produced content to reach millions of people with your message. This lower barrier to entry can be a tool in a brand’s toolkit to differentiate, story tell and foster community.
Social viral strategies have emerged as a great way to make people feel more connected to your brand at the top of the funnel. This authentic connection to the customer has emerged as a defining theme for the most successful brands of our time
The past ten years have shown a marked shift in what drives engagement across social. Out are promotional efforts and highly produced, “perfect” content. In are authenticity, transparency, and consistency. To be part of the cultural conversation, you have to talk the talk.
Focus, focus, focus. Above all else, deeply appealing to a niche audience is the key to cracking true virality – and these “niche” audiences are far larger than you can likely ever imagine.
As short form video content matures as a category, there is an emerging quadfurcation into 4 distinct formats: edutainment, entertainment, repurposed long form, and building in public. To win, companies should aim to find where white space meets their skills and double down on what’s working.
Experimentation is essential and consistency is key. Committing the time to testing your way into what resonates with your community is critical to unlocking outsized opportunities. When you strike gold, then double down on the format and voice at a consistent cadence. This consistency drives trust and loyalty.
For climate companies specifically, accessible and entertaining education is paramount. Successful maturation of this movement is contingent on recruiting the next 100M evangelists, which will require different and far more mass market appeal than engaging early adopters alone.
Repurposing content is critical to driving ROI. From re-posting across platforms to slicing and dicing longer form content into punchier bits, content investments should never be viewed as one and done.
Despite valuable long tail reach across channels, not all platforms are created equal. And today, TikTok is the clear category captain. With 1Bn MAUs and 90% of users accessing the app on a daily basis, brands – both B2C and B2B (!!) – can not and should not ignore how powerful TikTok is as a platform for reaching users.
Collaborate, comment, and give credit where credit is due. In the land of social viral, teamwork makes the dreamwork – and the kings and queens of content won’t stand for having it any other way.
The Tech Toolkit:
Shure MV7 (microphone)
The Opal (camera)
Riverside (podcast recording)
Descript (video and podcast editing)
Simplecast (distribution and analytics)
While in many ways only scratching the surface, we hope these musings at the very least ignites some initial creative conversations within your organization. We’re excited to be back with Part 2 in the coming weeks, and, in the meantime, we look forward to hearing from you in the comments or on Twitter at @corporayshid / @itsmeeraclark.
Climate Conversations: Scaling Social Viral