Social media platforms were not built for brands, but in this modern world of media - that’s where brands are built.

Intended originally as a place for socialising, these platforms are still an interesting ecosystem of inspiration, silly entertaining videos and subcultures. The algorithm is not optimised for brands pushing product or services without any storytelling, or speaking and behaving like a company rather than those they’re trying to engage. As the medium of dominant content, and incredibly powerful search and discovery channels, brands need to evolve or die.

“Competition isn’t with the category, but with everything on social feeds” - Andy Pearson VP Creative Liquid Death.

So, what is an “internet voice”?

At POCKLA, we define a brand’s “internet voice” as the combination of its unique tone, personality, and online presence. It’s the way your brand communicates across social platforms, contributing to conversations that interact with trending topics and even potentially shape culture.

Developing a distinct online brand identity is key for any effective organic marketing strategy.

How can brands craft this for an effective organic marketing strategy?

1. Really understand your audience

Seems obvious? You’d be surprised how many brands still fail to understand their core target audience.

First, knowing who your audience is, whether that’s through interviews, psychographics or social listening technology. Second, actually understand what matters to them. For POCKLA, this means analysing billions of social data points alongside real-world experiences. Don’t forget to be sensitive to cultural nuances (whether regional or social communities).

From there, the best brands - the Glossiers of the marketing world - continue to pay attention to how their audience sees their brand and builds on their perceptions and interactions. A true strategic advantage for continuous feedback, engagement and ultimately sales.

2. Find whitespace topics of conversations

What we call “fountains”. These are niche conversation topics that are highly relevant to your brand, product or service, industry, or even topics that are unrelated but meaningful to your audience. Critically, these are topics which are authentic to your brand and can become evergreen content pillars.

Reformation is a brand that’s done this exquisitely, earning them cult status on socials. Despite being a fashion company, they’ve owned topics of dating and personal finance. Not an obvious link to clothes, but important matters in their audience’s lives. This crucially enables them show-up for the conversations their audience is already having, guiding them along the customer journey with subtle product placement, whilst actually engaging.

3. Craft your brand's “internet voice” to create content off the back of this

If you’re looking to employ an internet voice or character-led social strategy, create one that’s actually yours. The bolder the better, but copying is out in 2025.

Whether you aim to inspire, educate, or entertain, your brand’s content needs to reflect its true personality. Establish clear content guidelines that define your brand’s character, core messaging, and tone of voice. Decide how you want to communicate, what stories you want to tell, and which language and expressions best connect with your followers.

Social-first marketing sweetheart Duolingo meticulously do this through their mascot, Duo the owl.

“Duo is [our learners’] #1 fan and biggest cheerleader. He's also very persistent. Duo isn't shy about checking in or laying on a guilt trip.” - Duolingo

Success has been down to their bravery, not being afraid to experiment and fail when their audience joke or criticise them, but listening to what they say. The origin story of their voice and characterisation strategy in fact came from customers’ poking fun at the app’s unrelenting notifications through memes on Tumblr.

Their reward? A >20m TikTok and Youtube following, their highest performing acquisition channels even over paid search, second only to word-of-mouth.(1)

Final thoughts

Being quick to the mark is hard to execute and takes time, money and energy. Being on top of these viral moments (events, stories, audio or more niche subject matter) is critical for content to gain traction with the algorithms and achieve organic reach.

But making it authentic to your brand is the most important ingredient to success. "Authenticity" as a concept has taken a hit recently and whilst we agree that insistence brands retain this could be seen as a preachiness - actually driving fake "realness" online - the core concept still holds for us. Inauthenticity? Copying a competitor’s exact voice, trying too hard with memes or Gen-Zisms, commenting on areas outside your expertise, or brute-forcing your way into sensitive topics where your company does not have domain. Any brand can show-up to a moment without value or insight (trend or threadjacking), see when the internet groaned at “Corporate America” trying to get in on Amelia Dimoldenberg and Andrew Garfield’s Chicken Shop Date.

What any brand can’t do is create true ongoing engagement with their audience. Through genuine content which has something to say, in a voice that’s undeniably theirs, continuing to evolve on socials as one of your friends would.

Want to develop your brand’s voice and enhance your organic marketing strategy? Book in a free call with our organic experts here for personalised advice on how to achieve this.

References

(1) Duolingo Website 2025