A point of view based on campaigns I planned and ran. Results are real; client names are omitted.

What I'd change about most brands' social

Six years in social media: two in organic, four planning and running paid social for national brands. Brand social is often built around the media plan, with the content bent to fit it. My strongest results point the other way. Start from what the audience did, which creative won and where it ran, then build the media plan around that.

These are the six changes I'd test first for a brand, each with a campaign result behind it. I'd want to run the tests before calling any of them a rule.

By Nicole GlassmanUpdated October 20265-minute read

The short version

Let the test decide who makes the creative.Creator content cut cost per interaction 72% and beat brand and AI creative on tune-in. Brand creative still won when the goal was follows.
Buy intent before interests.Search-keyword targeting beat interest targeting on Pinterest and cut CPA 40% on Reddit.
Give every dollar a job.One TikTok placement doubled attention; another drove 1.57M clicks. Judge each on the outcome it's built to drive.
Measure lift, not likes.One TikTok tune-in campaign reached 15% of the U.S. and lifted tune-in 115%. Views alone would have missed it.
Put AI in the workflow first.Creators beat AI creative by 24% on tune-in; AI-assisted QA turned a four-day review into 20 minutes.
Run organic and paid as one system.Planned together, every post becomes a creative test for paid. Organic social I ran lifted engagement per post 218%.

The six changes

Each one: what I usually see, what I'd change, and the test that convinced me. The goal comes first.

Let the test decide who makes the creative

What I usually see: creative format gets chosen by assumption: creators for authenticity, brand films for polish, AI for scale. Those assumptions often replace the head-to-head test.

What I'd change: test creator, brand and AI-generated creative under matched media conditions, then assign each format to the outcome it proves it can drive. In an equal-spend Meta test, creator content won on view rate, click-through rate, cost per interaction and shares, while brand creative led on CPM and follows. In a separate tune-in test, creator-boosted ads outperformed both brand and AI creative.

Creators earn the stop and the share; the brand earns the follow.

Buy intent before interests

What I usually see: prospect on interest and lookalike audiences on every platform, because that is what the platforms default to.

What I'd change: treat social search as search. Build keyword sets from the brand's own search queries, comments and customer language; put them to work on Pinterest and Reddit first, and write the creative's first line in the same words. Broad targeting still earns its place when the goal is pure reach; once the goal is consideration or action, lead with intent, and let lookalikes do retargeting's job, not discovery's.

Give every dollar a job, and grade it on that job

What I usually see: compare placements on one CPM line and optimize to whichever event is cheapest.

What I'd change: name the job first (attention, clicks or consideration), then buy, optimize and grade against it. On TikTok, Pulse sits next to videos people chose to watch, so it buys attention; TopView opens the app, so it buys clicks. On Meta, the event you optimize to decides what you get back.

Measure lift, not likes

What I usually see: report platform metrics (reach, views, engagement rate) and call the campaign a success when they go up.

What I'd change: name the one outcome the campaign exists to move (awareness, consideration, tune-in or sales). Read it with a holdout on every launch that matters (it costs nothing but a slice of reach) and a lift study when the budget allows, and report it on one page leadership can act on. Reach and views say what happened to the media. Lift says whether anyone did anything.

Put AI in the workflow first

What I usually see: AI aimed at what the audience sees, while the slow, manual work behind every launch stays as it was.

What I'd change: test AI creative like any other creative, and don't give it the feed until it wins. Point it first at the checking, building and reporting that slow a team down, with a person signing off on every launch.

Run organic and paid as one content system

What I usually see: organic lives with the community team, paid lives with media, and the two share a logo.

What I'd change: organic is the cheapest creative test a brand will ever run, because every post shows what the audience wants more of. Paid should amplify what organic already proved, comments should feed the brief, and one calendar should hold both. It's the change I most want to own next.

How I'd run it

The first 90 days, with strategy, creative and execution in the same room. This is the order I'd do it in.

Days 1 to 30

Learn and audit

Agree on each campaign's goal and how we'll know it worked.
Audit organic and paid against that goal.
Set content pillars and a posting cadence from what the audience already responds to organically.
Map the build process; find the four-day step.

Days 31 to 60

Test the big bets

Stand up a creator roster, then run creator vs studio creative on identical media, the same matched-spend design that found the 72% gap.
Intent vs interest prospecting on Pinterest and Reddit.
Make community a routine: comments and DMs answered daily, recurring questions fed into the brief.

Days 61 to 90

Decide and scale

Lift study on the first big launch; holdouts on everything else.
One calendar for organic and paid, with paid amplifying what organic already proved.
Shift budget to what the tests said, in a one-page readout leadership can act on.

If you're hiring for brand social

What I bring is every step from the brief to the readout: the point of view on what to make, a media plan to put money behind it, the measurement to know whether it worked, and the QA that makes sure what launches is what was planned. Four years in paid social at Mediahub Worldwide, which became KINESSO, and VaynerMedia, 2022 to 2026, most recently as Media Manager, promoted three times along the way. Two years of organic social before that. Meta Blueprint, Google Ads and TikTok certified, and one AI QA system rolled out agency-wide.

nicolebglassman@gmail.com LinkedIn

Every number on this page comes from work I planned and ran: at two agencies between 2022 and 2026, and in organic social before that. Clients aren't named. Ask me about the thinking behind any of these numbers. The Buildcheck demo runs on synthetic data.