{"id":38731,"date":"2025-09-29T13:50:42","date_gmt":"2025-09-29T17:50:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/?p=38731"},"modified":"2025-09-30T08:17:23","modified_gmt":"2025-09-30T12:17:23","slug":"10-social-experiments-we-tried","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/8-social-experiments-we-tried\/","title":{"rendered":"8+ Unhinged Social Media Experiments in 6 Months"},"content":{"rendered":"

TL;DR: We ran multiple over experiments over 6 months to show up as real humans on social media. It was messy, unhinged\u2026 and didn’t exactly go viral. Here’s what we learned.<\/b><\/em><\/p>\n

Tired of seeing (and writing) the same thinly veiled PR or the normal marketing megaphone posts?<\/span><\/p>\n

“Join our webinar!” “New Product announcement” “Check out our new blog post”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

What happens when a company’s social media account tries to break from the pack?<\/p>\n

We gave it a shot. Our goal was simple: what if I show up on social media to be social as real humans, not a jargon machine. Let’s be the brand that made people not realize the posts were from a brand.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

So we went all-in on a human-first, unhinged content strategy. And by unhinged, I mean actually unhinged – not the sanitized corporate version of “edgy.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Our Goal – Real People Engagement<\/h2>\n

I wanted people to engage, to resonate with our content, and for us to earn the connection. Comments that went beyond ‘great post!’ Having conversations and being social with our audience.<\/span><\/p>\n

Specifically, we were watching for:<\/span><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Mutual relationships instead of one-sided shouting<\/span><\/li>\n
  2. The same people coming back (community signs)<\/span><\/li>\n
  3. Content that sparked shares or DMs<\/span><\/li>\n
  4. Whether different formats (video, carousel, personal posts) could break through<\/span><\/li>\n
  5. Engagement from other brands and social media professionals<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Look, we weren’t expecting to go viral. We’re a referral marketing platform that provides services to businesses, not a TikTok dance trend. But I hoped for a enough engagement that told us we were building something real.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Experiment 1: Shake up the Standard Social Media Profile<\/h2>\n

    Approach: <\/b>Buck the trend of social media norms and completely changed our profile picture and went all-in on a different visual approach.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    Ampy (our mascot) got profile pic fame and we even added a banner to the profile pic that said “human, not bot” that looked like other LinkedIn banners to give people a chance to interact.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/b><\/p>\n

    I hopped on the design trend where people were making cartoon versions of themselves as packaged toys. We created our own version with Ampy to see if jumping on viral design trends could get us noticed.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"A<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    <\/h2>\n

    Experiment 2: Marketing Insights + Personal Stories<\/h2>\n

    Approach:<\/b> Help other marketers by sharing what I’ve learned, wrapped in my own personal stories.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Content built around the science of sharing, inspired by Jonah Berger’s Contagious. Teaching the audience about word-of-mouth psychology carousels covering scarcity, emotion, and surprise.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    \"Mars<\/p>\n

    A marking insight + personal story + nostalgia meme<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Experiment 3: Confessional Content + A Little Mystery<\/h2>\n

    Approach:<\/b> Raw honesty – diary-style introspection and “I don’t know what I’m doing” energy.\u00a0 <\/span>Human-first storytelling to show we’re figuring it out just like everyone else.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Below is the post that started all the experiments. I opened with confessional posts about the overwhelming pressure of creative freedom, written mid-iced-coffee spiral.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

     <\/p>\n

    After months of anonymous chaos as “The Unhinged Marketer”, I finally revealed my face and name. I started filming video content to put an actual face to the voice behind our posts.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    “Meet the marketer” confessionals, POV storytelling, and day-in-the-life content including train mishaps and referral marketing metaphors.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Experiment 4: Make Friends with Bigger Social Media Brands<\/h2>\n

    Approach:<\/b> See if mentions of popular brands could increase visibility. Surely other social media managers could relate?<\/span><\/p>\n

    I tagged and shouted out major brands like Duolingo, hoping to spark conversations or get noticed by bigger accounts.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"Duo,<\/p>\n

    I actively commented on other brands’ social media posts as our company account, and left thoughtful comments on brand pages to build relationships with other social media professionals… didn’t seem like anyone was listening.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Experiment 5-8: A Few More Shots<\/h2>\n

    I also tried these approaches:<\/p>\n

    Behind-the-Scenes Chaos<\/strong>: Team chaos, internal memes, and unpolished behind-the-scenes moments. Tax season memes, burnout rants, mid-holiday launches, and company debates like “What’s more wet: damp or moist?”<\/span><\/p>\n

    Internal Engagement Boost:<\/strong> Posted content internally on Slack first to get our team engaged before pushing it to external channels.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Customer Story Deep Dives:<\/b> Lead with brutal honesty about what actually works (and what doesn’t). Shared real customer insights and referral program truths, including harsh realities like “referral programs flop when no one promotes them.”\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

    What Actually Happened<\/h2>\n

    Despite pouring creative energy and a questionable amount of caffeine into these experiments, the results were… humbling.<\/span><\/p>\n

    Some posts had small wins – Bridget Poetker commented on our first ever post: “Best post I’ve seen from a brand page in a minute. You’re already winning” and honestly? That comment got hearted in my favorites album because it felt like validation that we were onto something.<\/span><\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    \"\"<\/p>\n

    Overall, most experiments? They didn’t land:<\/span><\/p>\n

      \n
    • Minimal engagement (we’re talking 1\u20132 likes, usually an employee’s mom and our CEO)<\/span><\/li>\n
    • No traction unless our CEO reposted from his personal account<\/span><\/li>\n
    • Bots. Ghost towns. Or ghost bots.<\/span><\/li>\n
    • Other brands mostly ignored our comments or responded with bot replies<\/span><\/li>\n
    • The owl never wrote back (RIP Duolingo dreams)<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n

      \"The<\/p>\n

       <\/p>\n

      We couldn’t get out of the Social Media “Brand Profile Jail”. Even before hearing all the advice of how hard this is, we threw a ton of ideas, experiments, and did many things most CEOs would never green-light.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

      It turns out that even when you’re being authentically unhinged, you’re still fighting an uphill battle against algorithms.<\/span><\/p>\n

      So what’s next?<\/h2>\n

      Actually it’s another experiment. We’re taking a break from social media. We believe most people check out a company’s social media page for two main reasons:<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. See if the company is real<\/li>\n
      2. Make sure the company is still running<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Maybe they check for social proof by seeing follower counts and if they know anyone who follows the company but that’s a nice to have.<\/p>\n

        The big question is… can we accomplish the above two points by leaving a pinned post and linking to where the business is active?<\/p>\n

        You tell me.<\/p>\n

        At a minimum I get to save some energy and the business can focus on embracing the beautifully messy process of building genuine relationships the old-fashioned way: by actually helping people solve their problems<\/span><\/p>\n

        Love, The (Still Slightly) Unhinged Marketer<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

        What happens when a business stops sounding like a robot that just keeps posting? Here’s what we found out when we went all-in on a human-first, unhinged social strategy.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":27,"featured_media":38759,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2591],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-38731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-under-the-rock"],"acf":[],"modified_by":"Josh Ho","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/27"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=38731"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":38758,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/38731\/revisions\/38758"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/38759"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=38731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=38731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/referralrock.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=38731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}