In my previous article, I explained why large consumer brands should invest in organic social media: to earn attention before the next purchase occasion, build familiarity at scale, and increase the likelihood of being chosen later.
The next question is how a brand can generate hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of organic views every month on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, and use that reach to build future demand.
The answer starts with understanding one major shift: having followers no longer guarantees distribution.
For years, social media strategies were built around accumulating followers.
The logic was simple: the more followers a brand had, the more distribution it could expect when it published.
In the earlier days of Facebook and Instagram, people mainly saw posts from accounts they had chosen to follow. Feeds were chronological, so when a brand published, its post appeared at the top of its followers’ feeds.
If a brand had 100,000 followers, it had a built-in distribution network of 100,000 people. Not every follower would see every post, but the size of the following gave the brand a relatively predictable level of reach.
This is why follower growth became the primary goal of so many organic social media strategies. It is also why posting time mattered so much. Brands wanted to publish when the largest number of their followers were online so the post would appear near the top of their feeds.
Today, that model is gone.
TikTok popularized a discovery-based feed that shows people content based on what the platform believes they will enjoy, whether they follow the account or not. Instagram Reels and other platforms have since adopted the same approach.
A follower count is no longer a distribution guarantee.
A brand with 100,000 followers can publish a weak video and receive only a few hundred views. That same brand can publish a strong video the following week and reach one million people, most of whom have never heard of the company and do not follow its account.
The difference is no longer primarily the number of followers the brand has accumulated.
It is how people respond to each individual post.
Every time a brand publishes, the platform evaluates that content from scratch. It looks at whether people stop, keep watching, share, save, comment, or immediately scroll past.
If the audience responds well, the platform shows the post to more people.
If it does not, distribution stops.
For brands, this means every post is a fresh start.
In the past, brands accumulated followers to secure distribution.
Today, they have to earn distribution with every piece of content they publish.
The exact recommendation systems used by Instagram and TikTok are complex, and neither platform publicly discloses a fixed formula or a specific initial test-group size.
But in simplified terms, a post is shown to an initial audience and the platform watches how those people respond.
Do they immediately scroll away?
Do they stop and watch?
How long do they stay?
Do they finish the video, replay it, save it, share it, comment, or follow the account?
Those behaviours help the platform decide whether a post should reach more people. On Instagram, Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, has highlighted average watch time, likes per reach, and sends per reach as key signals, with sends being especially important for reaching people who do not already follow the account.
The platforms are not asking:
How important is this message to the company publishing it?
They are asking:
Do people actually want to watch this, or is it going to make them close the app and find something more interesting elsewhere?
That distinction should shape how a brand thinks about its entire organic social media strategy.
At Dreww, one of the metrics we pay close attention to when reviewing short-form video performance is skip rate.
When I refer to skip rate, I mean the percentage of people who move on within the first three seconds. A 20% skip rate means that 80% of the people who were shown the opening of the video stayed to watch beyond those first few seconds.
Across Dreww’s content and our clients’ accounts, I have noticed that videos with a skip rate of around 20% or lower often go on to generate hundreds of thousands, and sometimes millions, of organic views.
That is not an official Instagram or TikTok benchmark, and it does not guarantee that a video will go viral. It is simply a pattern we have observed repeatedly in our own work.
Those videos can eventually be shown to hundreds of thousands of people, most of whom have never followed the account or heard of the brand.
On the other hand, I have seen overtly promotional videos produce skip rates of 80%, 90%, or higher.
When almost everyone leaves immediately, the platform receives a very clear message: people do not want to watch this.
Distribution stops.
The post gets 500 views, five likes, and no comments. The brand publishes another product promotion a few days later, gets the same result, and eventually concludes that organic social media does not work.
Usually, the platform is not refusing to distribute the brand’s content.
The audience is refusing to watch it.
This is where many brands get stuck.
They begin their content planning by asking: What do we need to announce this month? Which product do we need to sell more of?
A product is launching. A promotion needs support. A feature needs to be explained. A campaign needs more visibility. Another department wants something included in the calendar.
All of those requests may be legitimate internally.
But internal importance does not automatically create audience interest.
After a long day at work, people do not sit down on the couch, open Instagram, and hope that a coffee brand will explain its latest limited-time offer or that a retailer will show them another promotional graphic highlighting what is on sale that week.
They open the app to be entertained, learn something, discover something new, or feel inspired.
Social media now plays a role that television once occupied, except the content may be 30 seconds instead of 30 minutes, and almost anyone, including a brand, has a chance to become the producer.
But the brand still needs to make something worth watching.
An audience-first strategy begins with a simple question: What would our ideal customer genuinely choose to watch?
That does not mean removing the brand, hiding the product, or producing random entertainment for views.
It means creating something valuable or enjoyable within a space that makes sense for the brand.
Here are some examples:
A home-improvement retailer could create a recurring series in which an experienced contractor reacts to real DIY mistakes and explains how to fix them. The tools and materials sold by the retailer can appear naturally, but the reason to watch is the transformation and the expert advice.
A furniture brand could redesign real, awkward spaces: a 450-square-foot apartment, a living room shared by three roommates, or a nursery that also needs to function as a home office. The products are featured, but the story is about solving a problem the audience recognizes.
A financial institution could produce a series called Money Questions People Are Embarrassed to Ask, covering topics like credit-card debt, saving for a first home, splitting finances as a couple, or what to do after making an expensive mistake. The brand builds trust by being useful instead of immediately promoting an account or credit card.
A hotel group could ask local employees to build the perfect 24-hour itinerary for different types of travellers: a foodie weekend, a rainy day with kids, a first visit to Montreal, or a date night under $200. The hotel becomes the starting point of the experience, rather than the sole subject of every video.
A grocery retailer could test viral food-storage tricks, compare whether expensive ingredients are actually worth it, or follow a chef trying to prepare dinner for a family of four with a fixed budget. The retailer’s products remain central, but the audience receives entertainment and practical value.
A skincare brand could have a chemist or dermatologist break down popular routines, test common claims, and explain which ingredients should or should not be combined. The product earns a place in the conversation because the brand has first earned credibility.
This is what audience-first means.
The content is still strategically connected to the brand. But it begins with what people care about, not with what the company needs to promote that week.
Brands often say they want more reach, more followers, and more views.
But those results begin with individual decisions.
Every person decides whether to stop or skip.
Those decisions create the signals that tell Instagram and TikTok whether a post should reach more people.
That is why an audience-first approach is not simply a creative preference. It is a requirement created by the way modern social platforms distribute content.
There is no formula that guarantees every post will perform. Brands still need to test different ideas, hooks, formats, personalities, stories, and recurring series. They need to study what works, build on it, and move away from what does not.
But the starting point is clear.
A brand will not consistently generate millions of organic views by publishing only what it wants to sell.
It earns that reach by creating content people genuinely want to watch.
The platforms follow the audience. Brands need to do the same.
That is precisely the challenge Dreww’s Always-On Social Media service was designed to help large brands overcome.
We work alongside internal marketing teams to develop the audience-first strategy, creative direction, recurring formats, and content required to earn attention consistently. We then help execute that strategy through an ongoing production system built for the speed, volume, and constant testing that modern social media demands.
The goal is not simply to help brands publish more often.
It is to help them create content people actually want to watch, so they can generate meaningful organic reach and build future demand at scale.