What National Geographic Can Teach Us About Social Media Marketing

In the age where print magazines are vanishing before our very eyes, National Geographic (Nat Geo) is one of few to have survived the culling. Why?

It boils down to the magazine’s incredible transformation to a digital powerhouse, with their social media accounts amassing over 90 million followers. How has this one-hundred-year-old publication thrived today — and more importantly — what secret ingredients have the respected publication used to grow its social media footprint and outpace its competitors?

Stick around as we demystify Nat Geo’s social media marketing strategy, pinpointing what makes them a smashing success.

The Art Of Storytelling

Yes, nowadays, storytelling has become an industry buzzword. But it’s still an ancient-old concept that can and should be applied to today’s fast-paced digital world. The bottom line is, humans love a good story. And when it comes to brand storytelling, it’s about weaving in a cohesive narrative that bridges the facts and emotions your brand is trying to convey. It’s about tapping into the hearts and minds of your audience while never losing sight of the fact that stories are meant to be engaging.

It so happens that National Geographic is good at storytelling. Great in fact.

Take their Instagram account, for instance. Nat Geo cleverly pairs stunning visuals with high-quality content that truly taps into the hearts of their users. They’ve successfully done this by leveraging their global community of photographers and freelancers, giving them exclusive ownership over their own stories.

It almost feels like Nat Geo’s Insta account is a journal of sorts, where photographers on assignments are free to share engaging captions behind their photos. This not only makes Nat Geo’s Instagram content genuine, but it adds a layer of credibility to the content, shifting the publication away from boring corporate-speak.

Lesson for your brand: When it comes to your own social media strategy, consider the role brand storytelling will play in forging connections with your niche audience and ramping up engagement. Ultimately, when done right, brand storytelling can maximize your business’s visibility, profit, and impact.

Embrace the visuals

Business Insider CEO Henry Blodget’s theory is that the internet is a visual medium. The statistics certainly speak for themselves. On average, our brain only needs one-tenth of a second to grasp an image. In contrast, reading a 200–250 word caption takes us roughly 60 seconds (more on the study here).

Overall, people tend to remember visual information six times better than information they’ve read or heard, with Nat Geo being a good case in point. As a century-old publication dedicated to world-class photography, they sure are in a fantastic position when it comes to producing next-level visuals. And while it may seem a bit redundant to point out that Nat Geo has excellent photographers, it’s a valid point considering their social media success.

When it comes to marrying visuals with great content, Nat Geo is the king of the jungle, with its editorial staff spending a great deal of time and money building the team’s expertise on content production. The investment has clearly paid off. The lesson here is that in today’s competitive media landscape, social media marketing needs more than just optimization and an ad strategy. Without striking visuals, brands can quickly get drowned out by more dominant businesses.

Lesson for your brand: Visuals should be an invaluable part of your content marketing and social media campaigns. Quality images have been proven to bump up traffic, clicks, and conversions, receiving more attention on social media than text updates. So don’t be stingy when it comes to your image bank. Try and steer clear from using generic Istock images and do a creative brainstorm on where to source your images.

Master your data

Above, we established the importance of storytelling. But it’s not just about sharing any old story; it’s about telling a story that your audience wants to hear and connect with. And that, my friend, requires data. Insights. Analytics. The works.

Knowing your data inside out will help you understand what is and isn’t working in your social media strategy. It’s about combining data analytics with traditional forms of content production so that you remain on top of your digital competitors.

Nat Geo has been doing some backend magic. A former social media employee shared his two cents on the importance of data analytics, revealing how the team at Nat Geo collects insights that matter, moving beyond just measuring likes, shares, and comments. Instead, the team goes an extra step further, looking at what type of content to produce for each social media channel, as well as the attention spent by visitors on each story.

With this data, Nat Geo can pinpoint what audiences want on each platform and then deliver accordingly.

Lesson for your brand: Look at your data and figure out what your target audience wants to see. What works on Twitter won’t necessarily work on Facebook. People go on Instagram for photographs, and Facebook and Twitter for short bursts of text, with external links directing users to engaging content.

While it’s time-consuming to collect and normalize data across multiple channels, it’s ultimately worth it since it’ll enable you to pinpoint exactly what type of content your audiences connect with and on what medium.

Final word

Sometimes social media may feel like wading through choppy waters, but if you step back and observe, you’ll see that it all makes sense. Having perspective is key, as well as the creative drive to study, test, tweak, then rinse and repeat. National Geographic’s social media marketing can teach brands a lot about leveraging visuals, storytelling, and data to create successful marketing outcomes. Apply some of their wise teachings to your own marketing, and watch your engagement rates soar.

Need more inspo? Check out some common social media marketing mistakes to avoid at all costs here.

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