16 October 2023 | Marketing
The Browser Company’s Content Playbook
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Viral feature launches, using social to improve the product, etc.
Company background
This is important, so you understand the context behind these strategies. Not every social tactic works for every company. They are industry-dependent, stage-dependent, etc.
Industry: Software
Company stage: Series A
Product (what the hell do they do): The Browser Company runs Arc Internet, a new (or in their words, a better) way to browse the internet. My friend Sully swears by the product, but I’m gonna be honest, I’m still rocking Chrome 😅
Social platforms: Twitter, LinkedIn (kind of)
Now, let’s talk content. I’m impressed by what they’ve built on social, and there is a lot to learn here.
Pillar I. Bangers only 💥
There’s this common idea in startup land that you need to be hyper-active on social media to have success. 4 tweets per day. 3 LinkedIn posts per day. Spend 2 hours replying.
Exhausting—and usually results in low-quality content.
Look, quantity matters early. You need to take shots on goal to know what hits. Not every company has the luxury of selectivity early on.
But I love when a brand is able to execute like a sniper, rather than a machine gunner, on social.
Arc is selective with what they post on the brand’s Twitter account. From what I’ve seen, they only post from the main brand page when they drop a new feature.
And when they post, it hits. let’s look at a few examples.
The band account only posts 1-2x per week. But when they post, it hits.
When can your brand post less but better?
A few qualities are needed:
- You understand what ‘works.’ This either happens through testing on the brand’s account or when you have a team (or agency) that deeply understands the industry you operate in. Pattern recognition matters.
- You have a founder with an audience. Brand account growth is way easier when you have a founder with a personal platform.
- Your team is tapped into an investor or peer network that can amplify. Who you know matters. Especially as a startup, when you drop some cool shit, have your investors, industry peers, friends, etc. pump the hell out of the post.
Pillar II. Inherently a visual product 😍
Arc Internet is a browser, so it’s features are visual.
When they drop a new feature, it’s fairly straightforward to take that and turn it into an asset.
A few products that have this luxury:
- The Browser Company
- Beehiiv (wrote about this last week here)
- Notion (people share templates, workflows, etc.)
- Shopify (dashboard or live-view screenshots)
As a content team, you don’t have a ton of ‘control’ over this. But if you do have the luxury of working for a company with a product that just looks dope, lean in on social.
Pillar III. Involving their community 🤝
A common thread in the startups I’ve worked with, and studied, that are most successful on Twitter and LinkedIn is that they have a hyper-active team.
The Browser Company is no different.
I want to take this a layer deeper, though.
Yes, the founders are announcing product launches and features from their accounts to increase distribution.
But what I really love is how their CEO, Josh Miller, actively asks for user feedback on Twitter/X.
So many startup CEOs cower at the thought of customer complaints. Josh gets ahead of them using Twitter/X as a direct line of communication. The engagement and visibility metrics are just a bonus.
71 replies on that one. Solid.
Here’s another example of Josh asking for feature requests for Arc’s Developer Mode. 67 replies.
And here’s an example from the brand account:
This seems obvious. But social gives you a direct line to your end customer. Take advantage of it.
Another pattern to flag here:
Other Arc team members are active aside from the CEO and co-founders.
Not only that, the team is actively woven into the content strategy. Check out this ‘What’s New At Arc?” video (watch here then come back).
Notice how Josh calls out the team members behind each individual update in the product?
Super cool nuance. It helps the audience build a more genuine connection with the team behind the product. People want to buy from people.
Other notes I took
Shipping speed is a social growth hack for tech startups. More features → more launches on social. Arc crushes this.
Again, if you have the luxury of a dev team that ships fast, turn each launch into a social activation. You’d be surprised by the amount of hype you can sustain doing this.
They have multiple company accounts. The Browser Company. Arc Internet. Arc Support.
For most companies, I like a consolidated approach (doesn’t make sense to split already limited resources on social), but I do like having a separate support account if you’re fielding enough tickets for it to make sense.
I like how they flip ‘bugs’ into FOMO. Here’s an example
I’m not sure if it’s intentional (the copywriting, not the crash), but the idea of ‘so many people were rushing to use our product that it crashed’ takes a potentially annoying user experience and turns it into a great marketing moment. Reminds me of when ChatGPT first launched.
Also, 10/10 pun given the product’s name is Arc Max. I love great copywriting lmao.
That’s all I’ve got today. If this playbook was helpful, toss it in your marketing team’s Slack channel. They’ll thank you for it 🙂