Your Content Isn’t the Problem. You Ignoring Social Care Is!

Key Takeaways:

• Most content doesn’t fail because it’s bad. It fails because no one is working the conversations after it goes live.

• Social care is not just handling complaints. It’s revenue, retention, and trust happening in real time.

• Small teams can start social care today without expensive tools by tracking and tagging conversations.

• Tagging and labeling turns comments into business intelligence you can actually use across marketing, sales, and support.

• A simple weekly “what we heard” loop is one of the fastest ways to prove ROI and get alignment.

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You can spend hours researching, writing, designing, editing, and scheduling content… and still feel like it goes nowhere. People might like it. They might even comment. But it doesn’t turn into real relationships, referrals, or revenue.

Here’s what I said in this episode, and I stand by it:

“Most of your content, the content you spend time researching and creating is going nowhere.”

Not because you’re doing it wrong, but because what happens after you post is just as important as what you post.

On Strategy Talks, I sat down with Brooke Sellas, award-winning CEO of B Squared Media, to talk about the missing link so many brands skip: social care.

And yes, Brooke supports enterprise brands, but what she shared applies to the team of one just as much as it applies to a 70-billion-dollar company.

Social care is the missing link between content and growth

Most teams treat social media like a publishing pipeline. Post, move on, post again. That’s how you end up with “busy” content and quiet results.

Brooke put it plainly: “If there were ever a time now, would be it.”

Reach is down. Impressions are harder. Engagement is inconsistent. The old model of relying on content alone is not holding up the way it used to.

The shift is this: people aren’t just consuming content. They’re using social to ask questions, compare options, research products, and shop. That means your comment section and DMs aren’t an afterthought. They’re part of your customer experience.

And when you treat them that way, social stops being a brand channel and starts becoming a growth channel.

Who owns social care when you have a small team?

I asked Brooke the question every small team asks: if you’re content-focused, who owns social care?

• The social media manager?

• A community manager?

• A VA?

• Customer support?

Brooke’s answer was refreshing because it wasn’t about picking a single owner. It was about alignment.

She explained that even massive brands struggle with this because everyone thinks they should own it. Marketing, customer experience, social, and support all have a legitimate reason to raise their hand. Sales belongs in the mix too. Brooke described it like a Venn diagram, with social care sitting in the center.

Here’s what I love about that framing: it makes social care less about titles and more about shared responsibility.

For a smaller business, that can look like a simple rule:

• Marketing monitors and responds to everyday comments and engagement

• Support handles issues that require account access or deeper troubleshooting

• Sales gets looped in when purchase intent shows up in comments or DMs

• Everyone shares what they’re hearing so decisions get smarter

One of the best lines from Brooke, and it matters here:

“It’s less about who owns it and more about alignment with those people.”

The social care skills that matter most

When Brooke hires for social care, she’s not looking for someone who knows every platform feature. She’s looking for someone who is wired to help.

“You can train the platforms and the nuances, but you can’t train that real willingness and eagerness to solve someone else’s problem.”

Her best hires often come from hospitality, customer service, nonprofit work, or volunteer backgrounds. People who understand that tone matters. Patience matters. Follow-through matters.

Because social care is not about clever replies. It’s about solving, guiding, calming, and noticing patterns before they become problems.

You don’t need expensive tools to start social care

This is where I see teams get stuck. They assume social care requires enterprise software and a whole department.

Brooke was clear: “You don’t have to have the expensive tools.”

Her starter strategy is beautifully simple:

1. Identify where conversations are happening most

2. Track the conversations

3. Categorize them

4. Pay attention to sentiment and patterns

She even recommended starting with “a good old Excel spreadsheet.”

There are two types of conversations you need to notice:

• Reactive: people responding directly to your posts

• Proactive: people talking about you without tagging you

That second type is easy to miss. If someone posts about your product and doesn’t tag you, your notifications won’t catch it. That’s why brands use social listening, but even without software, you can start paying attention by searching your brand name, product name, and common variations inside the platforms you use most.

Tagging and labeling is how social care becomes ROI

If Brooke only wanted you to remember one thing, this was it: “You must tag and label. Everything. Everything.”

Because when you tag and label conversations, you stop guessing. You can actually see what’s happening.

Brooke gave an example that matters: not all conversations are support issues. A surprising amount are sales-related. People asking where to buy, how to buy, if a product is available, if there’s a promo code, if you carry their size. Those are buying signals.

If those questions sit unanswered, you don’t just lose engagement. You lose revenue.

A simple tagging system for a small team could look like this:

• Conversation type: Sales, Support, Feedback, Partnership, Brand Love

• Sentiment: Positive, Neutral, Negative

• Topic: Product, Shipping, Pricing, Availability, How-To, Account Access

You can do this in a spreadsheet, a basic social management tool, or even in a notes doc if you’re starting from scratch. The point is consistency. Once you have a few weeks of labeled conversations, patterns become obvious.

Brooke also addressed something we hear constantly: social doesn’t have ROI. Her response was direct: “Social media doesn’t have an ROI. Yes, it does.”

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ocial care makes ROI visible because it shows where people are trying to buy, where they get stuck, what causes frustration, and what creates loyalty.

A weekly workflow that works with content creation

I asked Brooke what it looks like when you’re managing content and social care at the same time. Her answer was a mindset shift I want every content team to borrow:

Create content to spark conversations on purpose.

She called it talk-worthy or conversational content. That looks like questions, polls, opinions, and moments that invite response. And there’s a real reason for it.

Brooke explained that when brands share opinions and feelings in a way that fits their audience, people respond with reciprocity. They share back. That gives you real insight into what your customers care about and what they need.

This is important for small brands because it means social care isn’t a separate workload. It’s part of the content strategy. You’re posting with conversation in mind, and then using those conversations to refine what you post next.

That’s how you get smarter without doing more.

What to do if you’re a founder doing social care solo

If you’re a founder, consultant, or solopreneur, social care can feel like one more thing you don’t have time for. Brooke’s advice was less about volume and more about boundaries.

You decide what you’re willing to be vulnerable about and what you’re not. Vulnerability doesn’t mean sharing your whole personal life. It means being willing to speak clearly about values, beliefs, and decisions that your ideal customer actually relates to.

That’s how you attract the right people and make conversations easier.

The simplest social care report you can run every week

This is where the whole system becomes sustainable.

Brooke shared their most impactful reporting habit: “What we heard loops. They happen every week.”

Every week, you share:

• The top customer concerns or issues

• The top sales opportunities or buying questions

• Any noticeable sentiment shifts

For a small team, this can be a short weekly email, a Slack message, or a standing 15-minute meeting. The point is that you’re not keeping customer insight trapped inside your comment section.

This is how marketing, sales, support, and product stop operating in silos. And even if you are the same person wearing all those hats, the weekly loop forces you to make decisions based on real customer language, not assumptions.

Start here this week

If you want to put social care into action without overhauling your entire workflow, here’s the simple starting point:

• Pick one platform where you get the most comments or DMs

• Track conversations for two weeks

• Tag each conversation by type, sentiment, and topic

• Identify your top three repeat questions and top three buying signals

• Create one weekly “what we heard” recap

• Use those insights to shape next week’s content and offers

That’s it. Start small, but start intentionally.

Because your content isn’t failing because it’s not good enough. It’s failing because too many brands treat the conversation as optional.

Or as I said in the episode:

“What happens after you post is just as important as what you post.”

10 smart AI prompts your audience can use to apply this faster

• Create a simple social care tagging system for a small business in my industry.

• Turn these comments and DMs into a weekly “what we heard” summary for my team.

• Identify buying signals in these social comments and suggest response scripts to close the sale.

• Write 10 talk-worthy LinkedIn post prompts designed to spark customer conversations.

• Draft brand-voice reply templates for sales questions, support issues, and brand love.

• Analyze these tagged conversations and list the top three customer pain points and how to address them in content.

• Suggest a 30-minute daily workflow for content plus social care for a solopreneur.

• Turn these repeated customer questions into an FAQ page and three social posts.

• Create a monthly dashboard outline to track social care ROI without expensive tools.

• Write a short internal update I can send weekly that shares customer sentiment trends and opportunities.