During the Thanksgiving break, while scrolling on X (formerly Twitter), I stumbled upon a post from Auntie Anne’s, the mall pretzel company. The post featured a greyed-out, grainy photo of a pretzel, accompanied by lowercase text that read: “are you ready for it?”

are you ready for it? pic.twitter.com/HOw6C2G3nS

— Auntie Anne’s (@AuntieAnnes) November 27, 2023

The reference didn’t immediately register with me, but upon further investigation of its 2 million views, I noticed that a colleague who happens to be a die-hard Taylor Swift fan had engaged with the content. I got the gist. This was an inside fandom joke. A very successful joke, might I add.

With just five words, the post managed to form a new alliance with the Swifties. Through their engagement, it reminded the rest of us about the availability of a deliciously salty snack. After days of talking about Thanksgiving and eating one too many plates of leftovers, who wouldn’t want to grab a pretzel?

That social media manager earned their holiday bonus by doing something many publishing brands will never achieve — not because newsrooms aren’t capable, but because there was a major twist in the plot when it comes to identifying wins on social media and we chose not to get on board.

Social media editors working in newsrooms often feel disconnected from the communities they serve. This is largely due to the limitations created by the systems they operate under. These limitations include a lack of authority over the channels they are managing, insufficient time to brainstorm or test creative ideas, and inadequate budget for training and staying up-to-date with the latest trends.

While pageviews are still important for generating advertising revenue in the news business, imagine the benefits of a post that forces a smile on the faces of millions of its ideal audience and the recurring venue it could bring. It’s no longer publisher vs. publisher. It’s publisher vs. everyone.

To stay current and connected with our readership, we need to focus on expanding our reach, capturing the attention of younger audiences, and demonstrating our relevance.

My challenge to newsrooms is to get serious about identifying your brand voice. How many times have we had perfect opportunities to jump on trends — but seen the hours it takes to get approval shut the doors to the engagement party on us?

Newsroom leaders should allow time, space, and more freedom for creative teams to be…creative.

Some brands have hardly touched their Threads accounts. Meanwhile, influencers are there begging the fictional algorithm gods to bring them their people. LinkedIn is not just a place to share job advertisements. It’s the wealthiest social media website, with millions of active daily users just waiting for you to show up and tell them who they should subscribe to.

So with this prediction, I offer a challenge: Grant license to your teams to finally inject some joy into their brand voice before it’s too late.

I’m sure Auntie Anne’s social media team isn’t spending days discussing why they didn’t reach a certain website traffic threshold. No, they’re too busy celebrating the new wave of fans they earned with a hilariously relatable five-word tweet.