Content & Community: The Bonfire, Wildfire, and Fireworks Strategy
To build an engaged community you need to give people reasons to keep coming back. Our Hot Topics framework does this. It uses a fiery metaphor to remind us about the 3 key drivers of community engagement.
🪵 Bonfires, are about consistent community engagement;
🔥Wildfires, are about surprising content experiments & breakthroughs;
💥Fireworks, are about promoted posts and guaranteed content winners.
We tend to combine all three when we’re considering a content strategy, as they all build on each other.
Let's explore each of these a bit more with some practical examples.
Bonfires
In the real world, a bonfire is a gathering point where we share stories, and have conversations that connect us. Digitally, a bonfire is about community engagement.
Digitally, Bonfire content is how you join the conversation. It’s all about who you follow, which hashtags you’re tracking. It’s about the community events and gatherings you contribute to. It’s about relevance and cultural resonance.
Consistency is key. You don't want the embers of conversation to die down, rather you want to keep people involved and engaged. You don't just drop content into your timeline randomly, each piece of content is produced as fuel for an ongoing conversation.
Momentum is key - you have to use energy to get it going, and then keep fuelling it. If you find a hot topic, don’t just post on it once, keep going.
Practically, we’re using hashtags to connect with broader conversations. We’re following and responding to influential voices in these conversations too. And we’re aiming to build trust and recognition over time. So consistency and momentum really are important here.
Bonfire content activities
Identify a theme, topic or community you want to build influence with;
Find and connect with the most influential voices on your topic or theme;
Stay on topic, and on-brand;
Build a consistent rhythm of posting on key themes and keep it up;
Respond and engage to posts on the topic with flair;
Focus on building lists, subscribers, and followers so you can more easily reach people when you need to activate them (for your Fireworks and Wildfire moments)
There is no hierarchy around a bonfire, but there can be leadership and influence.
Keywords: Connection. Community. Consistency. Content Calendar. Conversational Momementum.
Fireworks
Fireworks are spectacular, they can be seen far and wide.
Firework content is content you plan to succeed. The easiest way to guarantee a winner is through paid promotion, organic boosting (seeding to supporters), and content excellence.
We don’t hope our firework content performs well, we plan for it. We build up to it, time the release of it perfectly, promote it with paid media spend, and send it to our community directly and ask them to share it.
Each campaign should have at least one key piece of super-successful content around which the rest of the campaign is built. Often we have several: the launch video, mid-campaign rally, and wrap-video.
Timing is important with fireworks, all your influencers should announce the moment at the same time to create a trending topic.
Examples at Treeshake of this are campaign launch videos; our lists celebrating change-makers; and key announcements.
Firework content activities:
Pick the optimal date and time for your firework content.
Pick a hashtag so people can find each other on the theme.
Get in touch with influential people on the topic and secure their involvement before you launch.
Make it easy to participate: clear call to action, and compelling reason to get involved. You might event pre-produce content templates for your “influencers” (or social media volunteers) to use for their posts.
On the posting date (or date range) mobilise as many people to get onto social media and post at the same time using the hashtag.
Get a group of influencers/volunteers to spend time commenting or responding to people on the hashtag so that it’s really active.
Keywords: Cost. Calendar. Collaboration. Coordination. Conversion.
Wildfires
Wildfires spread fast, burn hot, and happen unpredictably. Digitally, it’s about content that “goes viral” and drives results and reach for your brand, message or movement.
On social media wildfire content is content that spreads from person to person and where ANYONE can contribute to the conversation, even if they don't know anything about the actual topic.
The keys to this kind of content are that it should be timely, unexpected, and taste-makers should get involved.
Wildfire content activities:
Create beautiful, surprising or super-relevant content regularly.
Wildfire content is often brave, experimental, or perfectly timed.
Follow the news and keep a look out for emotive pieces that you can create content about. Improve your taste as you learn what your people respond to.
Get fast and accurate in your copywriting and design so you can produce quality content really quickly in response to key news event.
Help your content spread by sending it directly to supporters, friends and influencers and asking them directly to share it.
Keywords: Creativity. Timing. Responsiveness. Surprise!
