tentree Social Media Strategy

“This project has not only produced a campaign roadmap for tentree; it has also shaped a more disciplined approach that I will carry into future work.“

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Background

This piece is my final project for COMSTRAT 563: Professional Digital Content Promotion, completed independently over Fall 2025 and submitted December 12, 2025. The course’s capstone assignment asked each student to build a complete social media marketing strategy for an organization of their choosing, applying course frameworks to real brand data across five sequential phases rather than treating the plan as a single, one-off document.

I selected tentree, a sustainable apparel company best known for planting ten trees for every item sold. I was drawn to the brand because its mission-driven identity gave me a chance to build a strategy where storytelling and measurable business outcomes had to work together, rather than treating impact messaging as separate from performance metrics. The final deliverable is a 50-page, brand-styled strategy document (using tentree’s own color palette and typography) that moves from foundational research through a fully scheduled content calendar, an evaluation model, and a personal reflection on the process.

I was the sole researcher, strategist, and designer on this project. My instructor provided the phase outlines and grading criteria, and I incorporated a round of peer and instructor feedback before final submission (documented in my “Changes Based on Feedback” notes).

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Scope

There were five distinct and involved phases in completing this project, including: original research, data analysis, strategic writing, and visual design across all phases:

• Preliminary research into tentree’s mission, sustainability claims, key messaging, and digital footprint across six platforms.
• A full social media audit for Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, TikTok, and YouTube that included noting followers, posting frequency, engagement, and reach, as well as a review of customer reviews, inquiries, and response rates.
• Creating three original audience personas that were built from demographic and behavioral research.
• A competitive analysis of two mission-led competitors, Patagonia and Cotopaxi, evaluated against tentree’s positioning.
• A SWOT analysis, SMART goals, objectives, and a metrics framework built specifically around tentree’s social channels.
• A staffing and budget plan (7 roles, $25,000/month), a five-pillar brand tone-of-voice guide, and platform-selection rationale.
• Three designed Instagram post mock-ups and a six-week, six-platform content calendar with scheduled copy, imagery, timing, and calls to action.
• An evaluation strategy mapped to a four-stage funnel (Awareness, Engagement, Action, Impact) as well as a full written reflection.

The last piece to the scope was peer feedback that happened at the end of each phase. Once I received feedback from two to three peers, I made targeted revisions to the phase in question. I declined one piece of peer feedback that suggested changing the color scheme on my top-performing-post mock-ups, but the color palette selected is tentree’s actual brand colors and altering them wasn’t part of this assignment.

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Process

Phase 1 – Preliminary Research:

I built the brand’s quick foundation using the ‘5W framework’ (who/what/where/when/why) to ground the strategy in tentree’s mission and sustainability claims. From there, I developed a key message profile of keywords, likely customer questions, and customer value statements before auditing tentree’s presence across all six of its social platforms.

Phase 2 – Audience, Audit, and Goals:

I built three personas to represent tentree’s distinct customer segments, then audited engagement data for each platform to identify which channels were performing and which ones were dormant. From there, I examined tentree’s brand against Patagonia and Cotopaxi, built a SWOT that was specifically focused on tentree’s social media presence, and then I used the audit data to set the campaign’s SMART goals.

Phase 3 – Resources, Roles, and Tone:

For the third phase, I outlined a 7-person team and monthly budget, wrote a five-pillar brand tone-of-voice guide with do’s and don’ts for each, and then I selected socials platforms for the social media campaign strategy based on where the audit showed the strongest return.

Phase 4 – Content Strategy and Calendar:

Using SproutSocial and SocialBee’s published posting-time research, I set a content mix and cadence for each platform. Then I designed three realistic Instagram post mock-ups, and built a detailed six-week content calendar for January–February 2026 that included post copy, timing, imagery, hashtags, and calls to action across all six channels.

Phase 5 – Evaluation and Reflection:

In the last phase, I mapped every objective to a funnel a stage of Awareness, Engagement, Action, or Impact with specific metrics, tools, and target outcomes. I closed with a full written reflection that connected my process back to SMART goals, funnel-based planning, and the specific technical and creative challenges I worked through.

Throughout each phase, I made deliberate trade-offs based on feedback: I rewrote the Phase 3 responsibilities into bulleted lists and set a more realistic monthly budget amount after the peer review process. I refocused my SWOT specifically on tentree’s social media instead of on the brand as a whole based on instructor feedback, and I added a bar chart to Phase 5, which was an extra page I hadn’t originally planned, but the data was easier to explain visually than in text.

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Lessons Learned

What went well:

I found that by grounding Phases 3-5 in the audit data from Phases 1–2 helped me to keep the strategy specific to tentree, and help me give every goal a real and measurable baseline.

Also, by creating the three distinct personas in the early phases, helped to make later decisions, like tone, content pillars, and platform priority, much easier to justify and keep consistent.

The main challenge:

The first challenge was how the baseline data was uneven across platforms. For example, Instagram and Facebook had a lot of recent data, but Pinterest, TikTok, and YouTube had wide posting gaps. To address that, I tried to set precise, evidence-based targets on the strongest channels and directional goals, instead of exact goals, for the quieter ones.

The second challenge was keeping one consistent brand voice across very different platform norms. TikTok was more playful, but LinkedIn was more polished. This required that I build tone guardrails for each platform while also tying every post back to the same core brand promise.

Outcomes:

I was very proud of how this social media strategy plan turned out:

• The finished product was a complete, submission-ready 50-page social media content strategy with SMART, data-backed goals: +30% average Instagram reach per post (19,712 → ~26,000) and +25% average engagement per post (2,597 → 3,246) within 90 days.
• I created a concrete customer-service target for tentree, moving them from an observed 0% public response rate, to responding to 90% of comments and reviews within 24 hours.
• Finally, I created a strong final presentation format and visual storytelling piece that included a new evaluation chart that was a direct result from peer and instructor feedback that I incorporated before the final submission.

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