#266: Building an Organic Social Media Following with Lindzi Shanks, XO Marshmallow

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1:16We have a video we posted to TikTok maybe three years ago, and it was how do we turn a negative comment into a positive and somebody had commented on it and was like oh I ordered from another marshmallow business and my order never arrived and they never answered me so like how can I trust that you're not a scam because you know we're all the same right so me responding and basically saying hey I'm really sorry that happened to you that sucks we're a legitimate business we're real here's when we started here's our story here's why our marshmallows are better than anybody you're ordering from anyway, so you should definitely order from us because we're great.

1:58And that video on TikTok ended up getting 26 million views. And so that video we've now turned into an ad on Meta. I mean, that video is three, four years old at this point, but it just continues to drive a 12x ROAS every time we post about it. Welcome to the Startup CPG podcast. Today is the Today, we are all finally going to learn how to build an organic social media presence that actually drives business growth. Our guest is Lindsay Shanks. She's founder and CEO of XO Marshmallow. She's grown XO into one of the most recognizable brands in the confectionery space with an audience of more than 1.4 million followers, creating millions in revenue through social content and even building more than$2 million in TikTok shop sales.

2:44Today, she's going to take us behind the scenes of her content, what works on different platforms, how to leverage that into sales, how to make time for all the content, and just a lot of tips for founders who are just getting started on their social media journey who want to do what she's done. You are going to love this, and be sure to check the show notes for links to all of her content. All right, enjoy.

3:09All right, Lindsay, welcome to the podcast. I am really excited for today's episode because I don't think we've ever done one that just goes through how do you actually build an organic social media following. It's a very hard thing to do as a brand. When I was a brand, we desperately wanted one and could not for the life of us figure out how to actually do it, like how to make your company relevant to people where they'd actually want to click like on stuff, not just the things you want them to like. So thank you for joining us today. Do you mind just doing a quick intro? Sure. Thanks so much for having me.

3:39So I am Lindsay Shanks. I am the founder and CEO of XO Marshmallow. We are a gourmet marshmallow company with 1.4 million social media followers across platforms. And can you do the breakdown of those platforms? Yeah. So the majority of it is on TikTok. So over half a million is on TikTok. We've got close to 200 ,000 on Insta. And then the rest are Facebook and YouTube. And YouTube right now is our fastest growing platform. Well, that's cool. And I know I've seen some of your posts on TikTok that got, I think, up to 20 million views. Yes. So I'm really excited to jump into how do you make that happen?

4:19So can you just tell me a little bit about like when you started, did you just plan on this being a core strength of yours? Or did you just realize at some point that marshmallows really lend themselves to social media content? It's a little bit of both. So you have to keep in mind that our business has been around for 10 years. So when we first started the brand, the idea of social media as we know it today wasn't as big. Instagram was the primary platform and everything was focused on highly curated, very visual photos. And when I started the brand, I knew because I had a background in social media, I had been an influencer and a blogger for a few years, kind of experimenting with social media, that if we could create some very compelling and visually stunning photos, then we could start to generate that following.

5:12And that's exactly what happened. So when we were creating the brand, I knew from day one, we wanted to create a brand that was going to be social media shareable, something that people not only would want to engage with our photos on, but as they purchase the item, would want to post their own photos. It's 10 years ago, so, you know, create these beautiful flat lays or what's in my bags. And as video became relevant, especially as we started moving into 2020 and the era of TikTok, we started experimenting filming with our behind the scenes process and realized that the manufacturing process of marshmallows really lent itself for social media.

5:52So in a wonderful way, as social media has evolved and as our strategy has evolved, it's really aligned well with what's working on the various platforms. And I really recommend everybody, if you're listening to this, you're obviously interested in this story. I recommend going right now to check out some of the XO Marshmallow channels. And we will put the links here in the show notes to make it nice and easy for you. But I want you to see that content, especially on TikTok or behind the scenes. It's beautiful. It gets you. imagine if you're not watching it yet, just a full sheet of marshmallows and all of their fluffy, gooey glory and people like kind of manipulating them.

6:32So it comes off of this big grid that they're on and bending them. And you just it's incredibly visually appealing. And knowing that it's all edible and delicious at the same time makes it even more compelling. So is that a good way to describe it, Lindsay? Yeah, I think that's a really good way of putting it. You know, our mission statement at XO is to spread joy into the world through marshmallows. So as we are creating content, to your point, it's got to be visually stunning. It's got to be joyful. It's got to make you happy. So, you know, if anybody goes and looks at our platform and the first thing they do is smile, I've achieved my goal.

7:04Okay. I think you're doing that a lot of the time because I certainly was smiling looking at those videos. Like for those of us who don't know a lot about the social media platform, I'm not really on TikTok. I got to be honest. I don't know how to do it. Can you just tell me a little bit about how the logic works of that? Like, how do people actually end up seeing your video? How do you amass such a following like that? Yeah, so part of it is creating for your community, right? So we're fortunate that since we've been around for so long, I understand who our customer is. I understand who our community is.

7:34And so I'm able to create content that hits that algorithm. So for us, it's sweet treat lovers, it's dopamine decor lovers, it's ASMR lovers. So I can create content that gets to that customer. The main way you start figuring that out is simply by experimenting. So to your point, we've got this great video that's got 20 plus million views. We've got a 20 plus million view video on TikTok. We've got one on Instagram. We've got one on YouTube. They're not the same video. They hit different moments of virality across different platforms. And that's because the different platforms are looking for something different.

8:15So the only way to kind of figure out what that is as either a founder or you're hiring somebody to take over your social media is to experiment. We didn't get that video from day one. It took us trying option one, option two, option three, what was going to connect with our customers and what was going to connect with the platform. And when you find that thing that hits, let's say you're used to getting 1 ,000, 2 ,000 views, and all of a sudden you get a video that's got 100 ,000 views, that's viral for you. Take the time to really dissect that video, what worked, and create that style of content again and again and again until it doesn't work.

8:56Because that happens. That happens to us all the time. You find this perfect thing that works and works and works until it doesn't. And then you have to go right back into experimenting mode. I think the thing a lot of founders kind of run into moments of frustration with is, you know, in our businesses, we constantly talk about having to pivot and adapt to the different things in our environment like sales and what's working with SEO. Social media is the same way. You have to constantly be evolving and changing your content. So don't blame the algorithm. Blame your content. Like it changes all the time and it's not its responsibility to adapt to your content.

9:35It's your responsibility to adapt your content to it. So if your content stops working, you got to go right back to that experimentation process. Why do you think it stops working? Is it because you've saturated your audience with that style of videos or something in the algorithm changes or your algorithm knows that you just have been hitting it too hard on those kind of videos? Yeah, I think we as consumers crave newness, right? We're constantly looking for something different. and let's face it, if you create a style of content that's doing really well, chances are your competitors or other similar creators are going to start creating a lot of content that looks similar to your content.

10:13So now your customers aren't getting that content just from you, they're getting it from their favorite creator, they're getting it from a potential competitor, maybe more than one potential competitor. They get tired of seeing the same thing over and over again, they crave newness. So it's our responsibility to just find them something new. I totally get that. I think we have a cool social media. It's a very different kind of objective that we have since we're a B2B company. But for sure, we take inspiration from people who are doing cool stuff out there. So that makes a lot of sense to me in the context of your answer.

10:45So can you also just break down the different platforms for me? You mentioned that they play a different role for you. What have you learned, at least for you? I don't know if you would say it's true for all brands, but what is the style of content or the differences for you with TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram? Yeah, absolutely. So it's actually changed a little bit, I would say, in 2026. It used to be that TikTok really rewarded lots of behind the scenes, lots of very authentic, very raw content. And Instagram rewarded a lot of video, but beautifully curated video, lots of color. And YouTube always rewards like a younger audience and anything that's like a little bit older, a little sillier, a little goofier.

11:30So for us, now that's kind of changed a little bit. Instagram is really rewarding that behind the scenes content. I feel like the Instagram algorithm is just really driving founder led content right now. So how we approach those three platforms is a little different. So for TikTok, we're right now focusing a lot on our ASMR content. If you think about the person who's scrolling on TikTok at like 2am, 3am, because they either can't sleep or they're trying to look for something soothing, you have to think about the type of videos that work for them. And for us that like ASMR content, the visually pulling apart the marshmallows, the pouring, that's what's doing well.

12:12And then those people find our TikTok shop and just go ahead and place an order. In fact, we get a lot of notes in people's orders that are like, hey, remember you ordered this at 1am and you were really tired because people are, you know, they kind of zone out and scroll a little bit. So you kind of lean into that and we give them kind of zoning out type content. For Instagram, we are really leaning very heavily into our community. We're doing lots of founder driven content. We're also going through a rebrand right now. So we are taking our Instagram customers along that rebrand, letting them vote on do like this logo or this logo.

12:49This is the direction we're going with our colors. Is that good? Here's the kind of merch we're doing. We also have found that clickbaity type content does really well on Instagram too. So we are a dedicated gluten-free facility. We have a very strong celiac community that is like a diehard from exo for day one. So every now and then we'll get a snarky comment from a customer that'll say, oh, gluten-free, give me a break. Goal, that's goal for us. We immediately turn that comment into a video and we talk about how great our celiac community is and how important it is to be allergy friendly. And they come out of the work like crazy and start commenting.

13:31And I can take that same comment over the course of six months and turn it into six different videos each month, kind of reiterating the same thing, but with different visuals. And it pops off every single time. The most recent time I posted it last month, I think it's sitting at right about half a million views because that's really tapping into our community. And then our YouTube customer likes things a little sillier. So we'll do, like we pipe our marshmallow fluff by hand. So we'll do like employee versus employee pipe racing contests, you know, to see who will finish and like we'll sabotage each other.

14:10That's what does really well on YouTube. I would say that customer doesn't convert as much. It's more brand awareness. But yeah, it's about tapping into what's different across each platform. And then to be honest with you, for Facebook, we're just reposting content because who knows what works there. And then we don't do X or threads or any of the quick pithy comment. It just doesn't work for us. We're a visual brand. That makes so much sense. Wow. Honestly, I was listening to every single word you said there. That was really interesting. I especially like that one about taking a negative comment, which I hate it when we get those on our Instagram.

14:48Just it makes me a little crazy that there are people out there in the world who just can say such negative stuff for no reason. But I'm like, no, that was a lost opportunity. I should have been using those and to make content. And it sounds like you're so effectively using it to really just gather your community and get them around your cause. Like, yeah, how dare you say that to like, no, this is our community and like really support you. That's so interesting. I wanted to ask about that conversion. So you're obviously really good at doing content and building a huge following. How does that translate into sales?

15:22How's the conversion? What does it mean when you do a video that does half a million views on one of the platforms? How does that impact the dollars of the business? Sometimes it impacts it a lot and sometimes it doesn't do anything at all, right? And I think there is this assumption that if I get a viral video, my sales are gonna spike and that's not always the case. So typically when we get a video that's over half a million views on TikTok, we do see a direct correlation between those views and our TikTok shop performance. And anytime we see our TikTok shop performance go up, our Shopify goes up.

16:00Similarly, because we're part of the TikTok shop affiliate program and we'll work with affiliate creators to send them samples, when we have a video do well, we see an influx of requests for free samples. We'll send those out. Then a bunch of creators start posting about us and it kind of creates this halo effect of now all of a sudden it feels like we're everywhere. because, you know, maybe from one video we get X amount of orders, but we also got 50 requests for free items, 40 of them posted, 10 of those videos did well, right? And it kind of just like starts building this momentum. So we typically find if we have a video that does well on TikTok, typically the next three to four videos also do well because we've now created this system where multiple people are talking about us at once.

16:53Instagram is interesting. Sometimes we've had a video get 21 million views on Insta, and I don't feel like it really translated to sales. It's a lot of brand awareness, and it's a lot of people get a lot of followers for our brand or will get a lot of people sharing about it. But because people, while you can purchase from Instagram, it's not built the same way that TikTok is. You don't see a lot of that straight conversion. It's more community building. I mean, YouTube's the same way. Again, you can purchase straight from the videos on YouTube when you get a certain amount of followers, which we have.

17:32And again, we just don't see that immediate purchase. It's a lot of brand building. It's a lot of community awareness. What we're hoping it does is drive people to our email list. And once we get people on our email list, then we start moving through the funnel of how to turn them into customers. I mean, I wanted to ask you like, okay, what's the video that actually drove the most sales for you? What's kind of content was it? And what's one that wouldn't really do that, but would, you know, just kind of get a lot of views, but maybe it could be good for some brand building. But it sounds like you're saying like, maybe you don't even focus on that as much as really is more about driving them to your email list.

18:09It's a little bit of both. So one of the things that we found does really well for us from a strategy perspective is if we do have a viral video that generates sales and also generates a lot of comments and a lot of engagements, we will take that video and turn it into an ad. And those ads definitely generate a lot of sales. So we have a video we posted to TikTok maybe three years ago. And it was again, it was how do we turn a negative comment into a positive? And somebody had commented on it and was like, oh, I ordered from another marshmallow business and my order never arrived and they never answered me.

18:49So like, how can I trust that you're not a scam? Because, you know, we're all the same, right? Big marshmallow. Yeah. Big marshmallow is out to get you. So I think I literally created the video in like less than two minutes and it was kind of like, not a snarky rage post, but it was me responding and basically saying, hey, I'm really sorry that happened to you. That sucks. We're a legitimate business. We're real. Here's when we started. Here's our story. Here's why our marshmallows are better than anybody you're ordering from anyway. So you should definitely order from us because we're great. And that video on TikTok ended up getting 26 million views and generated a lot of sales for us.

19:30And the funny part about that is, you know, you're talking about your better customer service. All of a sudden, we had to extend our processing times in order to fulfill all of those orders. But you have to stay true to that promise. So we're over communicating with everybody, showing them that turns into additional videos of us showing the process of what it likes to looks like to go viral on the back end and like our team staying until two o 'clock in the morning to fulfill their orders. Because we do everything in house. We don't have a 3PL. We don't have a co-man. Everything is done in-house, that also means we're able to capitalize on virality.

20:05So we don't have to worry about running out of product. We'll just make more product. And so that video we've now turned into an ad on Meta. I mean, that video is three, four years old at this point, but it just continues to drive a 12x ROAS every time we post about it. I know this goes against everything we both believe about CPG, but weren't you just a little bit tempted not to send her her order as to fuel her conspiracy thoughts? No. So actually that particular commenter. So because she was talking about a different company and had never purchased from us, we actually ended up DMing her directly and offering to send her a free package.

20:43Oh, that's so smart. Yeah. We have a couple of competitors. And again, because I think it's such a niche product, people get confused and end up reaching out. So sometimes we'll get customer service emails for not us. Makes sense. Being like, where's my order? What's going on? And we always end up sending those people discount codes. And if you kind of ever get your order and you don't like it, come back. Or if you never get your order, try again. So we've converted a few people that way. So what's your zooming out? What is your overall business plan? And what is the role here? Are you, what's the current breakdown for you for online sales?

21:19Is it a hundred percent? Is it less? Are you planning to do retail? How, what is the role of all of the social media content? If you are going into retail as well? Yeah, of course. So right now we are primarily D2C. So about 90 % of the business is directly from our website or from TikTok shop. But part of the reason we're going through a rebrand right now is we are looking to expand into retail. So actually from our social media videos, we've been reached out to buy Sprouts, buy Target, buy Whole Foods as inbound of, hey, we want to carry you in our store because we see you've got this virality.

21:56We've got the ability to, we get our product on the shelves, activate our community to help create some velocity to move product off shelves, which as the brand, that's your responsibility. And I think a lot of people don't realize that. So as part of our rebrand, we're redoing our packaging to extend our shelf life. So right now we have a shelf life of four months, which doesn't work for retail. Our new packaging will have a shelf life of 18 months. So we can start saying yes to some of these buyers, get the product on shelves. So what we're doing with social media right now is twofold. One is that sort of behind the scenes founder led content, the strategy behind the rebrand, taking our customers along the process of this rebrand, right?

22:40I think there's this notion that if you've been in business for a long time, you can't do founder led content. That's not true. You're constantly evolving as a business. So created a video, literally it was like, watch me restart my 10 year old business from day one. And that video did really well on both my personal account and the XO account to drive engagement for this rebrand. And then we're also using it as an opportunity to create brand awareness to also tap into our affiliates in our community. So once we do get on those retail shelves, we can activate them. Hey, instead of ordering on our website, go to Target, go to Sprouts, go to Whole Foods, purchase from there.

23:23And then that way we can create that velocity. Because right now our customer's biggest complaint is the cost of shipping. I'm never going to be able to solve that problem. The only way I can solve that problem is to meet her where she already is, and that's at the grocery store. So it's kind of trying to increase that retail presence and have a community that's already ready to purchase by the time we get there. I imagine they're asking for it because it seems like, especially when you're talking about an indulgence, a treat, a lot of that that's sold in the grocery store is sold as immediate consumption, right?

23:52That's why you have the checkout stand because people just send an impulse buy. They want it. They want it right then, right? I just think about it a little bit differently. Like, I'm not the kind of person who's going to buy like a week's worth of candy and keep my house and have it there. Like, no, I'm just going to like grab it when I want it right then. So it makes sense that your audience would be really excited to have it available in retail. So it doesn't surprise me that you're getting that kind of outreach from people. And by the way, if you need some people to be in one of these videos, I would love to bring my team to the Marshmallow Factory and participate.

24:22Yeah, we would love that. Next time you guys are in Chicago, stop by and we'll create some fun content. OK, talk to me about how you carve out the time that it takes to actually film all of this stuff. Because for me, even I like to post on LinkedIn a lot very different content from what you do. But this is real time that it takes for me. I probably on a morning when I'm going to post, I probably spend 30 to 45 minutes just really trying to craft a thought post that I'm going to do that day. And then a lot of time throughout the day, trying to engage with people who are nice enough to comment on it.

24:53That is very real time that comes out of growing the business, doing a lot of the like getting through my emails that don't get through themselves and building and coming up with new ideas, all that stuff. And that's just for me doing like a written LinkedIn post. So for you, I can only imagine because your posting frequency is way higher than mine. And probably, I mean, I don't think you do stuff that's really highly produced. You know, it's not like you're hiring a professional crew to come in and film the stuff because I wouldn't work on these platforms anyways. But I mean, overall, it's a lot of effort to like brainstorm the content and cut the content and do all these iterations.