Social Media’s Evolved, Why Haven’t Marketers?

Photo by Marco Palumbo on Unsplash 

Is it just me or have social media focused briefs become paradoxically tedious? For what arguably continues to be the most interesting medium available to marketers, the thinking around standing up a content engine often seems to be a crude merger of dated beliefs with new school platform “best practices”. This approach leaves a lot on the table for brands. 

It’s not so much that the artifacts need to change — content calendars, channel strategies, customer service reply matrices, etc. are all still part of the game to operationalize a social media marketing plan, but in today’s landscape, brands need to think harder about their inputs and creative strategies to win. 

This likely all sounds vaguely correct, but what does it mean in practice? What’s being left out of social strategy and how should brands course correct? The first step is understanding four truths of the space today: 

1. Organic Reach Is Dead, But Organic Strategy Isn’t. Ever since Facebook’s initial maturation of their ad products in the 2010s, marketers have been confronted with anemic organic reach levels leaving the majority to adhere to a pay-to-play mindset.  

However, with the ‘for you page’ and Reels ushering in the algorithmic recommendation age, Organic Content’s speed of travel has gotten a massive upgrade. With the virality opportunity restored, savvy brands have taken advantage of going off-script to drive views and memorability in social. There are two paths emerging to get the most value here: getting weird and leaning into the chronically online audience’s proclivity toward the absurd (see: Duolingo, Ryan Air, Scrubdaddy, and Pine Sol to name a few) or getting engaged and leveraging existing trends or high traffic content to create value-adding organic content (see: Unilever’s Cleanipedia and Vaseline Verified initiatives).  

As a footnote here, it’s worth noting that social content is also now indexing into Google and AI adding an additional incentive for brands to continue putting effort into this content. 

2. Attention is the New Oil of Paid Social. For too long we’ve taken volume, or worse - vanity, metrics as KPis. We now know from research from folks like Dr. Karen Nelson-Field, PhD that 85% of digital ads get less than 2.5 seconds of attention. Does delivery and reach matter if it isn’t seen or absorbed? 

In other words…you need to win the first 3s to earn the next 3s seconds. Here again there are a couple levers to keep in mind. First, focus on ‘hooks’ and creating instantly engaging premises for your ads. This can be done with V/O, visuals, unique storytelling and many more tactics. The other area to explore is being strategic about where you deploy paid in these environments. Some new placements, such as Meta’s trending reels ads or TikTok’s search ads, are creating on-ramps to more qualified attention. Approaching paid creative with an attention-first lens will surely help drive performance, just make sure measurement is adjusted to encompass deeper numbers beyond reach and 3-second views. And remember, you’re not just competing vs. your category but vs. the entirety of your target audience’s feeds. 

3. Creators are a Channel, Objectives Should Guide Its Usage. In recent years, brands have spread their influencer strategy and talent agreements across buckets based on follower size and reach potential. Scale, Reach, and Cost are always going to be top of mind. However, there are other important factors that need to be considered when selecting partners.

Followership and engagement rate (and lack of competitive involvement) are typically the primary filters for quality creator relationships and those are often a solid start for objectives such as awareness or engagement but as brands think about other needs such as delivering education or driving sales, it’s important they don’t lose sight of qualitative aspects of a creator such as their production approach, style, expertise or qualifications. Sometimes a lesser-known, but more credible partner may be the best opportunity to drive connection with consumers. 

Similarly, shifting from one-off posts to deeper engagements with creators and influencer partners has helped brands keep content fresh and create more compelling, native content. We see this starting to happen more through short-form content series hosted by influencers and other deeper partnerships across brand ecosystems.

4. The ‘Invisible Work’ of Community Management Builds Impact. In the new era of hyper-monetized attention, it can be easy for brands to dismiss community management as ‘nice to have’ tinkering in the comment section, but it remains so much more. 

While some may see the aforementioned comments from brands as fleeting impressions for niche audiences, being active in a comment section signals to creators and consumers that they’re participating alongside everyone else (recent Morning Consult data shows that around 80% of consumers seek out and read comments). The most active brands are also repurposing comments, featuring them within content directly and using ideas as springboards for new content. Once you get beyond the comments, Community Management becomes the intersection of brand strategy and opportunistic marketing. Staying on the lookout for collaboration opportunities or trends that can lead to content ideas with outsize impact is a critical function.

From a day-to-day perspective, it’s about ensuring content is optimized for the best chance to ‘win’ the algorithm. There’s no silver bullet, but several elements have surfaced as helpful including: first-hour engagement, leveraging native formats and features, seeding engagement from trusted partners and teams, adding trending audio sounds or music, and cross-posting and reposting strategically. That’s a lot of important stuff, the value of which is going under-recognized. 

Succeeding Means Keeping Up

While it’s a convenient mindset to believe social media has settled into its place as a predictable set of channels primarily driven by media spend, it’s not enough to follow the standard playbook. Keeping the above truths in mind can drive innovative strategies and help marketers think more holistically about their approaches. 

If we keep assessing the channels through old lenses, we’re left playing catch-up to ‘best practices’ which quickly become homogeneous across brands vs. creating new ones that leverage what these platforms are still best at – connecting with and captivating consumers.