August 12, 2025 • 38 mins
More posts ≠ more progress.
I’m sharing exactly what’s working on social media right now—and what’s not—so you can adapt your content to meet your audience where they are (without burning out in the process).
We’re covering real shifts in content behavior, algorithm changes, and how smart marketers are showing up differently in 2025. If you're frustrated with lower reach and engagement, this episode will help you understand why and what to do next.
In this episode of the podcast, I talk about:
- Why the attention economy has shifted (and what it means for your content)
- Why “educational” posts aren’t hitting like they used to
- The difference between how-to content and how-I content
- The “middle tier content” that’s fading fast
- What “high-concept, low-production” content actually looks like
- The real reason engagement has dropped (it’s not you)
This Episode Was Made Possible By:
Riverside All-in-One Podcast & Video Platform
Visit Riverside and use the code DREA to get 15% off any Riverside individual plan. We use it to record all our podcast interviews: https://onlinedrea.com/riverside
Go to the show notes for all the resources mentioned in this episode: https://onlinedrea.com/370
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:00):
If posting on social media is feeling a little bit of shouting into
the void energy, then this episode is for you. I'm
recording it especially for a lot of you because you voted on
this topic in my Instagram polls. If you don't know what the
heck I'm talking about, make sure you follow me on Instagram at online Drea so
you can choose the next episode too. But today we're talking about
(00:22):
what's working on social media in 2025. Let's get into it, but first,
a word from our sponsor. Riverside is the all in one
podcast recording and editing tool that I use for this right here
show. I use it to edit not only the audio in the video, it is
like Chef's kiss magical. Making the entire process
so, so easy. Plus, I love their
(00:45):
Magic AI clips. Their little AI
robot in the background pulls out the most impactful moments
of the episodes without me having to comb through into it myself.
Resizes them for social media. So those vertical videos you see on
TIKT and Reels, those all come from Magic AI inside of
Riverside. It's literally one click. It spits out 10 clips.
(01:07):
I picked the best one and away I go. Saves me so much time. If
you want to get on the Riverside train, check it out today. The links in
the show notes and make sure to use my code DREA D R E A
at checkout to get 15 off your membership.
Welcome to the Mindful Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Jones and I'm all about
simpler, smarter marketing solutions for busy ass people like you
(01:29):
and me. And I gotta say, my preamble today is
I have been taking care of my skin and y', all,
I'm not wearing any foundation today and I feel glowing.
That's just my little like personal update I sell my lipstick on. Duh.
But I have been playing around with like different skin care options,
(01:49):
drinking more water and I have to say I'm loving
it. I may have to try the like no foundation
makeup strategy more in the future. If you're watching this on YouTube,
give me some love. Give me some love in the chat because I need some
external validation today apparently. Okay, let's talk about social
media content because I got this question
(02:11):
specifically from a couple people, actually one person in my membership, one
person in threads who is like, listen,
I feel like I'm posting, I feel like I'm checking off the box. I feel
like I'm doing what exactly what I'm supposed to be doing and ain't nobody seeing
my posts. And I was like Girl, same. So if that's you,
let's talk about it. The changes that I've made in my marketing this year. Year.
(02:33):
The changes that I'm recommending you make in your marketing this year so we can
finish out 2025 with a bang. But before I get into the
suggestions, I do have to set the stage for everything. And I don't mean
this as like an excuse. I'm just trying to give you all
the facts, right? Because the reality of the situation is we're
in a post peak attention economy, okay? So
(02:55):
what I mean BY that is 2020 happens. The. The
pandemic happens. Two weeks to crush the curb turns into two years across the
curve, okay? We're still struggling with COVID to this day. At least we
don't have massive shutdowns that we were having back then.
Because of that, though, we had a lot of
attention on digital during that time.
(03:18):
Social media, podcasts, YouTube. We were connecting in digital
ways that we literally had never done to that extreme ever
before in the history of time. This is the Same time where TikTok blew
up, y'. All. People were going absolutely viral on TikTok again and
again and again because we all were watching it, especially for
those of you, like me, who are in Canada, and we were shut down for
(03:41):
damn near two years. Okay? It was tough. It
was tough. So that attention economy
led to more content that has been produced than ever.
And even now, more content is being produced than it ever has
been. More people are posting than they ever have.
Okay? So what that means is there's less attention
(04:03):
to go around because at the same time, right
now, we're experiencing a tiny little collective
burnout. You may be feeling it too, where you're not spending as
much time on social media as you used to. You're choosing
to, like, I don't know, go outside and touch grass. I know I have been,
especially since it was like, pandemic then. I had two kids in
(04:26):
three years. And so now that I'm on the other side of that, My oldest
is 3 years old. I'm like, okay, okay. I'm. I'm in my outside
era. I was in my homebody era for a while, and I love that journey.
For me, now she's outside girl. So
spending less time on the Internet, just as it were.
And a lot of us are. We're overloaded with content,
(04:47):
which equals to content fatigue. So
we're all feeling that more content's being produced, but we're actually
consuming a little bit less.
And I don't want this to to sound like
nobody's consuming content because we are. Like I said
back in my day, okay, this is tmi. Those of you who've heard this on
(05:09):
the podcast before, pretend this is the first time I'm sharing this. But back in
my day, there used to be little books
next to the toilet with like jokes or like a magazine. And
if you didn't have that book, you were staring at nothing, my friend.
This was back in my day. Now we all
take our phones to the bathroom and pretend that this is not kind of gross,
(05:31):
that we're literally poop scrolling. We all do it. Don't
act like you don't do it. We all do it. We don't sit in silence
and stare at nothing anymore. Okay? So that means we're all consuming a lot of
content. We're just more selective about the content
we're consuming because frankly, there's a lot of it. So we have way more
choice. And two, we scroll, scroll, and then we move on with
(05:53):
our day. Okay? So you've got to keep that context in mind
when you're creating your content. How are people consuming it?
They may be poop scrolling too.
Should I brand it? Hashtag poop scrolling? Let me
stop before I get myself in trouble. Okay, so that's where we are right now.
I now have to talk about the shifts that are happening marketing wise as well.
(06:16):
Because of that stage setting moment, social media is
back at the top of the funnel. During the pandemic years, we were
all buying on Temu like it was going out of style.
Wish.com, amazon package delivery,
set it, forget it. We would see an ad and we'd go, sure, why not?
People are getting a little bit more discerning about their
(06:38):
purchases. We're also in an economic downturn, which
definitely affects a lot of industries. It impacts us and
our buying decisions. So the golden age of I post on
Instagram, I make a sale instantly is kind of
slowing down, could be over, maybe it could make a resurgence.
But here, now and today, it's not
(07:01):
a credit card machine, a slot machine,
if you will, it is more of a billboard. And this is
not old news, okay? I think we've got a little bit spoiled by
the economic booms of the pandemic and all that PPP
money that kind of flooded the economy and
gave us that boost. Okay, we're not there
(07:23):
anymore. Sorry, girls. Sorry, babe.
We're not there anymore. So what we have to do is be
aware that our social content is more of a
billboard, less of a vending machine slot machine moment.
Okay, so it's not, you know, press B5 and
you spit something out. It's more of you pass by the sign
(07:44):
four times before you go, oh, yeah, I meant to buy that. Okay, so
think more awareness. First impressions. Know, like,
and trust the role of your content marketing and your social
media marketing is for someone to go, huh, that's interesting.
Or, huh, I want to learn more. It's less of like, I want to give
you my money immediately here now and today. And. And that
(08:07):
varies person to person. Okay, it varies. It varies a lot.
But we're trending more towards the huh, that's
interesting side of things when it comes to how we all interact
with media. So smart business owners are treating
social media like the top of their awareness funnel.
That means people find you, they watch your video,
(08:30):
they look at your carousel posts, they. They see your posts on threads, and they
follow you to go, maybe I'll see more about this person.
Then you post some more. You. You share about your offers, how you work with
your people, and then they go, huh,
maybe I will visit their website. They sign up for a lead magnet or freebie,
10% off coupon, whatever the case may be they're getting for a while,
(08:52):
and then they go, huh, maybe I'll buy. Okay, so you see how it
goes from huh, I interested into, huh, maybe I'll buy.
These are all very technical terms, of course, and
it takes longer that buying process. The
timeline from I don't know you to I want to give you my money just
is taking a little bit longer. Okay, so I want you to
(09:14):
treat your social media posts almost like an invitation to a party.
It's like, hey, do you want to get to know me better? Come
on in the water. Fun. It's not a,
hey, I just met you. Would you like to be best
friends? That feels a little aggressive, right? I always like to use my dating analogy
here. I've been using this analogy for 11 years, y'. All. The
(09:36):
dating timeline got a little bit shorter during that pandemic, and we got used
to it. But it always remains that
you meet someone, you see if there's a spark or connection.
There's an indefinite time period where they get to know you. Then
you take things to a deeper relationship. This indefinite time period is the thing that
people struggle with the most, because for a while there,
(09:59):
we met someone, we went on one date, and we were like, yep, this is
our one. Boom, bada bing, we're done. That
indefinite time period was a lot shorter now it's okay, I need five dates,
and then maybe. And so
it just takes a little bit of wooing. Okay. It takes a little bit of
taking care of yourself, being the best person you can be so you can track
(10:21):
your right mate. Wow. I love what I did with that. Okay,
so that's the first thing is social media is top of the funnel. Second thing
is, we don't like to be sold to. Ain't nobody
likes ads. Okay, this is another. Back in my day, Moga. Back in my
day, I remember when TiVo came around and y' all youngins don't even know
what this is. Oh, I feel so old. Internet granny moment here. Come
(10:44):
Gather round, children. TiVo was when we used to
record our TV shows. Because we only can watch them live. We record
the TV shows. And one of the benefits of recording was, yes, we could watch
later whenever we wanted to, because otherwise you missed your show.
Okay. I remember rushing home to watch TV shows. It's so
silly now when I think about it. You record your show, so you watch later.
(11:06):
But the benefit of TiVo, the other one is you could fast forward through those
commercials. Girl, listen. The way we
loved fast forwarding through commercials was slightly
unhinged. Like, we got so excited to, like, fast forward to
commercials because up until that point, you had to either watch the commercial
or the commercial was when you went to the bathroom, you got yourself a new
(11:27):
drink, a snack, whatever, right?
But the same is happening now. It's just in a different format.
So what happens is we go to YouTube, we watch a video, and we're like,
watching the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, countdown, so we can hit skip and
skip on over to the video we wanted to watch in the first place. We're
not going. Oh, exciting, a commercial. I wonder what this is about.
(11:49):
Same thing with ad blockers. Literally putting them in our browser so that
we don't see any ads. When we see an ad
on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, we're scrolling right past it. Once we notice that
it's an ad, we either see the sponsored or, like, subliminal messages.
Go, it's an ad, and we just keep scrolling, right? Then there's you
and your small business trying to post, and people are
(12:11):
thinking it's an ad. And what do we do with ads? We've already decided we're
skipping them. Okay, so your takeaway.
I know this is a little emotional, but people don't want to be
convinced of something they don't want. Okay, I mentioned this last week
with my labubu episode. The reason why Labubu is doing
so well is because people want it, so they bought it. Okay?
(12:32):
How can you be that? You need to figure out why people want your thing
and just show up reminding them that it exists and
making them feel seen in that process. You don't necessarily
need to orchestrate desire, but you definitely need
to connect with them on a human level and go, if this is
your problem, we've all been there. This is the solution,
(12:54):
okay? They want to feel seen and understood.
And I think that this is why certain things like there's this de influencer
trend happening, de influencing trend happening, where
we've all been convinced to buy something because some influencer somewhere said it was
amazing. Then we bought it and we were like, why do we waste our money
on that? So now there's people literally de influencing you,
(13:18):
which is also still influencing you. But
they're literally saying, I bought this things, here's why I didn't like it, or here's
why you don't need it. But low key, a lot of them are saying, buy
this other thing instead. Just from marketing standpoint, got to say it. I got to
say it. It's not that they're convincing you, it's that
they, they're showing up thinking the same thing you're thinking and you feel
(13:40):
like, I'm not the only one thinking this. Thank goodness. Okay? You feel
seen. People want to feel
related to and they want honesty way more than
they want like perfect framing and lighting and all of that stuff. They
want an honest interaction with someone, especially
with how AI is on the rise. Right? And yes, can be a
(14:03):
powerful tool. But at the end of the day, I don't want to
speak to the robot. Press 0 to speak to customer service human, please.
Like, that's just me. And I think that's a lot of people too. Okay? So
yes, yes, social media is
crowded. Yes, social media is at the top of the funnel. But we don't
also we don't want to be sold to as like social
(14:25):
conventions are shifting. Okay, this is
another one y' all aren't going to like. Entertainment
is the new engagement. Okay?
Entertainment is a new engagement. So when I teach social
media, when I taught it for a long time and to this day there are
some of my pre recorded stuff still says that I used to keep the five
(14:46):
pillars of content. I still teach it to some extent. But one
of the pillars is educational content. And this pillar right
here, educational content is shifting. I'm not saying
people don't want to be Educated. I'm just saying they won't. Don't
want to be like, eat your vegetables. Okay. They don't want to be shamed into
doing something. It's more of infotainment.
(15:08):
Okay, so share the infotainment or edutainment. Can we go
edutainment or infotainment? It's like, share the info,
but, like, make it cute. Share the info but, like, give me a funny
story or do it with a trending meme or give me,
like a cute vlog style moment. Okay. You don't have to be a
comedian. I'm not saying you have to, like, do scenes and stuff. I'm
(15:30):
not the type of person who's like, gonna do multiple characters. I've tried
it. It just takes me way too long
and I don't have time for that. I don't have time for it. The people
who can do it go off. You're doing amazing. Me, not for me.
I am much better at just turning on the camera and
talking. And I've learned to
(15:54):
layer in a level of this new infotainment
edutainment angle. So what I mean by that. Give us the behind the
scenes. Give us the reality TV show version of our business.
Reality TV shows are very popular for a reason.
Why? We're nosy. We're nosy. We want
other people's drama. Okay. We want to see the mess. We want to see
(16:16):
the process. Show me how that sausage is made. Okay? And so I
think that with social media specifically, there's so
much content we can consume. If I see a video where
someone's like, here's how you can.
I'm already like, I don't want. I have too much stuff I need to fix
already. Don't tell me to fix something else that I'm doing wrong that I don't
(16:37):
know yet. Okay. I skipped past it. But if someone had a video
that said, okay, listen, I'm trying to convince my toddler to eat
carrots. And this is how I convince my toddler to eat carrots. I'd be like,
oh, tell me more. How did you convince your daughter to eat
carrots? This is something that I would be interested in
because I want to see how other people are actually doing it. I don't want
(16:59):
something theoretical. Here's how one can
convince one's toddler to eat carrots already. I feel like I'm behind.
But if someone said, okay, I tried everything, this is the thing that works for
me, I'd go, I want to see what works for you. So I can determine
if I want to try it or not. This is infotainment,
edutainment, content versus
(17:22):
just straight up educational content. Now I'll put
a huge asterisk on this because I still think educational
content has a role in this. But the
simple shift that I predicted last year that has come true this year
is we're shifting away from how to content
towards how I content. That simple shift can
(17:45):
really make a connection with your
ideal customer or client because now they don't feel
ashamed into making a change. They're just along for their
nosy little journey. And you get to be the one that helps them see a
different way to do things without putting them at the
center of it necessarily. You're actually showing you're,
(18:07):
you're actually just being a freaking human. This is how we exchanged information
in my ancestors day. We weren't writing things down. We,
we didn't have, you know, libraries and libraries of books available to
every single person. We didn't have Google at our fingertip. We would
just have to go to our neighbor and be like, howdy, neighbor, what you up
to today? Oh, here's what I tried in my yard. Oh, I'm gonna try it
(18:29):
too. You know, and that's, that's kind of where we are. It's like a human
thing, you know. Okay, so last thing
I want to talk about before I get into the down and dirty of what
you can post today is this concept I've been thinking about for
a long time that I haven't talked about before, which is
the content middle class. So
(18:50):
there is a weird sweet spot right now where there's like high
class content, which I'm talking, I'm talking like
a studio quality film production, scripts.
It still works. Okay, it takes a lot of time and money, but
we all still like to see it. We like to see high production, highly
produced content. I mean, come on, we still watch Netflix for that
(19:13):
reason, right? We like it. But then on the
low, I hate low class. Maybe I need to come up with a different way
to say this, but on the other end of that highly produced content
is like low production quality content. Think
face time with the bestie. Think. I just woke up like this
and I rolled out of bed and I posted it. It's messy, it's spontaneous, it's
(19:34):
rots. I just had a thought that works
extraordinarily well and that's where I tend to hang out is in that
low class, low brow, low quality content. Okay,
there is this mid tier that's like semi Polished,
that's not doing as well. And my
YouTube videos are here. They do fine on YouTube. I'm talking
(19:58):
short form, like TikTok,
like Instagram, you know, the.
The talking head style videos where
I kind of have my setup, but, you know, it's not. It doesn't
have the aesthetic that other people have. That stuff
isn't working as well. Okay. This mid tier
(20:21):
level of content is disappearing. Semi polished, semi planned.
It looks like you're trying too hard and you didn't quite hit the
mark. Okay. And not saying there's anything
bad about this content. I love it. I still create it. Something about
y' all consuming it, we don't want to see it. So I think it's
better to deliberately go on the lower end of the
(20:43):
content production value than try to go on the high end,
because that takes so much time, energy and effort. And at the end of
that, you could still get the same results potentially. So this is what
I'm calling this middle tier of content. I said middle class.
I don't like that middle tier. This middle tier of content is like disappearing.
So what do we do? What do we do about all of this information? First,
(21:07):
because of the low production value, you
actually can create content quicker. But I
do need it to be more thoughtful. Okay, More thoughtful
content. We're calling this
high concept, low production content. Okay.
High concept, meaning you've considered
(21:30):
the target audience, their language, what
they want, their desires, what they don't want, the result that they're
looking for, where they are now, you, you understand their attention
span. You know them so intimately that when they
consume your content, they're like, this is me, this is me,
and we are the same. Okay. Lots of thought
(21:53):
goes into it, but it's a low production
content. I'm talking. It looks like you took a screenshot of your notes app.
I'm talking you FaceTime video videos. I'm talking,
you know, off the cuff threads, posts that feel like a stream of
consciousness. Those types of content pieces
are working extraordinarily well right now. And the more
(22:15):
specific you can be, the better. Okay.
It's still. It's still high thought, but it's low
production value. Okay. Working so well right
now also. What's working well right now? Post less,
post less. Whatever you're posting, drop it in half. I went from
five posts a week down to two posts a week. And my posts are getting
(22:37):
more engagement. And they look, if you go to my Instagram
right now, they look like they have less production value
intentionally, because that's what's working better right now?
Okay, so I'm posting two times a week over on Instagram,
two on LinkedIn, sometimes. One, my thread strategy
is still the same, to be honest. I may even be posting more over there,
(22:59):
but it's more like stream of consciousness. I'm just spraying, praying, throwing everything
at the wall. It's like my messy drafts folder
meets my podcast, like voice chats with my besties.
And I actually have more stuff in my drafts right now than I
have posted for probably the first time ever. Because there are some
(23:19):
content pieces that I spent way too much time on. And I look back at
it and I go, this isn't going to work well. Or it's not the
time to post this. Or I have one right now where I just feel like
I was, like, complaining. And I feel like there's a time and a place where,
like, complaining works on social media. It's just I'm not feeling that vibe right
now. Either way, I'm taking more time to
(23:41):
think through my content, Read the room a little bit,
be a little bit more reactionary, but post way,
way, way less. Okay, so more
thoughtful, less production, less
quantity, more quality. Okay,
now the other thing that I mentioned that I want to linger on for a
(24:03):
little bit is being more reactionary. This
is, I think, one of the biggest missing pieces right now because
marketers, myself included, used to teach these content calendars.
And again, nothing wrong with a content calendar. I love a good content calendar
moment. However, some of us are planning a little bit too far
into the future, and it kind of comes across that way.
(24:26):
And this is where that mid tier content is coming from. Because it
looks like you tried really hard and it looks like you tried
really hard, and we kind of go, oh, that's nice. How cute of
you. You know, I'm talking like
I used to love, and I still do. I love a good styled canva
graphic. Just, I just want to eat it up. I love it. And
(24:48):
y' all don't love it anymore. You look at it and you go, this is
an ad from a small business scroll. And
so it's not working. And that's me
reading the room. You also have to read the room.
You know, major events happening in the world, read the room. Maybe don't
post that day. If there are
(25:10):
trending topics happening in your industry, read the room,
react to the trending topic. If there is some sort of
meme that's circling, read the room, react. So recently
we had this whole scenario with the CEO of
Astronomy, who
astronomer who was seen with an executive at a Coldplay
(25:32):
concert. Y' all know the one all the memes came from that.
People loved it. I was sharing memes with my husband too. We, we had a
good time. But. And any content
that wasn't like, along that vein kind of seemed
like you weren't in the same conversation. Right? And I'm not saying you have to
join every conversation. You just need to read the room on what's happening.
(25:54):
So it kind of feels like everyone's having a conversation and then you're changing
the topic to something so unrelated
that people are like, okay. And then the conversation just
dies a little bit. Okay, so read the room
with that. I will also say join more conversations.
(26:14):
This is a con. This is a suggestion. I have time and time again
with my small business owner friends. Okay. We
love a good. Like, I posted it and then sit and watch and wait
and going. I hope someone like, leaves me a comment and likes my
post and I go, are you leaving comments? Are you liking
posts? It feels very much like you're at a networking
(26:37):
event and you want to hand out all your business cards and don't want to
take nobody else's business card. It's not reciprocal.
Okay? So we need to have a reciprocal emotional relationship here
with social media. And a lot of times that is actually giving more than
you get. Okay? So for me, for
instance, I spend way, way, way, way, way, way, way more time
(26:58):
in my DMS than I ever do creating content.
Y' all don't see that because it's dark social media. Dark social media
is the hidden social media interactions that you don't see on a day to day
basis. Not just DMs, but I'm talking sharing, saving
posts, those sorts of things that you can't see publicly. You can see when someone
likes it. You can see when someone comments. We all can see that you can't
(27:20):
see the DM conversation behind the scenes. Now, there's
a few, like, technical reasons why this behind the
scenes participatory content works.
One, you're spending more time on the app. And I don't care what anyone says,
you get rewarded for how much time you spend on the app. Okay? If you
spend a lot of time on Instagram, Instagram's going to show your post to more
(27:42):
people. It's why sometimes people say post X, Y, Z number of times a day.
Because it's just because you're spending so much time on the app. Like you're
on there every day, night and day, and you get rewarded for
how much time you spend on there. That's just how it is, especially frequent time.
So day over day over day two,
you. When you start interacting with someone on the
(28:04):
app, you both start seeing each other's posts more.
So if I interact with you, you interact with me. Now we're seeing each
other's posts more frequently. So the more people you interact with, especially
if you vary that interaction, the more chance they have of seeing your
post. So there's a lot of reasons why this
works, but I think at the end of the day, what it is is just
(28:25):
natural humanness. Again, at play for the win
is we just like people. And
when we like people, we interact with their posts more.
It's not like, groundbreaking, I know, but it's just one of those things
that we kind of discredit a little bit. We. We want to, especially as
(28:46):
business owners who have so much to do, we would just love
post our little posts on Instagram and just say, come buy my
stuff. And then people see it and they come buy our stuff. Like, that's
what. Ultimately, that's what we want to do. We just want people to buy our
stuff. If it were that easy, we'd all be millionaires. Just takes a
little bit more time. Okay? Give it that time to do so and be
(29:08):
social in your communities.
Last thing I'll say before I get to like my quick Hot Takes moment. These
are just the thoughts that didn't make it into the notes. Like, into my outline.
Carousel posts, voiceovers, videos,
audio. People keep asking me, like, what's the best thing to post?
(29:29):
And my answer is that to that is to post a variety of
things. Y' all hate this answer. Post a variety of things. Like, from a
technical standpoint, different styles of posts work better at different given
moments. So right now I'm recording this on July
31, 2025. If you're on Instagram, you
better be posting carousel posts. For most accounts, those carousel
(29:50):
posts are doing slightly better than reels, though
reels are still high up there in terms of consumption and
engagement. Okay, so I'm not saying don't post reels. I'm just saying a good mix,
carousel and reels tend to work best. If you're posting all
different types of content, all different styles, you
get rewarded more. So if you're posting carousels and reels, a
(30:12):
static post and stories, you will get rewarded more by the platform.
The delivery, though, reflects how people consume it.
So depending on the information that's available, you may want to present it in a
different way. One of the tests that I love doing
is taking the same content and putting it in different formats to see how it
perform. So I'll take a topic and write it as a carousel post. Then I'll
(30:35):
do it as a reel, then I'll do it as a story, and I'll see
which performs the best. And then whatever performs the best, I'll do a little bit
more of that than the other formats. I keep telling people
this, too. I'm on my soapbox today, y'. All.
It varies by account, by niche, by industry, even
within the same industry, I've observed the same
(30:56):
strategies working completely different on different accounts.
Everyone's experience is different. So, yes, I can give you kind of
trending advice, like, here's what's generally happening.
But it's all a spectrum, right? Some of us are on this side, some of
us are that side, some of us are in the middle. So all the advice
works for us. So whenever I. Whatever I'm saying today, I want you to
(31:18):
take it, try it, look at the data, see if it works for you, and
then adjust. All right, I've got some quick, hot takes for you. These
didn't, like, quite fit into my outline, but
it's like a rapid fire. Okay. People keep saying AI generated
content is the problem. It's not the problem. Lazy AI generated content
is a problem. Okay, I can tell you right now, half of my threads
(31:41):
posts come from these podcasts. So this podcast right here, I'm going to put it
into AI and say, give me, like, 40 different
ideas that I can post to threads and then I'll tweak them and post them.
That's AI content, y'. All. It A robot helped me put this
together. Now, the thoughts came from me because it came from my notes and my
outline, but I don't have time to re listen to this
(32:02):
and then individually type up all of the thoughts that I think
could possibly make a threads post. I don't have time.
So I put it into my Cast Magic tool. It gives me a bunch of
things back. I use, like, half of them, I schedule them out, and away we
go. Okay, so it's not AI that's a problem. It's lazy
AI that's a problem. To me, it's like Botox.
(32:25):
I used to work at a spa, a day spa that offered
injectables. The people who came in and got Botox,
99% of them looked amazing. You can't even tell if I said that
person has Botox, you'd go, really? Yes.
Y' all just notice the 1% of people who either
got a bad Botox job or did it way too much. And it just looks
(32:46):
a little like Uncanny Valley, right? Y' all are looking at these
AI posts and going, oh, that's definitely AI. I can tell you right now a
lot of it is produced by AI. Doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad
thing. It's just like the lazy generic AI content that y' all like.
Okay, hot take two hashtags.
They're not as important anymore. We spend too much time on
(33:08):
hashtags. We spend too much time on time of day. What time of day should
I post? What hashtag should I post? They're not that important.
The algorithms, another robot behind the scenes, are
so much smarter than they were two years ago, they're smarter than they were five
years ago, and they're actively trying to match your content
with your people. Looking at the content itself, if you're recording a video video,
(33:29):
it's looking at the words in your video. If you have a carousel post
with text in the post, it's looking at that, it's looking at your captions.
So what you need to do is make sure all of that is clear first
and foremost. Okay. Hashtag can be a seasoning. It's
great. It's just not as important as it used to be. It is not the
main dish. So make sure that the content in your post
(33:50):
accurately represents what you do or what you want to be about.
And then the AI algorithm will try to
match you with the person who would maybe like that post. Okay?
Three text based platforms are making a comeback. I
know everyone loves a good video moment. I'm a video galley, I love it.
However, threads and LinkedIn are having a moment. Okay.
(34:12):
Threads, short form, stream of consciousness. I'm just
chit chatting. It's having its moment. LinkedIn, y' all are
discounting LinkedIn. There's a lot of money to be have over in LinkedIn, a lot
of buying decisions. You definitely don't have to post as much, but you've got to
be a part of the community and you have to find your people because again,
there are some lazy AI generated content out there that just looks,
(34:33):
I don't know, clickbaity. And it's not for me, and it's not for you probably
too. So you got to find your people and be in community with them.
Long form content is still having a day in the sun.
In fact, I'm seeing more of my clients shift to more long form
content and less shorter form Content. I know for me, for
(34:53):
instance, I produce about equal amount. So I have
two newsletters, I produce a week, I have this podcast. And then
when I'm really going, I have a YouTube video as well.
That's more long form content than short form content. Okay? And so for me,
long form, like bingeable content, is working really well for me.
I know I said attention spans are shifting, but when your people
(35:15):
find something they love, we want the whole series. We want
multiple series. Okay? If you're like me, you're like, and I see like
one or two episodes of something, I'm like, I'll wait, I'll wait till the whole
series is done, that I'll go watch it. The same thing is for your people
when they find your podcast, your YouTube channel, your substack, whatever it
is. We're going through the archives, babe. So when you think about
(35:38):
your long form content, I want you to think about it as bingeable.
People are loving that right now, especially for blog posts.
Okay, so those are my hot takes. But I don't want you to feel
discouraged at the end of this thinking like, oh, woe is
me. It's not as important. The main takeaway
for me, for you, that I want you to have is
(36:01):
that social media one is just a part of your marketing ecosystem.
It's a part, it's a. It's an important piece, but
it's not the biggest piece of your marketing. It plays a
significant role, but it's more of like a supporting actress role, less main
character. Okay, you need to decide what the main character of your marketing
is. Where do you spend the most time, who's going to win the awards,
(36:23):
and then the supporting character helps them get there. Okay, that'll be
very helpful for you. Two, it's not that your content
isn't working. It's not that you're bad at it. It's just that the rules have
changed and you haven't changed with it. I used to teach make
sure you post three to five times a week on Instagram. That is no longer
necessary, nor do I advise it for a lot of my business owners that I
(36:44):
work with. If you have less than 10k followers, especially not
post that much, you're spending too much time creating content.
Okay. Three, take a look at your data.
Y' all hate data, insights, metrics, whatever you want to call.
Feels like stepping on a scale. I know, I don't like that scale number either,
(37:05):
but sometimes gotta do a little check in just to see where you're
actually at and not where you feel like you're at.
So check in with your data. Look long
term, don't look at just one post. Look at a collection of
posts and see what the trends are in your own
data. Okay, what surprises you? What did it? What can you
(37:28):
do more of what didn't? And even look at the emotional data points that
are really hard to look at when you're looking at the metric.
So for me, for instance, whenever I post about my kids,
those posts go off. Emotionally though,
I don't like it, so I don't do it. So, like, yeah, the data could
say, Andrea, post a kit, a photo of your kids. Everyone's gonna love it. I
(37:50):
don't love it, so I'm not going to do it. So you've got to also
check in with yourself too. All right, my friends,
I hope that you're excited that you don't have to post as much on social
media. I hope that your, your wheels are
turning about how you can really create an experience that
works really well for you on social media media. And I hope that you're ready
(38:10):
to figure out who the main character of your marketing is so that social media
can play the supporting role that it's meant to be. If you want to learn
more about this, I'm definitely talking about this next week, so stay
tuned. In the meantime, can you leave a five star review on Apple podcasts or
Spotify keeps us in the top 100 marketing podcasts. And that's all
because of your support, my friends. I'll see you next week. Bye for now.
If posting on social media is feeling a little bit of shouting into
the void energy, then this episode is for you. I'm
recording it especially for a lot of you because you voted on
this topic in my Instagram polls. If you don't know what the
heck I'm talking about, make sure you follow me on Instagram at online Drea so
you can choose the next episode too. But today we're talking about
(00:22):
what's working on social media in 2025. Let's get into it, but first,
a word from our sponsor. Riverside is the all in one
podcast recording and editing tool that I use for this right here
show. I use it to edit not only the audio in the video, it is
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so, so easy. Plus, I love their
(00:45):
Magic AI clips. Their little AI
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Resizes them for social media. So those vertical videos you see on
TIKT and Reels, those all come from Magic AI inside of
Riverside. It's literally one click. It spits out 10 clips.
(01:07):
I picked the best one and away I go. Saves me so much time. If
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Welcome to the Mindful Marketing Podcast. I'm your host, Andrea Jones and I'm all about
simpler, smarter marketing solutions for busy ass people like you
(01:29):
and me. And I gotta say, my preamble today is
I have been taking care of my skin and y', all,
I'm not wearing any foundation today and I feel glowing.
That's just my little like personal update I sell my lipstick on. Duh.
But I have been playing around with like different skin care options,
(01:49):
drinking more water and I have to say I'm loving
it. I may have to try the like no foundation
makeup strategy more in the future. If you're watching this on YouTube,
give me some love. Give me some love in the chat because I need some
external validation today apparently. Okay, let's talk about social
media content because I got this question
(02:11):
specifically from a couple people, actually one person in my membership, one
person in threads who is like, listen,
I feel like I'm posting, I feel like I'm checking off the box. I feel
like I'm doing what exactly what I'm supposed to be doing and ain't nobody seeing
my posts. And I was like Girl, same. So if that's you,
let's talk about it. The changes that I've made in my marketing this year. Year.
(02:33):
The changes that I'm recommending you make in your marketing this year so we can
finish out 2025 with a bang. But before I get into the
suggestions, I do have to set the stage for everything. And I don't mean
this as like an excuse. I'm just trying to give you all
the facts, right? Because the reality of the situation is we're
in a post peak attention economy, okay? So
(02:55):
what I mean BY that is 2020 happens. The. The
pandemic happens. Two weeks to crush the curb turns into two years across the
curve, okay? We're still struggling with COVID to this day. At least we
don't have massive shutdowns that we were having back then.
Because of that, though, we had a lot of
attention on digital during that time.
(03:18):
Social media, podcasts, YouTube. We were connecting in digital
ways that we literally had never done to that extreme ever
before in the history of time. This is the Same time where TikTok blew
up, y'. All. People were going absolutely viral on TikTok again and
again and again because we all were watching it, especially for
those of you, like me, who are in Canada, and we were shut down for
(03:41):
damn near two years. Okay? It was tough. It
was tough. So that attention economy
led to more content that has been produced than ever.
And even now, more content is being produced than it ever has
been. More people are posting than they ever have.
Okay? So what that means is there's less attention
(04:03):
to go around because at the same time, right
now, we're experiencing a tiny little collective
burnout. You may be feeling it too, where you're not spending as
much time on social media as you used to. You're choosing
to, like, I don't know, go outside and touch grass. I know I have been,
especially since it was like, pandemic then. I had two kids in
(04:26):
three years. And so now that I'm on the other side of that, My oldest
is 3 years old. I'm like, okay, okay. I'm. I'm in my outside
era. I was in my homebody era for a while, and I love that journey.
For me, now she's outside girl. So
spending less time on the Internet, just as it were.
And a lot of us are. We're overloaded with content,
(04:47):
which equals to content fatigue. So
we're all feeling that more content's being produced, but we're actually
consuming a little bit less.
And I don't want this to to sound like
nobody's consuming content because we are. Like I said
back in my day, okay, this is tmi. Those of you who've heard this on
(05:09):
the podcast before, pretend this is the first time I'm sharing this. But back in
my day, there used to be little books
next to the toilet with like jokes or like a magazine. And
if you didn't have that book, you were staring at nothing, my friend.
This was back in my day. Now we all
take our phones to the bathroom and pretend that this is not kind of gross,
(05:31):
that we're literally poop scrolling. We all do it. Don't
act like you don't do it. We all do it. We don't sit in silence
and stare at nothing anymore. Okay? So that means we're all consuming a lot of
content. We're just more selective about the content
we're consuming because frankly, there's a lot of it. So we have way more
choice. And two, we scroll, scroll, and then we move on with
(05:53):
our day. Okay? So you've got to keep that context in mind
when you're creating your content. How are people consuming it?
They may be poop scrolling too.
Should I brand it? Hashtag poop scrolling? Let me
stop before I get myself in trouble. Okay, so that's where we are right now.
I now have to talk about the shifts that are happening marketing wise as well.
(06:16):
Because of that stage setting moment, social media is
back at the top of the funnel. During the pandemic years, we were
all buying on Temu like it was going out of style.
Wish.com, amazon package delivery,
set it, forget it. We would see an ad and we'd go, sure, why not?
People are getting a little bit more discerning about their
(06:38):
purchases. We're also in an economic downturn, which
definitely affects a lot of industries. It impacts us and
our buying decisions. So the golden age of I post on
Instagram, I make a sale instantly is kind of
slowing down, could be over, maybe it could make a resurgence.
But here, now and today, it's not
(07:01):
a credit card machine, a slot machine,
if you will, it is more of a billboard. And this is
not old news, okay? I think we've got a little bit spoiled by
the economic booms of the pandemic and all that PPP
money that kind of flooded the economy and
gave us that boost. Okay, we're not there
(07:23):
anymore. Sorry, girls. Sorry, babe.
We're not there anymore. So what we have to do is be
aware that our social content is more of a
billboard, less of a vending machine slot machine moment.
Okay, so it's not, you know, press B5 and
you spit something out. It's more of you pass by the sign
(07:44):
four times before you go, oh, yeah, I meant to buy that. Okay, so
think more awareness. First impressions. Know, like,
and trust the role of your content marketing and your social
media marketing is for someone to go, huh, that's interesting.
Or, huh, I want to learn more. It's less of like, I want to give
you my money immediately here now and today. And. And that
(08:07):
varies person to person. Okay, it varies. It varies a lot.
But we're trending more towards the huh, that's
interesting side of things when it comes to how we all interact
with media. So smart business owners are treating
social media like the top of their awareness funnel.
That means people find you, they watch your video,
(08:30):
they look at your carousel posts, they. They see your posts on threads, and they
follow you to go, maybe I'll see more about this person.
Then you post some more. You. You share about your offers, how you work with
your people, and then they go, huh,
maybe I will visit their website. They sign up for a lead magnet or freebie,
10% off coupon, whatever the case may be they're getting for a while,
(08:52):
and then they go, huh, maybe I'll buy. Okay, so you see how it
goes from huh, I interested into, huh, maybe I'll buy.
These are all very technical terms, of course, and
it takes longer that buying process. The
timeline from I don't know you to I want to give you my money just
is taking a little bit longer. Okay, so I want you to
(09:14):
treat your social media posts almost like an invitation to a party.
It's like, hey, do you want to get to know me better? Come
on in the water. Fun. It's not a,
hey, I just met you. Would you like to be best
friends? That feels a little aggressive, right? I always like to use my dating analogy
here. I've been using this analogy for 11 years, y'. All. The
(09:36):
dating timeline got a little bit shorter during that pandemic, and we got used
to it. But it always remains that
you meet someone, you see if there's a spark or connection.
There's an indefinite time period where they get to know you. Then
you take things to a deeper relationship. This indefinite time period is the thing that
people struggle with the most, because for a while there,
(09:59):
we met someone, we went on one date, and we were like, yep, this is
our one. Boom, bada bing, we're done. That
indefinite time period was a lot shorter now it's okay, I need five dates,
and then maybe. And so
it just takes a little bit of wooing. Okay. It takes a little bit of
taking care of yourself, being the best person you can be so you can track
(10:21):
your right mate. Wow. I love what I did with that. Okay,
so that's the first thing is social media is top of the funnel. Second thing
is, we don't like to be sold to. Ain't nobody
likes ads. Okay, this is another. Back in my day, Moga. Back in my
day, I remember when TiVo came around and y' all youngins don't even know
what this is. Oh, I feel so old. Internet granny moment here. Come
(10:44):
Gather round, children. TiVo was when we used to
record our TV shows. Because we only can watch them live. We record
the TV shows. And one of the benefits of recording was, yes, we could watch
later whenever we wanted to, because otherwise you missed your show.
Okay. I remember rushing home to watch TV shows. It's so
silly now when I think about it. You record your show, so you watch later.
(11:06):
But the benefit of TiVo, the other one is you could fast forward through those
commercials. Girl, listen. The way we
loved fast forwarding through commercials was slightly
unhinged. Like, we got so excited to, like, fast forward to
commercials because up until that point, you had to either watch the commercial
or the commercial was when you went to the bathroom, you got yourself a new
(11:27):
drink, a snack, whatever, right?
But the same is happening now. It's just in a different format.
So what happens is we go to YouTube, we watch a video, and we're like,
watching the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, countdown, so we can hit skip and
skip on over to the video we wanted to watch in the first place. We're
not going. Oh, exciting, a commercial. I wonder what this is about.
(11:49):
Same thing with ad blockers. Literally putting them in our browser so that
we don't see any ads. When we see an ad
on Facebook or Instagram or whatever, we're scrolling right past it. Once we notice that
it's an ad, we either see the sponsored or, like, subliminal messages.
Go, it's an ad, and we just keep scrolling, right? Then there's you
and your small business trying to post, and people are
(12:11):
thinking it's an ad. And what do we do with ads? We've already decided we're
skipping them. Okay, so your takeaway.
I know this is a little emotional, but people don't want to be
convinced of something they don't want. Okay, I mentioned this last week
with my labubu episode. The reason why Labubu is doing
so well is because people want it, so they bought it. Okay?
(12:32):
How can you be that? You need to figure out why people want your thing
and just show up reminding them that it exists and
making them feel seen in that process. You don't necessarily
need to orchestrate desire, but you definitely need
to connect with them on a human level and go, if this is
your problem, we've all been there. This is the solution,
(12:54):
okay? They want to feel seen and understood.
And I think that this is why certain things like there's this de influencer
trend happening, de influencing trend happening, where
we've all been convinced to buy something because some influencer somewhere said it was
amazing. Then we bought it and we were like, why do we waste our money
on that? So now there's people literally de influencing you,
(13:18):
which is also still influencing you. But
they're literally saying, I bought this things, here's why I didn't like it, or here's
why you don't need it. But low key, a lot of them are saying, buy
this other thing instead. Just from marketing standpoint, got to say it. I got to
say it. It's not that they're convincing you, it's that
they, they're showing up thinking the same thing you're thinking and you feel
(13:40):
like, I'm not the only one thinking this. Thank goodness. Okay? You feel
seen. People want to feel
related to and they want honesty way more than
they want like perfect framing and lighting and all of that stuff. They
want an honest interaction with someone, especially
with how AI is on the rise. Right? And yes, can be a
(14:03):
powerful tool. But at the end of the day, I don't want to
speak to the robot. Press 0 to speak to customer service human, please.
Like, that's just me. And I think that's a lot of people too. Okay? So
yes, yes, social media is
crowded. Yes, social media is at the top of the funnel. But we don't
also we don't want to be sold to as like social
(14:25):
conventions are shifting. Okay, this is
another one y' all aren't going to like. Entertainment
is the new engagement. Okay?
Entertainment is a new engagement. So when I teach social
media, when I taught it for a long time and to this day there are
some of my pre recorded stuff still says that I used to keep the five
(14:46):
pillars of content. I still teach it to some extent. But one
of the pillars is educational content. And this pillar right
here, educational content is shifting. I'm not saying
people don't want to be Educated. I'm just saying they won't. Don't
want to be like, eat your vegetables. Okay. They don't want to be shamed into
doing something. It's more of infotainment.
(15:08):
Okay, so share the infotainment or edutainment. Can we go
edutainment or infotainment? It's like, share the info,
but, like, make it cute. Share the info but, like, give me a funny
story or do it with a trending meme or give me,
like a cute vlog style moment. Okay. You don't have to be a
comedian. I'm not saying you have to, like, do scenes and stuff. I'm
(15:30):
not the type of person who's like, gonna do multiple characters. I've tried
it. It just takes me way too long
and I don't have time for that. I don't have time for it. The people
who can do it go off. You're doing amazing. Me, not for me.
I am much better at just turning on the camera and
talking. And I've learned to
(15:54):
layer in a level of this new infotainment
edutainment angle. So what I mean by that. Give us the behind the
scenes. Give us the reality TV show version of our business.
Reality TV shows are very popular for a reason.
Why? We're nosy. We're nosy. We want
other people's drama. Okay. We want to see the mess. We want to see
(16:16):
the process. Show me how that sausage is made. Okay? And so I
think that with social media specifically, there's so
much content we can consume. If I see a video where
someone's like, here's how you can.
I'm already like, I don't want. I have too much stuff I need to fix
already. Don't tell me to fix something else that I'm doing wrong that I don't
(16:37):
know yet. Okay. I skipped past it. But if someone had a video
that said, okay, listen, I'm trying to convince my toddler to eat
carrots. And this is how I convince my toddler to eat carrots. I'd be like,
oh, tell me more. How did you convince your daughter to eat
carrots? This is something that I would be interested in
because I want to see how other people are actually doing it. I don't want
(16:59):
something theoretical. Here's how one can
convince one's toddler to eat carrots already. I feel like I'm behind.
But if someone said, okay, I tried everything, this is the thing that works for
me, I'd go, I want to see what works for you. So I can determine
if I want to try it or not. This is infotainment,
edutainment, content versus
(17:22):
just straight up educational content. Now I'll put
a huge asterisk on this because I still think educational
content has a role in this. But the
simple shift that I predicted last year that has come true this year
is we're shifting away from how to content
towards how I content. That simple shift can
(17:45):
really make a connection with your
ideal customer or client because now they don't feel
ashamed into making a change. They're just along for their
nosy little journey. And you get to be the one that helps them see a
different way to do things without putting them at the
center of it necessarily. You're actually showing you're,
(18:07):
you're actually just being a freaking human. This is how we exchanged information
in my ancestors day. We weren't writing things down. We,
we didn't have, you know, libraries and libraries of books available to
every single person. We didn't have Google at our fingertip. We would
just have to go to our neighbor and be like, howdy, neighbor, what you up
to today? Oh, here's what I tried in my yard. Oh, I'm gonna try it
(18:29):
too. You know, and that's, that's kind of where we are. It's like a human
thing, you know. Okay, so last thing
I want to talk about before I get into the down and dirty of what
you can post today is this concept I've been thinking about for
a long time that I haven't talked about before, which is
the content middle class. So
(18:50):
there is a weird sweet spot right now where there's like high
class content, which I'm talking, I'm talking like
a studio quality film production, scripts.
It still works. Okay, it takes a lot of time and money, but
we all still like to see it. We like to see high production, highly
produced content. I mean, come on, we still watch Netflix for that
(19:13):
reason, right? We like it. But then on the
low, I hate low class. Maybe I need to come up with a different way
to say this, but on the other end of that highly produced content
is like low production quality content. Think
face time with the bestie. Think. I just woke up like this
and I rolled out of bed and I posted it. It's messy, it's spontaneous, it's
(19:34):
rots. I just had a thought that works
extraordinarily well and that's where I tend to hang out is in that
low class, low brow, low quality content. Okay,
there is this mid tier that's like semi Polished,
that's not doing as well. And my
YouTube videos are here. They do fine on YouTube. I'm talking
(19:58):
short form, like TikTok,
like Instagram, you know, the.
The talking head style videos where
I kind of have my setup, but, you know, it's not. It doesn't
have the aesthetic that other people have. That stuff
isn't working as well. Okay. This mid tier
(20:21):
level of content is disappearing. Semi polished, semi planned.
It looks like you're trying too hard and you didn't quite hit the
mark. Okay. And not saying there's anything
bad about this content. I love it. I still create it. Something about
y' all consuming it, we don't want to see it. So I think it's
better to deliberately go on the lower end of the
(20:43):
content production value than try to go on the high end,
because that takes so much time, energy and effort. And at the end of
that, you could still get the same results potentially. So this is what
I'm calling this middle tier of content. I said middle class.
I don't like that middle tier. This middle tier of content is like disappearing.
So what do we do? What do we do about all of this information? First,
(21:07):
because of the low production value, you
actually can create content quicker. But I
do need it to be more thoughtful. Okay, More thoughtful
content. We're calling this
high concept, low production content. Okay.
High concept, meaning you've considered
(21:30):
the target audience, their language, what
they want, their desires, what they don't want, the result that they're
looking for, where they are now, you, you understand their attention
span. You know them so intimately that when they
consume your content, they're like, this is me, this is me,
and we are the same. Okay. Lots of thought
(21:53):
goes into it, but it's a low production
content. I'm talking. It looks like you took a screenshot of your notes app.
I'm talking you FaceTime video videos. I'm talking,
you know, off the cuff threads, posts that feel like a stream of
consciousness. Those types of content pieces
are working extraordinarily well right now. And the more
(22:15):
specific you can be, the better. Okay.
It's still. It's still high thought, but it's low
production value. Okay. Working so well right
now also. What's working well right now? Post less,
post less. Whatever you're posting, drop it in half. I went from
five posts a week down to two posts a week. And my posts are getting
(22:37):
more engagement. And they look, if you go to my Instagram
right now, they look like they have less production value
intentionally, because that's what's working better right now?
Okay, so I'm posting two times a week over on Instagram,
two on LinkedIn, sometimes. One, my thread strategy
is still the same, to be honest. I may even be posting more over there,
(22:59):
but it's more like stream of consciousness. I'm just spraying, praying, throwing everything
at the wall. It's like my messy drafts folder
meets my podcast, like voice chats with my besties.
And I actually have more stuff in my drafts right now than I
have posted for probably the first time ever. Because there are some
(23:19):
content pieces that I spent way too much time on. And I look back at
it and I go, this isn't going to work well. Or it's not the
time to post this. Or I have one right now where I just feel like
I was, like, complaining. And I feel like there's a time and a place where,
like, complaining works on social media. It's just I'm not feeling that vibe right
now. Either way, I'm taking more time to
(23:41):
think through my content, Read the room a little bit,
be a little bit more reactionary, but post way,
way, way less. Okay, so more
thoughtful, less production, less
quantity, more quality. Okay,
now the other thing that I mentioned that I want to linger on for a
(24:03):
little bit is being more reactionary. This
is, I think, one of the biggest missing pieces right now because
marketers, myself included, used to teach these content calendars.
And again, nothing wrong with a content calendar. I love a good content calendar
moment. However, some of us are planning a little bit too far
into the future, and it kind of comes across that way.
(24:26):
And this is where that mid tier content is coming from. Because it
looks like you tried really hard and it looks like you tried
really hard, and we kind of go, oh, that's nice. How cute of
you. You know, I'm talking like
I used to love, and I still do. I love a good styled canva
graphic. Just, I just want to eat it up. I love it. And
(24:48):
y' all don't love it anymore. You look at it and you go, this is
an ad from a small business scroll. And
so it's not working. And that's me
reading the room. You also have to read the room.
You know, major events happening in the world, read the room. Maybe don't
post that day. If there are
(25:10):
trending topics happening in your industry, read the room,
react to the trending topic. If there is some sort of
meme that's circling, read the room, react. So recently
we had this whole scenario with the CEO of
Astronomy, who
astronomer who was seen with an executive at a Coldplay
(25:32):
concert. Y' all know the one all the memes came from that.
People loved it. I was sharing memes with my husband too. We, we had a
good time. But. And any content
that wasn't like, along that vein kind of seemed
like you weren't in the same conversation. Right? And I'm not saying you have to
join every conversation. You just need to read the room on what's happening.
(25:54):
So it kind of feels like everyone's having a conversation and then you're changing
the topic to something so unrelated
that people are like, okay. And then the conversation just
dies a little bit. Okay, so read the room
with that. I will also say join more conversations.
(26:14):
This is a con. This is a suggestion. I have time and time again
with my small business owner friends. Okay. We
love a good. Like, I posted it and then sit and watch and wait
and going. I hope someone like, leaves me a comment and likes my
post and I go, are you leaving comments? Are you liking
posts? It feels very much like you're at a networking
(26:37):
event and you want to hand out all your business cards and don't want to
take nobody else's business card. It's not reciprocal.
Okay? So we need to have a reciprocal emotional relationship here
with social media. And a lot of times that is actually giving more than
you get. Okay? So for me, for
instance, I spend way, way, way, way, way, way, way more time
(26:58):
in my DMS than I ever do creating content.
Y' all don't see that because it's dark social media. Dark social media
is the hidden social media interactions that you don't see on a day to day
basis. Not just DMs, but I'm talking sharing, saving
posts, those sorts of things that you can't see publicly. You can see when someone
likes it. You can see when someone comments. We all can see that you can't
(27:20):
see the DM conversation behind the scenes. Now, there's
a few, like, technical reasons why this behind the
scenes participatory content works.
One, you're spending more time on the app. And I don't care what anyone says,
you get rewarded for how much time you spend on the app. Okay? If you
spend a lot of time on Instagram, Instagram's going to show your post to more
(27:42):
people. It's why sometimes people say post X, Y, Z number of times a day.
Because it's just because you're spending so much time on the app. Like you're
on there every day, night and day, and you get rewarded for
how much time you spend on there. That's just how it is, especially frequent time.
So day over day over day two,
you. When you start interacting with someone on the
(28:04):
app, you both start seeing each other's posts more.
So if I interact with you, you interact with me. Now we're seeing each
other's posts more frequently. So the more people you interact with, especially
if you vary that interaction, the more chance they have of seeing your
post. So there's a lot of reasons why this
works, but I think at the end of the day, what it is is just
(28:25):
natural humanness. Again, at play for the win
is we just like people. And
when we like people, we interact with their posts more.
It's not like, groundbreaking, I know, but it's just one of those things
that we kind of discredit a little bit. We. We want to, especially as
(28:46):
business owners who have so much to do, we would just love
post our little posts on Instagram and just say, come buy my
stuff. And then people see it and they come buy our stuff. Like, that's
what. Ultimately, that's what we want to do. We just want people to buy our
stuff. If it were that easy, we'd all be millionaires. Just takes a
little bit more time. Okay? Give it that time to do so and be
(29:08):
social in your communities.
Last thing I'll say before I get to like my quick Hot Takes moment. These
are just the thoughts that didn't make it into the notes. Like, into my outline.
Carousel posts, voiceovers, videos,
audio. People keep asking me, like, what's the best thing to post?
(29:29):
And my answer is that to that is to post a variety of
things. Y' all hate this answer. Post a variety of things. Like, from a
technical standpoint, different styles of posts work better at different given
moments. So right now I'm recording this on July
31, 2025. If you're on Instagram, you
better be posting carousel posts. For most accounts, those carousel
(29:50):
posts are doing slightly better than reels, though
reels are still high up there in terms of consumption and
engagement. Okay, so I'm not saying don't post reels. I'm just saying a good mix,
carousel and reels tend to work best. If you're posting all
different types of content, all different styles, you
get rewarded more. So if you're posting carousels and reels, a
(30:12):
static post and stories, you will get rewarded more by the platform.
The delivery, though, reflects how people consume it.
So depending on the information that's available, you may want to present it in a
different way. One of the tests that I love doing
is taking the same content and putting it in different formats to see how it
perform. So I'll take a topic and write it as a carousel post. Then I'll
(30:35):
do it as a reel, then I'll do it as a story, and I'll see
which performs the best. And then whatever performs the best, I'll do a little bit
more of that than the other formats. I keep telling people
this, too. I'm on my soapbox today, y'. All.
It varies by account, by niche, by industry, even
within the same industry, I've observed the same
(30:56):
strategies working completely different on different accounts.
Everyone's experience is different. So, yes, I can give you kind of
trending advice, like, here's what's generally happening.
But it's all a spectrum, right? Some of us are on this side, some of
us are that side, some of us are in the middle. So all the advice
works for us. So whenever I. Whatever I'm saying today, I want you to
(31:18):
take it, try it, look at the data, see if it works for you, and
then adjust. All right, I've got some quick, hot takes for you. These
didn't, like, quite fit into my outline, but
it's like a rapid fire. Okay. People keep saying AI generated
content is the problem. It's not the problem. Lazy AI generated content
is a problem. Okay, I can tell you right now, half of my threads
(31:41):
posts come from these podcasts. So this podcast right here, I'm going to put it
into AI and say, give me, like, 40 different
ideas that I can post to threads and then I'll tweak them and post them.
That's AI content, y'. All. It A robot helped me put this
together. Now, the thoughts came from me because it came from my notes and my
outline, but I don't have time to re listen to this
(32:02):
and then individually type up all of the thoughts that I think
could possibly make a threads post. I don't have time.
So I put it into my Cast Magic tool. It gives me a bunch of
things back. I use, like, half of them, I schedule them out, and away we
go. Okay, so it's not AI that's a problem. It's lazy
AI that's a problem. To me, it's like Botox.
(32:25):
I used to work at a spa, a day spa that offered
injectables. The people who came in and got Botox,
99% of them looked amazing. You can't even tell if I said that
person has Botox, you'd go, really? Yes.
Y' all just notice the 1% of people who either
got a bad Botox job or did it way too much. And it just looks
(32:46):
a little like Uncanny Valley, right? Y' all are looking at these
AI posts and going, oh, that's definitely AI. I can tell you right now a
lot of it is produced by AI. Doesn't necessarily mean it's a bad
thing. It's just like the lazy generic AI content that y' all like.
Okay, hot take two hashtags.
They're not as important anymore. We spend too much time on
(33:08):
hashtags. We spend too much time on time of day. What time of day should
I post? What hashtag should I post? They're not that important.
The algorithms, another robot behind the scenes, are
so much smarter than they were two years ago, they're smarter than they were five
years ago, and they're actively trying to match your content
with your people. Looking at the content itself, if you're recording a video video,
(33:29):
it's looking at the words in your video. If you have a carousel post
with text in the post, it's looking at that, it's looking at your captions.
So what you need to do is make sure all of that is clear first
and foremost. Okay. Hashtag can be a seasoning. It's
great. It's just not as important as it used to be. It is not the
main dish. So make sure that the content in your post
(33:50):
accurately represents what you do or what you want to be about.
And then the AI algorithm will try to
match you with the person who would maybe like that post. Okay?
Three text based platforms are making a comeback. I
know everyone loves a good video moment. I'm a video galley, I love it.
However, threads and LinkedIn are having a moment. Okay.
(34:12):
Threads, short form, stream of consciousness. I'm just
chit chatting. It's having its moment. LinkedIn, y' all are
discounting LinkedIn. There's a lot of money to be have over in LinkedIn, a lot
of buying decisions. You definitely don't have to post as much, but you've got to
be a part of the community and you have to find your people because again,
there are some lazy AI generated content out there that just looks,
(34:33):
I don't know, clickbaity. And it's not for me, and it's not for you probably
too. So you got to find your people and be in community with them.
Long form content is still having a day in the sun.
In fact, I'm seeing more of my clients shift to more long form
content and less shorter form Content. I know for me, for
(34:53):
instance, I produce about equal amount. So I have
two newsletters, I produce a week, I have this podcast. And then
when I'm really going, I have a YouTube video as well.
That's more long form content than short form content. Okay? And so for me,
long form, like bingeable content, is working really well for me.
I know I said attention spans are shifting, but when your people
(35:15):
find something they love, we want the whole series. We want
multiple series. Okay? If you're like me, you're like, and I see like
one or two episodes of something, I'm like, I'll wait, I'll wait till the whole
series is done, that I'll go watch it. The same thing is for your people
when they find your podcast, your YouTube channel, your substack, whatever it
is. We're going through the archives, babe. So when you think about
(35:38):
your long form content, I want you to think about it as bingeable.
People are loving that right now, especially for blog posts.
Okay, so those are my hot takes. But I don't want you to feel
discouraged at the end of this thinking like, oh, woe is
me. It's not as important. The main takeaway
for me, for you, that I want you to have is
(36:01):
that social media one is just a part of your marketing ecosystem.
It's a part, it's a. It's an important piece, but
it's not the biggest piece of your marketing. It plays a
significant role, but it's more of like a supporting actress role, less main
character. Okay, you need to decide what the main character of your marketing
is. Where do you spend the most time, who's going to win the awards,
(36:23):
and then the supporting character helps them get there. Okay, that'll be
very helpful for you. Two, it's not that your content
isn't working. It's not that you're bad at it. It's just that the rules have
changed and you haven't changed with it. I used to teach make
sure you post three to five times a week on Instagram. That is no longer
necessary, nor do I advise it for a lot of my business owners that I
(36:44):
work with. If you have less than 10k followers, especially not
post that much, you're spending too much time creating content.
Okay. Three, take a look at your data.
Y' all hate data, insights, metrics, whatever you want to call.
Feels like stepping on a scale. I know, I don't like that scale number either,
(37:05):
but sometimes gotta do a little check in just to see where you're
actually at and not where you feel like you're at.
So check in with your data. Look long
term, don't look at just one post. Look at a collection of
posts and see what the trends are in your own
data. Okay, what surprises you? What did it? What can you
(37:28):
do more of what didn't? And even look at the emotional data points that
are really hard to look at when you're looking at the metric.
So for me, for instance, whenever I post about my kids,
those posts go off. Emotionally though,
I don't like it, so I don't do it. So, like, yeah, the data could
say, Andrea, post a kit, a photo of your kids. Everyone's gonna love it. I
(37:50):
don't love it, so I'm not going to do it. So you've got to also
check in with yourself too. All right, my friends,
I hope that you're excited that you don't have to post as much on social
media. I hope that your, your wheels are
turning about how you can really create an experience that
works really well for you on social media media. And I hope that you're ready
(38:10):
to figure out who the main character of your marketing is so that social media
can play the supporting role that it's meant to be. If you want to learn
more about this, I'm definitely talking about this next week, so stay
tuned. In the meantime, can you leave a five star review on Apple podcasts or
Spotify keeps us in the top 100 marketing podcasts. And that's all
because of your support, my friends. I'll see you next week. Bye for now.
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