🍣 Where is social headed?

Hey friend – Rob here.

A few weeks ago, while at Frankly Speaking, i stumbled into a pretty neat way of attending a conference and taking notes. The answer? Don't take notes. Send texts. Specifically, find a buddy you can trust (in my case, the spectacularly smart Sheeza Anjum who is also part of the Salmon Crew) and swap your impressions as you go. It's pretty insane the level of insight you might get to by sharing the responsibilities of coming up with it.

Maybe there's a broader lesson in this for strategy as a discipline. Anyway, one for another time.

In short: the event was a banger. No surprises there, the team knows what they're doing. But more importantly, it's the tone through which the whole thing was presented. It's almost like the term "best practices" was banned, and instead there was a whole punk atmosphere to how we can do social in a way that says, fuck your system. This is how we do things around here. Full credit to Michael Corcoran, Beth Thomas and whole team who made it happen.

So, below are 10 things that Sheeza and i discussed and felt were representative of the state of social in 2024. Are these predictions for what will happen? Nope, i don't believe in that. Are they an analysis based on two full stack strategists, who know the fundamentals before getting into the fun part, about how to make the most of the world of social as it is? You bet your sweet Hootsuite Social Trends Report That Says The Same Things With A New Date ass.

Let's go.

In-house vs agencies

Look, here's the truth most agencies don't want to admit. In-house teams know brands better. And in a discipline where speed of execution can make or break an opportunity, ain't nobody got time got endless reviews and over-thinking of "what will make us [the agency] famous". The reality is agencies are still mostly driven by production fees as a revenue model, which limits their incentives to move fast. A possibly useful model is hybrid by nature. In-house brand consistency and execution, external strategic input across key projects. Sorry, content calendar scopes!

Content creation

Two words: lo-fi production. Now, of course, this doesn't mean "crap looking". It does mean that, as Simon Andrews from the Fix newsletter argues, the grammar of different media matters a huge deal. Platform-native tools are not to be shunned. Less "studio time", more scrappy in-platform editing time. We need to overcome our creative ego if we want to stand out in feed. This also means probably more relaxed sign off processes. Forgiveness over permission.

Communities

Buzzword alert! Our thoughts on this: it's great, but not suitable for all brands. The reality is most brands don't need communities. Most brands don't have existing communities to tap into. Community, like purpose, is something that is either baked in the brand and business DNA from the start, or it's very hard to pull it off. Because community, also like brand, should affect more than your comms, it should be a filter through which you think about new revenue models, products and services. Also, communities may not be the same as fandoms. We define communities as a place for shared values. Whereas fandom is much more about shared interests. Want to know the difference? Come chat with us in the Salmon Crew group, it's a good debate to have (or to drop the question and grab the popcorn).

Effectiveness

We (the industry) suck. So. Bad. At. This. Honestly, we need better measurement beyond basic metrics. Especially if we want to be taken seriously by senior people in the business, who – surprise – need to be bought into the journey for us to do the more fun part after. And part of that buy-in is knowing how we'll measure success. And being able to compare that success to other things we could do in our marketing mix. That means going beyond engagement metrics, who, to be clear, are important, just not sufficient. Will write an updated social effectiveness guide soon.

Platforms

A smart take from one of the panellists that made us think hard: focus on platform analysis, not competitor analysis. This felt interesting because it goes against our instincts. Who are we competing with? Well, our competitors surely? Wrong. In social, you're competing with cat videos and random algorithmically-served funny gags. So the real challenge isn't whether we show up as more distinct than our direct competition. It's whether we stand out in a deeply culturally nuanced environment. And those cultural nuances vary wildly by platform. Study them. Diligently.

Distribution

Some smart tactical takes we both agreed were underused. More predictable and already discussed: using organic social for early adopter ideas. And then using paid social to either distribute the ones who do well organically, plus other mass reach messages we need to land. One thing we don't see enough brands doing? Being smart about their broadcast channels, like on Instagram. Apart from Stories, it's one of the few chronologically-organised places you can still reach audiences on social. I feel like there's not enough of a playbook to start understanding how to use broadcasts for you (apart from quite broad "plug our shit here that we already plug elsewhere"). Hmmm.

Team structures

I've long believed that strategy dictates resources, as much as resources dictate strategy. And we rarely ask upfront which is which. The reason this matters? I've seen too many strategies who could indeed work very well, except their delivery is not performing because there's not enough resource to do it well. A more effective way to start? Let the resources you have dictate the strategy you can write, including around channels. Only got people who are good at writing but not so good with video? Maybe this should dictate whether you go to Threads vs Instagram, more than any anecdotal analysis of whether "our audience is there" or not. Many audiences are in most major platforms.

Spontaneity

Another classic. How reactive should we be? I often like to reframe this question by being all etymological about it (did i mention i am a strategist?). Reactiveness means acting on something while not thinking much about it. Whereas being responsive acknowledges the context before you do anything about this. But beyond the point, the fact most brands don't have a "what won't we respond to" framework (that goes beyond politics or religion etc) feels like an under-discussed topic. It's a truism to say our strategy is to not respond to contentious topics. But are there certain non-contentious topics we'd consciously opt out unless there was a clear role for us? Or better yet, what is the opportunity cost of responding to a "relevant enough" trend? What could we be using the team's time for instead?

Customer service

A short one on this but it feels criminal how content strategists don't spend enough time with customer service teams. Whether social customer service or beyond. What a tremendous source of customer pain points, around which we could brief communications and content that would be actually true to something people already feel. More if it pls.

Consistency

There's plenty of evidence now on the importance of creative consistency. If marketers in general get bored of their own brands way before customers get used to them, i'd say this is even more pertinent with social teams. We're so afraid of republishing content just because we've done it before. A useful reframe i saw a few months ago? Don't worry about the few that will see your content twice, focus on the many that will get to see it for the first time.

Whew

That's most of what we discussed. There's more of course, but the lesson was clear. The fact we swapped back and forth on WhatsApp allowed me to export this, Claude AI it into themes (yes this is now a verb), and write about it. I wholeheartedly encourage you to do this as well next time you attend an event with a buddy. So thank you Sheeza. And if you'd like to discuss any of these things with us, come join us on the Salmon Crew private community.