Last month, I wrote a blog post titled ‘content now finds us on social media and this changes everything’. The underlying thesis of the same is that we are now in the ‘interest graph’ era of social media whereby its no longer the number of followers that we have on social media that determines reach and and engagement as was the case previously in the ‘social graph’ era but the ai-enabled algorithms do so. This is the reason today on platforms like TikTok you can have a handful of followers and yet one of your social media posts can end up having millions of views. This is the basic premise of incredibly successful content creators like MrBeast who have mastered the art and science of creating highly performant organic content on social media that reaches hundreds of millions of consumers consistently. 

This insight became apparent in a recent meeting I had with a prospective client whereby they insisted they were happy to go ahead with a social media engagement for a new business they are launching but were adamant that they had no budget for running digital ads. If you have been in digital marketing as long as I have, you will know that it has always been the established rule that you create digital ad creative or social media posts that you then ‘boost’ by buying media placements like Meta Ads (Facebook and Instagram) or Google Ads (Google Search, Display, and YouTube). This is how things have always worked and the same applies to legacy media like TV, Radio, Out of Home, and Print. It’s church and state, so to speak, between the content (creative) and the media (ads). 

However, due to the interest graph, that now permeates the majority of social media platforms ever since their algorithms got rejigged with an ample sprinkling of AI-first approaches, the bias is to show organic content based on what people like to see based on their past and current behaviour on their platforms of choice. This approach is largely driven by the motivation of the social media platforms to ensure you stay ‘locked in’ for as long as possible by constantly rewarding your attention with content you actually like to consume which they can then monetize with digital ads. 

Therefore, this brings me to the whole point of this blog post. If the organic content you publish on social media platforms ultimately determines the reach and engagement it will get then the content and the media are essentially one and the same thing! I had this epiphany earlier this week after meeting the prospective client and what it basically means that it’s now completely possible (and rational) to consider creating social media campaigns where the intent is to never use any paid media to achieve the desired marketing and business results. I know, this is completely counter-intuitive to how things have always been done from a marketing perspective across all media but social media in the interest graph era disrupts this well established status quo. 

So, what does this mean going forward? Since the content and the media are the same thing in our current social media context, the onus is on marketers, brands, and businesses to begin with the end in mind in terms of creating social media content that is designed to perform well organically in reaching the right target audience(s) at scale. This means being incredibly thoughtful (and creative) about every piece of social media content in the context of who it is for and why it is being created and what the desired outcome is before anything is actually started. 

It also means that the days of having social media content and media being ‘siloed’ are over as they are both one and the same thing with any digital ads thereafter being used to simply expand the reach and engagement of the social media content that has already been proven to be effective organically. Ultimately, if one can master this approach it means they may never have to buy media (read: ads) to drive brand awareness and business performance on social media. 

It kind of reminds me of the way that there are brands and businesses that have never needed to buy Google Ads since they have managed to ensure their Search Engine Optimization or SEO generates lots of organic traffic to their websites and as a result lots of sales conversions. This, my friends, is a very big deal!