I published a 6-minute voice memo on the podcast this week, sharing a question that's been on my mind:
Are we nearing the end of a golden age of content discovery?
Social media feels harder lately – specifically Instagram, TikTok, and X. It certainly feels different. So I started asking myself why that is.
Learning from the past
In talking to hundreds of creators on the podcast, I've noticed that timing plays a huge role in people's success. Not the only role, but an important one.
There are massive benefits when you're early to something that becomes popular. Specifically, when there is greater demand than supply, those supplying the resource win big.
People who were early to SEO captured a huge amount of search traffic.
A wave of blogs and bloggers caught the wave of Facebook's early reach for publishers (Buzzfeed, Upworthy, Tim Urban, etc).
For most creators today, new audience discovery comes from social media. Engaging, short-form content that gets in front of new audiences, converting them into followers.
We've benefited from nearly two decades of growth in social platforms. As more and more of the world comes online and join these systems, content creators benefit from the influx of new content consumers.
But that growth won't last forever – at least not at the same pace we've grown accustomed. New consumers will slow down or maybe even opt out as we learn more about the negative impacts of social media on humans.
The question is: where are we in that lifecycle?
Understanding the present
Platforms have also evolved quite a bit in the 2020s. Namely, they've adopted almost universally a "For You" feed at the center of the product. As Jack Conte shared in his 2024 SXSW address, "Death of the Follower," followers are less and less important in a platform's decision on what content to share with consumers.
Historically, someone choosing to Follow you on any given social media platform would make it more likely they see your content than people who DON'T follow you (or people THEY don't follow). Increasingly, though, the Follow factor matters less and less. Instead, platforms are simply trying to show you the content most likely to hold your attention (regardless of whether you currently follow that account or not).
A quick scroll through your For You feed in any app will show you that the majority of posts are not from the same people you follow. The same is true for your followers – they're being fed the most engaging content possible, regardless of whether they're following the creator or not.
This isn't all bad – it means that anything you publish could hit big, regardless of your current follower count. In fact, some of my creator friends have described their recent experience on X as very binary – viral or flop (with very little in between).
Increased odds of virality sound good, right? But, if you take it a step further, what happens when something you publish goes viral? Historically, this means a big jump in followers. Which is what we wanted, because followers were typically those who see and engage with your posts.
But...as followers matter less and less...a glut of new followers also means less and less. For many of your followers to see your content, it needs to prove engaging to the people who initially see it (a small sample of your most engaged followers).
We used to see a certain baseline reach correlated with our follower count. The higher our follower count, the more engagement we'd see with our posts (on average). But it seems we're losing any "baseline" reach in favor of these two binary outcomes – huge success or huge disappointment.
So what should we do?
Looking toward the future
If you believe (like I do) that baseline reach on social media is increasingly unreliable, that doesn't mean you should ignore social media. What it does mean is that the follower journey has changed.
Historically, clicking "Follow" was the first step towards seeing more of your content on that platform, and eventually, you could move that follower deeper into your ecosystem. It's the GaryVee jab, jab, jab, right hook. But it's getting harder to land those jabs, so how can you right hook them?
The goal is to try and shorten the time between 1.) discovering your work and 2.) bingeing that work. As social media pushes you to make your content more broadly appealing, you also need to think about how you pull that person from the end of one piece of content OUT of the feed and into YOUR ecosystem.
It's hard! Direct calls-to-action in a social media post make it less likely the post will succeed. And yet, without a direct call-to-action, there's almost no real value in the success of that post.
Here's what I'm thinking about...
Series
This is what makes series content so compelling. When I enjoy part one of a story, I'm eager to watch part two. If you have a format I enjoy, I want to go binge more of that format.
→ Watch Pat Flynn's "Should I open it?" series
DM Automation
This is why ManyChat automations are powerful and increasingly pervasive on IG. Without requiring a CTA in the content itself, the caption or on-screen text tells the viewer how to take the next step.
→ Watch my interview with Natasha Willis about this
LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, and Substack
There's no debating how much video has grown across all platforms. But in X's slow, painful decline, it seems like there have been some encouraging new text-first platforms. Despite my overall somber tone in this essay, I'm actually encouraged by what I see on LinkedIn, Threads, Bluesky, and Substack Notes. Even YouTube's community tab is underrated.
YouTube
Because social media For You feeds seem to prioritize broad content, niche interest content (like most educational content) is getting harder to break through. That's not as true on YouTube, which seems to do a better job of profiling viewers and recommending specific videos for their interests.
Another plus for YouTube is how much longer your videos can be. On Instagram or TikTok, if someone likes your video, they'll quickly reach the end of it. To spend more time with YOU specifically, they must leave the feed and visit your profile. On YouTube, if they watch 6 minutes of your video, they can just...keep watching. You can spend a lot more time with the viewer more quickly.
Conclusion
My social media bias may be showing here. Social has never been my strength, but I try to source a lot of input from my friends who are much better at social. People generally seem less optimistic about social media than in years past.
This doesn't mean you should give up on it. It doesn't mean there's no value. It's just harder, and I don't know if I see it getting easier to build a business on social.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again:
The goal of social media is to decrease your dependence on social media.
Success on social should grow your relationship platforms in email, podcasting, SMS, or private communities. If you have a large audience on social but you don't have a relationship platform in place, I'd prioritize creating one. Every creator should build an email list (I'm an affiliate and investor in Kit).
If you've already built a relationship platform, ask yourself, "What if I COULDN'T reach anyone new?" How would your approach to your current audience change?
And even if discovery gets harder from here, that doesn't mean you can't succeed as a creator. Some of the biggest, most influential creators in the world are podcasters, and podcast discovery has always been abysmal. How did they do it? Dogged consistency, unwavering belief in their mission, and the slow compounding of word of mouth.
Those things will always be available to you – so keep going!
