The social aspect of social media is over. Welcome to the age of bite-sized TV.

It's not just you. 

Your feed is changing.

On LinkedIn. On Instagram. On Facebook. 

I can't speak to TikTok because I get my TikToks from Instagram (as any self-respecting elder Millennial does), but a quick Google search says it looks as bleak as Meta. 

The social aspect of social media's disappeared. It's not social anymore, it's "new media." 

It's TV in bite-sized form, the new digital Hit Clips. (Why does no one else remember these?!)

Your friends and family aren't posting as much—and maybe you're not either—because they're engaging less and passively watching more. 

Kyle Chayka, staff writer for the New Yorker, wrote a piece about the decline in active engagement earlier this month (link in comments). 

In an interview last week with the BBC's Katty Kay (link in comments for this too) he said, "If we look at the way things are going, it's a lot of professionalised media. It's a lot of passively watching stuff. We kind of see this merging today of YouTube and TikTok and Netflix into just an unholy combination of audio and video and algorithmic feed."

Which is probably why small business owners are starting to notice that followers do not equal buyers. And they haven't for quite some time. 

If you make really entertaining videos that get lots of likes and comments, that's great! If you're an actor or your business is in the entertainment industry, that is. 

But if you're not in the entertainment industry? When you do the math, it stops mathing.

Take your total number of followers and multiply it by 5%. That's the number of people, at MOST, who're gonna see your post organically to start with. It's probably closer to 1-3%, depending on the platform, the time of day you shared it, whether Mercury's in retrograde, and if the algorithm's still favoring ASMR product reels or cat videos that morning. 

Then check your sales data. How many buyers typically come from social? Ask yourself how much time you spent creating that post, or how much you spent on in-house or outsourced talent to have it made. 

If this math problem just got too bleak for a Wednesday morning, I get it. I felt the same thing today when I read that Bring It On is 25 years old this year. 

Disbelief. 

Insulted. 

Sad. 

What this means for small businesses (and marketers) is a shift in strategy. 

Start thinking of social media as an ad spot and change your tactics accordingly. 

Think about where your community, your buyers, are spending time off of social and how your product or service naturally shows up in that space. 

Find ways to build trust and visibility in-person. 

Remember that customers build relationships with people, not brands. Go be a person. Don't entertain, show up and connect. Mean it. 

Small, engaged audiences convert better than large, passive audiences, so unlike your caffeine habits because what's even keeping you alive at this point, it's reasonable to scale back. 

Need help making the shift? Contact me. I help businesses do just that!