The engagement numbers going so far down in social media this year tell a story most brands are missing.

Community is a huge next trend that's coming in. While everyone's scrambling to fix their content strategy, they're solving the wrong problem.

This isn't about algorithm changes or platform fatigue. People want to be in communities. People want to meet like-minded people. We just miss connection, especially after the last four years.

The Social Media Exodus Nobody's Talking About

Everyone's on Instagram and TikTok, but at this point, that doesn't make you interesting. You have to either be where everyone else is but in a different way, or go be where your audience is and no one else is.

The brands still throwing everything at the wall to see what works are really diluting their brand message and overwhelming their audience. They're not really able to follow your brand story when you're creating content for every single bucket you could put it in.

Think about it: when people started selling advertising on podcasts, no one was doing that for a while and there was an audience there. The same opportunity exists now in community spaces, but most brands are too busy chasing yesterday's metrics to notice.

Where Audiences Are Actually Going

You're seeing all of these women's groups and the New York Dad Club and all of these cool things start up because we just miss connection. People want to get out of the house and off their phones, and the brands that embrace that as part of their storytelling are going to really connect.

The shift isn't just about new platforms. It's about new behaviors. People are choosing substance over spectacle, depth over reach, belonging over broadcasting.

Why This Matters for Brands

Broad reach marketing is dying. If you look at video or any piece of media content and the strategy of how you're creating it and where you're putting it, if you're taking a flashy approach without any real substance, you're just going to be attracting the audience that's going to move on to the very next trendy brand thing as soon as it comes up.

Loyalty beats awareness. There's a difference between brands wanting to create authenticity and brand loyalty versus the ones that are just there to sell as much as possible for a short amount of time as possible. The brands that embrace the new and the flashy and the trendy all they're gonna get is consumers that move on from them to the next thing that appears flashy and trendy.

Authentic connection trumps transactional engagement. It costs them nothing to like your post. It costs them nothing to click a link, bookmark, and then leave to never return ever again. That's not engaging with them in the way that they are wanting to show up in the world.

Community-First Strategy Framework

Building real community takes conviction. You have to basically have conviction that this is the story you're telling.

Start with long-term strategy. It's a longer, harder sell and it takes a long-term plan that you can't get halfway through and bail on. You have to commit to the whole plan and know that there will be follow-through. It takes more than one quarter for a good strategy to work. You can't abandon it just because one quarter it's not clicking yet.

Focus on storytelling that builds connection. The stronger stories take the longer time to build. That's kind of like when there's a really good show out there that everyone's obsessed with and they tell you "the sixth episode is where it gets really good and you just have to stick with it." That's all just a part of storytelling and community and long-term strategies.

Meet them in their world. If you're an athletic company, do sporting events with local community clubs. If you're an outdoor company, instead of taking a bunch of influencers on a trip, take real customers. Let them experience it.

Production Implications: Community Content vs Click Content

We're starting to see a lot more events and experiential stuff where you want to get products not just on influencers, but into real people's hands who are going to go out there and be that representative for your brand.

This is about creating experiences that pull people off their phones and into your brand's community, not just their feed. Content that builds communities requires different thinking than content designed for clicks.

Community content is aspirational to their audience. It helps them have the life that they want to live. You're bringing your audience in on your storytelling, letting them know what you have going on, but at the same time helping them live the life they want.

The Strategic Shift

If anything is going to free up more of your budgets, let AI do the lower hanging fruit funnel stuff and focus your money on that bigger goal and on the more solid audience and community that you can build.

You don't want influencers to say "everyone buy this" and then that audience is going to just go buy whatever that influencer tells them to buy next. You want people to buy your product once and then buy something else from you.

The brands that get this right will charge more, prove the quality of their product, and prove that they have this ingrained community that's gonna go out there and influence others. It's free marketing to a certain extent, but more importantly, it's sustainable growth.

Moving Forward

People want to feel connections to their brands. Not just during a purchase moment, but as part of their identity and community.

The brands that figure this out first will build the kind of loyalty that survives algorithm changes, platform shifts, and economic downturns. Everyone else will keep wondering why their engagement keeps dropping while community-first brands build lasting relationships.

The choice is simple: keep optimizing for metrics that don't matter, or start building communities that do.