Social media once promised a level playing field where any brand—big or small—could connect directly with its audience. Early adopters found these platforms a fruitful ground for building loyal communities, fostering trust, and establishing their brand identity. As a brand, posting consistently and authentically allowed you to nurture a dedicated following who truly cared about what you had to say.
Then Came Advertising
As platforms matured, the landscape changed. Advertisers became the primary revenue drivers, and social media platforms evolved to capture as much advertising revenue as possible. This shift fundamentally altered how brands must engage online.
Then Came Customer Support
As social media use exploded, so did the expectations of consumers who flocked to these platforms. With many brand touchpoints at their fingertips—Facebook pages, Instagram DMs, X mentions, LinkedIn posts—customers increasingly demanded swift, knowledgeable, and empathetic responses, no matter the venue. This influx of requests, comments, and complaints quickly outpaced the capacity of traditional customer support models, forcing brands to overhaul their approach.
Beyond just hiring more staff, companies invested in robust CRM systems, chatbots, and social listening tools to streamline their multi-channel responsiveness. Instead of funneling all inquiries into a single inbox, brands had to meet customers exactly where they were—on their platform of choice—with the same level of attention and care. This required a coordinated strategy that ensured consistent messaging and service quality across multiple networks.
The cost was high regarding financial investment and the time required to train and empower customer support teams. Yet, for many brands, this was no longer optional. The social era set new standards for accessibility, placing the onus on companies to engage quickly and meaningfully wherever conversations happened.
Then Came Algorithms
The explosion in the volume of content posted every hour necessitated a filter—an algorithm. While the initial idea was to serve only the most relevant, interesting posts to users, the reality quickly set in: controversy and sensationalism often win out in attention economies.
Algorithms highlighted posts that generated strong emotional reactions—debates, outrage, and polarizing commentary—rather than simple updates from the brands people voluntarily followed. Suddenly, informative and high-quality brand content was overshadowed by more engaging content.
Then Came Reputation Management
As brands fought to maintain visibility amidst the torrent of algorithmically selected content, reputation management took on unprecedented importance. With platforms instantly highlighting trending positive and negative chatter, brands were compelled to generate favorable public sentiment proactively. This meant constantly encouraging real customers to post reviews, share user-generated content (UGC), and provide genuine testimonials.
The idea was simple: authentic endorsements from satisfied customers could boost a brand’s credibility and visibility, acting as proof points that cut through the noise.
But this shift also introduced new complexities and risks. Reaction times had to be near-instantaneous; a single unhappy customer’s tweet could snowball into a reputational crisis in hours. To avoid potential firestorms, brands invested heavily in social listening tools and community management teams dedicated to real-time monitoring, triage, and resolution.
Compounding this complexity were unethical competitors who strategically employed fake reviews or commissioned fraudulent endorsements on a rival’s page to sabotage their credibility. Brands were forced to not only police their channels but also constantly differentiate genuine praise from orchestrated attacks. The result was another costly, resource-intensive effort to preserve brand integrity, further eroding the promise of effortless organic growth and engagement that once defined social media marketing.
Then Came Pay To Play
As a result… the brand had to pay to play if it wanted to be seen. Brands are now forced to boost posts to get the reach they need to recoup their social media marketing investment.
The rise of sophisticated advertising targeting added a second layer of complexity. Brands who worked hard to build a following on these platforms unknowingly created a goldmine of data that competitors could use to target those very same followers.
Then Came Your Competitors
Demographic, geographic, and interest-based targeting allowed anyone to zero in on a carefully nurtured audience. Instead of organically reaching your fans, you’d have to outbid competitors for the attention of the community you built. The social media giants’ promise of Get closer to your customers evolved into Pay us or we’ll sell your community’s attention to your competitors.
Is it worth maintaining an active presence on a platform if organic reach is nearly nonexistent? More to the point, should they continue feeding platforms with valuable first-party data that competitors can leverage against them?
If a brand is unwilling or unable to invest heavily in boosting posts or running ads, it may be wiser to remove brand-specific pages from certain platforms altogether. This way, a brand with limited organic reach might lose their channel, but it also deprives competitors of easy access to its community via advertising.
Then Came Artificial Intelligence
Another layer to consider is the role of Artificial Intelligence (AI). As brands and communities create and share content, social media platforms feed this data into advanced AI models. This content helps train recommendation engines, fuels predictive analytics, and contributes to more refined user profiles. Over time, these insights become enormously valuable assets, aiding in everything from hyper-accurate ad targeting to creating synthetic content that resembles brand messaging but may never trace back to its original creators. Worse yet, these platforms may profit from this new AI-driven paradigm without providing adequate attribution to the brands and community members who made it possible.
In practical terms, that heartfelt story you posted or the insightful industry discussion you hosted might now serve as raw material for AI-generated campaigns, product recommendations, or even messaging from your competitors, circulating through the same network where you cultivated trust.
While users and followers might still recognize your expertise, the underlying data that once supported your brand’s unique voice has now been co-opted into a feed of generically optimized content. In essence, your brand and community’s contributions help fill the coffers of social media giants who are more than happy to repurpose your intellectual capital—without necessarily giving you credit or financial benefit.
Now Comes Your Decision
This isn’t to say that social media can’t be a part of a smart marketing strategy. It can—and often should—play a role. But the new paradigm demands a recalibration of expectations, budgets, and tactics. Treat it as a true pay-to-play environment, investing strategically to ensure each dollar spent supports measurable outcomes. For those brands without the resources or desire to pay, alternative methods of community building—such as exclusive newsletters, private forums, or brand-owned community platforms—may yield more control and better ROI.
Social Media Engagement Takeaways
Before finalizing your strategy, consider the following actionable insights that can help guide your approach to social media engagement.
Reevaluate Your Social Investment: Determine if the results justify the advertising costs required to reach your community.
Consider Scaling Back Presence: If you are unprepared to pay for visibility, consider removing your brand pages.
Diversify Your Channels: Look beyond major social platforms. Invest in building communities on owned channels like forums, email lists, or membership sites.
Protect Your Audience Data: Understand that competitors can leverage every post and every follower list—decide how much information you’re willing to share on these platforms.
Allocate Budget Strategically: When you do pay for social reach, ensure your messages are highly targeted, your offers are compelling, and that you track ROI meticulously.
In my opinion, it was a calculated and somewhat predatory tactic for social media platforms to leverage the very communities brands painstakingly built—then essentially hold these spaces hostage behind advertising fees, all while selling the same audience segments to competitors.
This approach transformed a once-promising marketing channel into a pay-to-play environment riddled with profiteering. Brands should think hard about whether their social media presence genuinely advances their interests or aids rival companies in poaching their followers. Ultimately, a thoughtful, measured decision could protect your brand’s integrity and the hard-won trust and loyalty you’ve cultivated in your audience.
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Originally Published on Martech Zone: Social Media Engagement: A Controversial View of Investing In Your Brand on Social Media in 2024