The biggest social media shift in a decade

Hey 👋

Welcome to Neighbourhood Post issue #53 - easy to implement digital marketing ideas straight through your metaphorical letterbox.

I hope you’ve had a good week.

For avid readers, you’ll notice this is a few hours late. Sorry - it’s been a busy week, but I couldn’t leave you in the lurch. So here’s a thought in 20 minutes.

We’ll be looking at a seismic shift in social media. 

👉 By the way, if you’ve missed previous newsletters you’ll find them here.

📩 And if you’ve been forwarded this email you can subscribe here.

The death of engagement 💀

Remember this heavily-pixelated guy?

Back in the mid-2000s, Tom from MySpace heralded in the era of social media.

Oh the simple days!

All you had to worry about was who made your Top 8 and which Panic! At The Disco track to have as your profile song.

It was all about connection.

It looks a lot different now.

With TikTok facing banishment, and X haemorrhaging users every month, what’s next?

The data points towards what I’m calling the post-engagement era.

It’s been heading this way for a while.

If we break the social media era down into epochs, it would look something like this:

• Social Media 1.0 - Connecting communities online (2004-2012)

• Social Media 2.0 - Algorithm driven content curation (2012-2023)

• Social Media 3.0 - Passive consumption and entertainment (2024-?)

As people who work in social media, it’s important for us to understand what a post-engagement 3.0 world looks like.

It boils down to this:

High engagement is no longer measured in likes, comments and reposts. Highly-engaged users now passively consume content, with a reluctance to interact with posts, profiles and other users.

The data backs it up.

Instagram’s engagement rate has halved since 2023, and a survey found over 90% of accounts engage “rarely to never”.

Social media in 2025 isn’t about connection, it’s about entertainment.

Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and others aren’t competing against each other, they’re competing with Netflix, Disney, Youtube and other entertainment sites taking big chunks of our time.

Could your social content compete with Netflix?

It’s a huge shift in user behaviour that requires a huge shift in our mindset.

Likes and comments are so integral to our strategies, reporting and objectives, when they mean less to success than ever before.

Being successful on social in 2025 requires thinking differently.

Here’s what we’re advising clients:

• Deprioritise likes and comments as meaningful metrics

• Prioritise two other stats; views and average video watch time

• Bake entertainment and inspiration into the heart of your content schedule

• Invest in mid-to-high level video production

• Observe how your own social media habits have changed

• Communicate to senior stakeholders so they understand the shift

There’s a huge positive to this shift:

Passively-consuming users interact with content, not accounts.

They consume content from accounts they’re not connected to, which presents an incredible opportunity in the way content is served to new audiences.

If you shift your social strategy towards brand awareness, you can ride the wave of shifting user behaviour.

That’s all for this week.

✌️

What we’re looking at 👀 and listening to 👂

📺 Dan’s excited that Severance is back! After a long hiatus, the cliff hangers of the superb season one finale will finally be answered… or will they?

📰 Worried what Sunday’s potential TikTok ban will mean for your brand? This newsletter article explains it perfectly. We don’t think the ban will happen, but creators are looking at alternatives, and audiences will follow.

Before you go - we’ll never use these newsletters to directly sell you our services, but we’re always here if you need any expertise or support 👍