Two newsletters in one week? Wild stuff. Trying to catch up a bit here—between building out my new office, my hoops side-quest, and trying to get a wink of sleep, penning long-form’s been a tough task. But, as the kids say, we are so back. |
Today, we’re discoursing about discourse. We’ll talk about why: |
Social media does not, in fact, constantly change What social changes we should actually focus on What skills to double down on
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—Jack Appleby |
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🚨 Huge social media job alert 🚨 |
Like, $220k - $290k huge. I'm helping Luma Labs hire their first ever Social Lead.
This is a big job. You'll head up their social efforts. That means building their first-ever proper social team, working directly with C-suite, owning all social media efforts across all platforms, collaborating with their Influencer team—it's the wholeeee thing.
The tool is crazy powerful. Basically, Luma builds AI agents for Creatives & Marketers, and it’s specifically built to make high quality video, images, and writing to revolutionize the entire production process.
Some extra fun: you'll be interviewing with me. |
I've consulted for & partnered with Luma this last year, helping them get ready to be special on social. We've laid groundwork and built plans, but it's clear they need a big brain inside the machine.
Apply via this link (and mention me when you do)! Excited to meet ya. |
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"Social media is always changing!!!… except it’s not. |
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“Social Media is always changing!!!”
It’s a phrase constantly tossed around the Social Media Manager world. I do get the sentiment—new features, new platforms, new trends, new algorithm updates, new discourse every single week. |
But honestly… social media almost never changes. Really, it’s only changed three times. And if you feel like it’s always changing, you mighttt be focused on the wrong things. |
The 3 times social media actually changed |
When social moved from desktop to mobile. I’m an elder millennial, so my first social strategy meant kicking a friend outta my MySpace Top 8 so my high school crush could make the cut. They didn’t have Facebook on my Blackberry Curve back then (god, I am aging myself). But the iPhone generation brought social to mobile, and with it reduced attention spans as content suddenly had to keep someone’s attention while on the go. |
When Short-Form Vertical Video took over. TikTok proved the format, everyone else followed, and now vertical video is the default content format across every major platform. This one's permanent, too—I really believe this is the “final” content type. It’s the size of a phone screen, and we’ll always have phones (until they plant microchips in our head, anyway). |
The shift from social graph algorithms (followers) to interest graphs. This is definitely the biggie. Feeds stopped being accounts you elected to follow and became content the algorithms chose for you based on what they know about you. The For You Page fundamentally changed the job—now we gotta assume the person watching our content has never seen us before, has no context, and has no relationship with us / our brands. It made organic social marketers more powerful (our content gets seen by non-followers!) but also meant we have to be better than ever (we’re competing with ALL content, not just whoever else our followers follow).That's how seismic this shift was. Platforms are still trying to figure out how to live with it. |
Those are the 3 seismic social shifts. Everything else is just noise. |
You’re focused on the wrong things |
When I hear “social media is always changing,” I can usually guess how that person’s spending their time. |
If you’re spending tons of time trend chasing, or frantically learning new social features, or being chronically online, or overanalyzing your competitors, or focusing on having a packed out content calendar… that’s not actually gonna help you. That’s all the fast fashion of social. You’re not actually building the most important skillsets. |
You should be obsessing over original content ideas. Deeply understanding emotional insights & the emotional value your product provides your customer. Digging into your own analytics to see which of your content is performing. Mastering hook writing (and not the “14 websites that should be illegal” type stuff, the hooks that are true to your brand). That's the work. |
The fundamentals have never moved |
Even when the big 3 happened, at the end of the day, the job of the social media marketer’s always come down to the same 3 questions: |
How are you immediately getting attention? The hook. It mattered for square photos on 2015 Instagram, it matters in vertical videos in 2026. Yeah, the format changed, but our job was always to figure out how to get the eyeballs to stop a scroll. |
Why would someone watch your content? The value prop. Are you entertaining them? Teaching them something? Making them feel seen? And the answer better not be “because we’re doing a trend”—that’s borrowed value, and basically empty calories. Your content’s gotta have a reason to exist that lives inside your brand, not inside the internet. |
Does your content help someone consider or purchase from your brand? The literal reason we have jobs. We're not making content for fun, we're marketers! The most beautiful, viral, “culturally relevant” post in the world is a failure if it doesn't move someone closer to caring about our brands. |
No matter what new thing’s happening in social media this week, those three questions have always been the whole job, and building skills to hit those fundamentals is far, far more important than “moving at the speed of culture.” |
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