Those of us who experienced the early days of the internet know it was a simpler time. Our biggest problem wasn’t navigating an overwhelming waterfall of information, it was putting in the work to find great content, then sharing it with our friends.

That’s why, when Facebook and Twitter came along with their personalized newsfeeds and tagging features, we were obsessed. Today, that problem no longer exits, but we’re still clinging to the same old solutions, and they’re not working.

In a recent Wired article, a Millennial internet user was quoted as saying “I basically only use [Instagram] Stories and almost never post on the grid… I’m over it.” That’s the common vibe these days, but the data tell a different story.

Social media usage is up, and more people are spending more time on their screens than ever. But if the newsfeeds aren’t working for us anymore, what’s happening?

The time that we spend on our devices has splintered. Instead of scrolling a single feed, people are on subreddits about their favourite topics, they’re going down rabbit holes on TikTok, and sharing memes in Instagram DMs.

In short, social media in 2024 is messy. That’s not a bad thing, but it complicates things for marketers.

The single-newsfeed world wasn’t easy, but at least it was simple. We knew where our audience’s attention was, and we just needed to figure out how to get our content to show up. That world is in the past.

When you talk to marketers today, however, nearly all of us still think in terms of a newsfeed-driven world. Most of us still spend a lot of time trying to figure out the algorithms and which tactics we can use to earn more reach from the platforms.

A messy social media world is one where there isn’t a tidy place that everyone is hanging out. It’s a wide world of channels, chats, and spaces online that don’t fit neatly into a marketing plan. For us, as users, that’s a great thing, because it means we’ve evolved beyond consuming whatever Zuckerberg’s trough chose to feed us that day, but for marketers, things just got more complicated.

So What?

Embracing the messiness means embracing the idea that there is no magic tactic that will rocket our content to the top of everyone’s screens. Instead, we can take the advice of experts like head of IG, Adam Mosseri, who emphasize that reach comes from shares.

In a messy social media world, content gets found when a small number of people like what they’re seeing so much that they choose to share it with their friends. Those shares are what earn us reach, which then earn us more sharing, and so on.

It’s no longer up to us where our content gets found. Users know how, and where, their friends are spending time, so it’s our job to give them stuff that’s worth sharing, and then trust them to do the work of distributing it for us.