The social media experience, for the most part, sucks for creators. There is no sugarcoating it. At best, Twitter, Instagram and Facebook are necessary evils. At worst, they are a time suck that promise reach in order to get you to hand over your information to Russian and Chinese hackers disguised as t-shirt companies and cryptocurrency traders.
How far back does your experience with social media go? The very early days of Facebook? To Myspace? To Friendster?
No matter the answer, too many organizations and individuals have approached these platforms with a single priority: get the audience to click on a link.
I know JB doesn’t don’t like me to cuss in these columns, but I don’t know a better way to say this. If that’s still the way you think about social media in 2025, then you’re f***ed.
To understand how to shape a social media strategy, you first have to accept the reality that these platforms are not designed to help your business. Maybe they were at one time, but not in 2025. Think about all of the stories and testimony about platforms owned by Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk penalizing users that link to outside websites.
Twitter and the Meta sites want users to stay in their respective universes. Maybe Instagram will show you content from Threads, but it isn’t easy to get your audience to a totally different website with just a click. Elon Musk has acknowledged that Twitter kind of sucks for creators that want to link their audience to their wider portfolio. In fact, for the last two years, Twitter’s algorithm has automatically flagged most links as spam, meaning most of your audience will never even have the opportunity to click on your link.
We are talking about billion dollar businesses here. Do you really think they want to make it easy for users, which is what they can offer advertisers, to go somewhere else?
So I am going to propose a radical idea for your social media strategy in 2025. What if instead of links, you prioritize content? Quit thinking of social media as the interstate and start thinking of it as the destination.
It doesn’t matter if you are creating content for a station or brand or if you are an individual talent. The concept is the same. Social media works best for branding and image building, not as a portal.
Branding has had a mostly successful history. Long before we were online, radio stations and television networks were airing commercials. There was no link to click or QR code to scan. Good content stood out and generated conversation.
A good example of this is a commercial from 1990. I think all root beer is gross. However, I think about A&W regularly because of a commercial that begins with the line “Mr. Dumb Ass, I can bring a lot to Dumb Ass and Dumb Ass”.
It’s been thirty-five years since that commercial came out, but it has staying power. I made an emotional connection to it, because when I was 9 years old, I had never seen anything funnier in my life (Wayne’s World was still two years away). It’s content that matters to me and I have never forgotten what it was trying to sell me.
Common sense tells you video and graphics will always get more attention than links. Bright colors and movement versus plain text? Come on!
Plenty of stations and talent already know that. They are creating funny, interesting, and exclusive content online. Chris Carlin on TikTok and 104.5 ESPN on YouTube are two examples that immediately spring to mind.
Of course they post clips from their shows and in the studio, but they are also creating content exclusively for these platforms. The goal isn’t to get the audience to go anywhere or do anything. It’s simply to entertain them. Doesn’t that sound like a better strategy to build the same kind of loyalty online they enjoy from their radio audience?
The biggest social media platforms don’t want your audience to see your work if it requires your audience to go somewhere else. Keeping their users on their site is the business model, so you have to learn to work within that structure to make social media work for you.
Learn to make graphics, whether it’s with Canva, Photoshop or whatever. Learn to edit video. Check out what programs are out there that can make interesting edits, filters, and other camera tricks easy. There is so much you can do that is so easy when you know what you are doing.
Create content that is worth clicking on and sharing. Let people know in your profile where they can find more of you. Not everyone is going to look for that information, but the best way to give someone a chance to find more of you is to give them a reason to be interested. Links can’t do that.
The truth is that so many of the links you post don’t make any impact. It’s not just the platforms deprioritizing links to outside content. The reality is you can put a link right in front of someone. It doesn’t guarantee that they are going to want or even think to click on it.
Social media has trained us to look around on-screen advertising. The best thing you can do is make creative and interesting content. Your name/brand in the corner will always be there. Getting the audience to click on that and go to your page is a more realistic goal than getting them to click a link to your station page and then have them start streaming.
Scroll through Instagram and TikTok. Plenty of successful creators, both companies and individuals, offer courses to show you what they do that seems to always work.
These courses are cheap too, like $60. They may not be comprehensive, but they will give you a good jumping off point for how to start thinking about your videos. I won’t link to them, but I think One Peak Creative offers a short, simple, and effective course.
The reality of social media is that it will always be working against you. You are simultaneously content and competition for Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg. Don’t let their goals deter your own. Understand the rules of their platforms and make them work for you.
It’s 2025. All media outfits – radio, TV, print, etc – need to be employing departments of people whose job it is to stay on top of algorithm changes for all of these social platforms. That probably isn’t happening in a lot of buildings though.
Change the rules and your goals for social media. If the goal is to get Twitter and Instagram users to click a link that takes them to your website, you’ve already lost. That game is rigged against you. You can win a branding game though. Focus on creating great content and the audience will come to know that is what they will get from you.
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Demetri Ravanos is a columnist and features writer for Barrett Media. He is also the creator of The Sports Podcast Festival, and a previous host on the Chewing Clock and Media Noise podcasts. He occasionally fills in on stations across the Carolinas in addition to hosting Panthers and College Football podcasts. His radio resume includes stops at WAVH and WZEW in Mobile, AL, WBPT in Birmingham, AL and WBBB, WPTK and WDNC in Raleigh, NC.
You can find him on Twitter @DemetriRavanos or reach him by email at DemetriTheGreek@gmail.com.
