The Death of Organic Reach What Works Right Now

... you can split test three titles and any combination of all the above. So if you love one of your thumbnails, you could just upload the th- uh, three thumbnails that are exact same but te- split test three different titles, or three entirely different packaging, meaning a title thumbnail combo, maybe a different positioning. So that's, that's radical. (instrumental music) Organic reach has dropped to pretty historic lows, and it's likely not coming back. People say that you just need to post more consistently or you need to create better content. But is that the solution? Today, I'm gonna be joined by two incredible guests who've mastered the art of visibility in an era of algorithms. My first guest is the queen of Facebook, a social media thought leader who's been named by Forbes as one of the top social media influencers. She's also a Facebook marketing expert, speaker, and author of the book, The New Relationship Marketing. Mari Smith, welcome back to the show. Thanks, Mike. It's always a joy to be with you. My second guest is a YouTube expert who's helped creators generate over one billion views. He's the author of YouTube Secrets and the CEO of Think Media, a company that helps entrepreneurs build their influence and income with online video. Sean Cannell, welcome back to the show. Oh, thanks so much for having me. Excited for this conversation today. Both of my guests have been speakers at our events and will be speaking at Social Media Marketing World 2026 coming this April. Mari, when people come to you and they say, quote, "My posts used to get tens of thousands of impressions, and now I'm lucky to get a couple of thousand," what do you tell them? Okay, first of all, it's sheer volume is an aspect of that. There is more content in these feeds than ever before, and there's only so much attention. So that's one thing. There's just so many eyeballs, only so many hours in the day. And social media has really changed, right? So it's no longer the actual social media. It's interest media. It's AI-powered algorithms that are deciding on your behalf what you're interested in and shoving all that in your feed. So yeah, like you just said in your intro, it's all very well to say, "Well, just post better content. " The thing is that it's actually about finding an audience of non-followers. That's one thing that I would recommend people pay attention to on Facebook and Instagram. You can go right into every post, and it's gonna show you how many followers and how many non-followers. So yes, you wanna be recommendable as it's called. And by the way, you mentioned impressions. Um, Facebook has changed that metric to views, and views is the same as Reels plays. It's one millisecond. It's just the moment of time that your content is on the screen. And, and uh, the same with views. The same with... Actually, it's a unified metric for all post types, whether it's carousels, photos, stories, reels, you name it. So yeah, if the views are low with followers and non-followers, it's like there's a mismatch with the resonance of your content. Elaborate on this phrase, interest media, that you introduced when you were- Yeah... answering that question. Yeah, so if anybody remembers Tumblr, (laughs) Tumblr actually... Well, I'm saying remembers, they're still around, right? But they were... And TikTok for sure, the For You page, they really mastered that kind of algorithm. And then of course, Meta is the great copycatter. And they're like, okay, they deployed it on Instagram, now it's fully on Facebook as well. And maybe about half the content that you see in your feeds is from accounts, people, pages that you have never come across. They're just suggested to you, recommended to you because of all the interactions that you've taken across all the Meta properties, including WhatsApp and Threads and Messenger. So this, you know, it's just this giant repository of data points that the algos are going, "Hey, you might be interested in this. " So people get frustrated with that, but it's like, be careful what you interact with because you're gonna see more of that. That's what's meant by interest media. Awesome. Sean, you've been, um, tracking the YouTube algorithm for a while. You wrote a book about it. Um, what do you see happening right now with people that are creating videos? Yeah, you know, there's some interesting trends happening right now. I have some takeaways, but let's talk about three quick case studies. You know, one is, uh, a well-known social media expert that's been in the game for years named Gary Vaynerchuk actually recently launched a new channel. It's a dedicated vlog channel. And if you look at his channel, his most viewed video only has 8,000 views. Now, that's great numbers actually. You know, I think a lot of us would love to get 8,000 views per YouTube video. But this is Gary V with a team of 10, 20, 30 people working on his personal brand. And I think it just reveals that this idea of coming on YouTube and getting millions of views, even if you're at the top of your game, is kind of a thing of the past. Second case study is Linus Tech Tips, one of the biggest tech creators. Recently posted a video that talked about views being down as much as 70%, and their typical videos actually got 1. 5 to two million views. Insane. But they said they dropped down to as little as a million or even

300,000. Now again, if we could get 300,000 views per upload, every marketer listening would be like, "Please. " You know, that's, that's good. But when you think about a 70 plus percent views drop, you just see this trend across the platform. And then recently, third case study, I was in Las Vegas at a creator meetup around the SEMA event. So there was a lot of car creators covering different car content and, um, sales and Dodge Chargers and all this different stuff. Tons of creators and a few personal finance, um, entrepreneurs, marketers, and creators as well. And across the board, they said, "Our views are down. " Now, they also were saying, "You know, we're s- we're still doing okay. Like we're still doing some brand deals, we're still doing business if we have products and services, we're still innovating and adapting," but it was just awareness that across the board, views are down. But I think the takeaways are views are down, but the opportunity is not. It's just being aware that attention is more divided than ever before. And I don't think it's just an algorithm thing. I think it's... Over the last few years, there's been the introduction of YouTube Shorts, which now get over 200 billion views per day. Wow. So there's a lot of attention going there. You've also got AI content, and there's probably a lot of people that don't love watching AI-only content, but a lot of people do. So there's a whole new set of content there. And then you're competing with the whole internet. There's more streaming platforms to watch, there's more different creators to watch. So I think it's just sort of realizing it's more of a maturity. YouTube isn't shrinking. Attention is being divided. And I think that ultimately, the opportunity is still there if you innovate and pivot and, uh, reinvent yourself, which we can continue to talk about. (smacks lips) Wow. Okay. So parallels across the meta platforms that Mari's been talking about, Instagram, Facebook, dot, dot, and YouTube, is we're seeing, um, less visibility, less reach for content. Sean, do you think that it's because there's just this flood of video content coming on YouTube right now because it's so easy to make as a result of AI? Do you feel like that's what's happening? Yeah, you know, YouTube just celebrated its 20th anni- anniversary, and so 20 years as a platform. And they made an announcement. They said, uh, the CEO, Neal Mohan, said, "20 million videos are uploaded to YouTube every single day. " Wow. So that's a lot of content. Now, I think the good news is (sighs) competition is highest for low-effort content, you know, a lot of people that are just posting and hoping to get views, as opposed to crafting their content. And so- Mm-hmm... I'd argue that if you can just get into the top 10% of content, not the top one or 2%, nobody really can compete with that. That's creators with budgets of even millions of dollars and whole production crews. But if you can get in that tom- top 10%, which I believe is accessible to every listener, it's just more rigor, more attention to detail, and there's still a lot of r- 'cause the audience is massive, you know? It's two point billion, uh, 2. 9 billion monthly active users. People still love consuming content on YouTube, of course. It's the number one most watched platform in US living rooms. There's more viewership on YouTube on TVs right now than Netflix or any other streaming platform. So there's a lot of attention to be had, um, but ultimately, i- it's definitely time to update your strategy. Mari, this is, um, a question that's a little off script, but are you finding that a lot of people are multi-purposing content from other platforms onto the meta platforms? For example, taking their YouTube videos and publishing them on Instagram, for example, or taking their TikTok videos and publishing them on Instagram? Could that be part of what's at play here as well? I'm just curious what your thoughts are coming from the meta lens. (laughs) Yeah, the meta lens. Absolutely. It's something I recommend to my students and clients all the time, is, uh, repurpose is king, you know? It's like, okay, you maybe do some long-form landscape content. That sits really well on YouTube. But man, you can repurpose that up the wazoo, (laughs) you know? Just make it in, into the, the vertical clips, and that'll do your YouTube Shorts, your TikTok, your Instagram and Facebook Reels. And, you know, Facebook and Instagram, they're just really competing head-to-head with TikTok, but also with YouTube on the Shorts side. So yeah, I'm, I'm a big fan of repurposing. And you're right. Uh, really meta is now, like, this ecosystem, right? And it's about creating content that will resonate with all the different, including Threads and Facebook and Instagram. So yeah, repurposing, that, that can reduce the overall views. But one of the things, uh, Sean just mentioned Gary Vaynerchuk. One of the things that Gary espouses, which I really am on board with, that we've never had a time in history, in 25 whatever years of social media, where you can test organic

content at scale. There's no such thing as over-posting now that the algorithms are... They're not gonna show every post to every follower. That now you can see what is gonna be your next runaway viral hit. Then you start put an ad budget on that. Sean, isn't it true that... And, and I might be getting... Either one of you chime in here. But I believe that there are people that test some of their content. Maybe it's on Facebook. I'm not 100% sure. Maybe it's on YouTube. Um, and then they decide to put them on the other platforms. I don't know if... Sean, have you ever heard of anybody doing something like this? 'Cause it doesn't... Isn't that a possibility? I'm just... What's your thoughts on this? Yeah, one of the case studies was the... One of the leading video podcasts and podcasts in the world right now is the Diary of a CEO with Steven Bartlett. And they were famous for kind of leaking the information that they would split test as many as 100 different thumbnails. And where you're gonna do that is by doing micro-budgets on paid media to see what the higher click-through rate is. Ah, like Facebook ads, for example. Yeah. And what the, um, workflow was like was they would take their guest and they would have three different facial expressions from their guest, perhaps more, and then they would have about 30 different quotes from the episode, very synthesized text on screen. You know, it says, "Stress is killing you," or it might be some other angle. And they would then try something else and narrow that down to find a winning thumbnail. So it speaks to the level of attention to detail. And this is a massive shift that YouTube just updated, is it g- now creators and entrepreneurs and marketers have the opportunity to split test three thumbnails. That's existed for a while. Now, you can split test three titles and any combination of all the above. So if you love one of your thumbnails, you could just upload the th- thr- uh, three thumbnails that are exact same but te- split test three different titles or three entirely different packaging, meaning a title thumbnail combo, maybe a different positioning. So that's, that's radical. And it's kind of overwhelming, but if you start to shift your mindset, you start saying, "Okay, this attention to detail matters because... "... a video can really either s-succeed or fail based on a different title. It could succeed thumbnail. And how far do you wanna take that? You could go back to old content, maybe that's already performing, and run a fresh thumbnail split test or title split test on it to get it to improve even more. Use the same one, you know, so you have that reference, uh, winner previously and see if you can increase the results, which for established marketers, you can optimize your old library in a vi- video very strategic way right now. Love it. Mari, um, and or Sean, whichever one of you has an example of this, do you have anybody, either it's you guys or someone you know, that has kind of figured it out, cracked the code on how to get organic reach that you think is doing a really good job that you wanna share a story about? Mari, do you have anything? S- sure, I absolutely do. Yeah, I actually have numerous examples. Example I would like to share is one of my VIP clients, Lizbeth. She is a dog trainer. She's @nordicdogtrainer. She's out of Norway. And, uh, up until five years ago, she'd do all her dog training in person, and then she cracked the code to do it all online. And she really does well with the Meta properties, so Facebook predominantly and little bit of Instagram. And she used to do consistent Facebook Lives, like, sometimes daily and, and then, you know, now that Facebook Lives, I don't know if they're performing as well. And of course, Facebook brought out that thing where they're gonna... they take it down after 28 days. Storage, I guess they need the storage. (laughs) But now, you know, all videos on Facebook are Reels, just like Instagram. And so Lizbeth's like she has these strong hoots- hooks, you know, like jump cuts and then mixing it up. Even though Meta would like us to be nothing but Reels, on Facebook is where you can really mix it up and do images, you can do those large font with the background color, you can ask questions, you can do polls, carousels, sometimes cross-posted from Instagram. They don't always do so well. But she's always experimenting and sh- she uses what I call all the things. So stories, always an active story. Um, you know, groups, she has very active groups. And then she does do ads. I know our episode today is dedicated to organic, but I'm a big fan of also bringing in some paid content. And just to plus what you were talking about a minute ago with Sean there, about the testing, stories are a brilliant way to test. You can post as many stories in any one day as you want on Facebook and/or Instagram and see how your audience responds to that. And then on Instagram, they have those trial Reels where it goes out and it finds you an audience of nothing but non-followers. Well, I'm fairly certain that Facebook will bring that over to the Facebook platform sooner or later so we can get a feel for how that runs. So just so I understand this example with, uh, the gal in Norway that has dogs- Yeah... is she going live and then taking the content from the live and m-

slicing it up into different content? Sh- she used to. Was that what I heard you say? She used to do that. She's eased up a bit with the lives and now she's mostly for- focused on the short form. The vertical- Got it... short form. Sean, what's going on in the live video frontier over on YouTube, just out of curiosity? Yeah, I think it depends on the niche and the industry. Um, y- one of the big opportunities that is fascinating on YouTube is vertical live streaming. And just as a consumer of YouTube myself, as you're scrolling through shorts, I'm astonished by the small and new creators that are actively live that come up every 10 to 20 short swipes, and you have the opportunity to click through and join the chat on vertical live streaming. I think vertical live shopping, in general, is a massive thing. And then, it depends on the niche. There's a lot of if you're in politics, education, if you have some kind of entertainment angle. Um, live streaming can be hard to get distribution, but it also is very much alive and well on YouTube. Gaming is still huge, um, and many marketers are leveraging live and getting great results. Any, uh, any examples that you haven't already shared that you wanna share about creators that are really dialing it in on YouTube that might be inspiring to other people? Yeah, I have a great case study, and, uh, here's the big, uh, takeaway and illustration. Those that are winning on YouTube right now understand this one thing: every second counts in the viewer journey. And so I think there's been an over-indexing on the past, uh, in the past of if you get your title right, your thumbnail right, and your hook right, then once you get into the content, people are there and they're gonna stick around. But I think in today's landscape, people are just busy, and if there's... it's starting to get boring in the video, if you feel like you're kind of repeating, you're going down a rabbit trail, you get off-topic, people can bounce and watch something else. They can switch platforms, click on a different video. So it's, it's a lot of rigor, but it's every second counts. So I think it's three things. And this case study is Dr. Jake Berman. His niche is helping senior golfers, um, become pain-free, enjoy the game, start getting better results, add yards to their drives. And so he was working with one of our Think Media coaches, and I think the power there is when somebody gets into YouTube, it feels like an overwhelming landscape. Let alone just creating videos and then thumbnails and all these details, but even mastering the video itself, the structure, the script. And so working with one of our coaches, they really focused on three things, and they architected every detail: mastering packaging, retention scripting, and retention editing. It's like concept to completion, like what's the big idea? What's the title and the thumbnail? And then what is said in the first few seconds of the video? How's the video structured? Trimming the fluff. And I wanna put a caveat and a disclaimer. YouTube still is giving marketers the opportunity to film a video in their car, one take, no editing, packaged well, and get crazy results. It's happening all the time. But at the highest level of the game, those... it's those attention to detail that's really breaking out. And so a recent video that, um, our coach worked on with Dr. Jake got, uh, 20,000 views. His channel has 8,000 subscribers, so it outperformed subscribers. It's still getting around 109 views per hour. It was a 38X outlier on the channel, and the title was Seniors, s- uh, Stop-... starting the down swing with your arms. One audience, one problem, one clear promise, great packaging, and the ROI of a video like that into Dr. Jake's business is off the charts. But, um, Nathan, our coach that was working with him, helped him on every single detail. This was not an accidental outlier video. It was crafted. And so, those that are winning understand that packaging matters and every second counts in the viewer journey. Mari, do you find that the, the things that, uh, Sean just talked about, um, things like first couple seconds of the video, um, thumbnail, um, scripting, and editing matters as much on Instagram and Facebook in your professional opinion? Absolutely. I love that Sean brought this up. It's about retention. It's about watch time. And because I think that many marketing experts out there have beaten this drum about the thumbnail, the title, the first three seconds. And so, people are like really honing that, like, "Okay, we hooked them. We got them. " Okay, now you're, okay, really talk for however many minutes that you want. And, but if you watch that retention graph, it's just, it just plummets within the first, you know, five, 10 seconds and it's like, whoa, you got, you gotta work on your retention. You go to work. I love what you said there, Sean, a minute ago about every second counts. It takes a little bit more work, but it's really, really worth it, because the algorithms are looking at that too. If you're consistently getting really long watch times, people watching to the

end, two minutes, three minutes, however long these things are, then yeah, you're gonna get a lot more reach and views. Mari, do you feel like with, um, uh, Facebook and Instagram it's still just a few minute long videos or can you go, like on YouTube, obviously you can go really long. What's your take on like the typical duration of what you recommend for creating videos these days? Yeah. Instagram, I just wouldn't go much more than about two minutes unless you're doing a live. Um, but Facebook is where I'm still experimenting, where I'm doing similar like a two-minute max, three-minute vertical Reel, but then I'll go ahead and pop a, you know, 10-minute landscape and experiment with it. The nice thing about Facebook is the only platform other than YouTube that where you rotate your phone, if you post in landscape and people are watching on their mobile device, it will actually go full screen when you rotate. Instagram doesn't do that, so I wouldn't ever really put landscape on, on Instagram for sure. But I'm still testing it because, you know, I'll do a landscape longer video, you know, like I say, you know, five minutes, 10 minutes on, uh, Facebook and the little thing will pop up. "You, you could get more reach if you made this vertical. " I'm like, "Aah! " (laughs) Sometimes you just can't win with these things. Sean, do you have any reaction to any of that? I know you're multipurposing across platforms, right? Yeah. I think that, um, platform native is, is very important and I'm very personally active on multiple platforms as well. So, um, on the one hand, I think there's the repurpose strategy still very powerful, especially if you do something like a video podcast and then translating that content into vertical, uh, videos. But I've found on Instagram and Meta Facebook that when I sit down and make platform native content and speak directly to my phone and think about retention, my results aren't like 10 times better, they're like 100 times better if I'm just native on platform and really thinking about, um, the audience there, the behavior there. And I think one of the... I know that all marketers listening to this probably are consuming a lot of social media, but I think one of the mindsets is to, um, go into a season of study and consume content and really ask yourself what's being recommended to you, what are you seeing? And so I, that's a lot of what I reverse engineer is success leaves clues and the content you see performing well is absolutely crafted for the individual platform. So Sean, what do you wanna say to people who are operating off like a 2023 playbook or a 2024 playbook? You know, what does their future look like? Yeah, I think there's like three things. To be honest, I think if you're still operating off of like yesterday's best practices, you still might be doing okay, like you might be serving your l- core audience and you're willing to accept diminishing returns. I had a conversation recently where somebody was just frustrated they weren't getting the same views they were getting in 2021 or 2022 and I was like, "Of course you aren't. " You know, e- everybody was locked down at the time, there was, uh, onl- people only had time to be on social media during that era and now attention's more divided. And I know that results vary between everybody listening, but this creator was used to getting like 100,000 views and now they're getting 10,000. And I think a reframe could be, well, you're still getting 10,000, like what are you doing with those views? And so I think that you need to reinvent yourself if you wanna rise, but perhaps you, you'll be okay. That's the first thing. Do you... Are you okay with the numbers and you just readjust right now? I think the second thing is a lot of people are gonna burn out and that's already starting to happen. Not necessarily a bad thing. Every marketer and business owner is just always measuring ROI and you have to then make the decision, am I going to accept these results, accept these numbers? Am I going to pivot and improve or am I gonna maybe just change my approach entirely? And so some people are abandoning social media to a degree, but I think the third option is to decide to reinvent yourself because, uh, as Mari mentioned earlier, um, this interest media gives brand new accounts a chance to break out. And you can experiment a lot and so you are one video away from having extraordinary results and if you just commit to kind of this new era, it in a way only takes one. Of course you want multiple hits, but you'll look at a lot of the biggest accounts. And you could look at TikTok or look at Instagram and go study their Reels views and see that they're getting 100 views, 1,000 views. And they might get those for 30 reels in a row. But then there's one that has 155,000 and then one that has 866,000. And if your bio is optimized, you understand what your kind of buyer journey, viewer journey is, customer journey, then that's reorienting that it's not every post entitled to reach all your followers. But how many winners do you need? And a couple of those winners can bring so much awareness, you know, new, new

people checking you out, clicking your links, you know, following you, conversations in the DMs. So I think the third group is going to understand that it's changed a little bit, retool their mindset, and then also retool their skill set. Mari, we're recording this podcast interview just days before Thanksgiving in 2025. And probably by the time this comes out, it's gonna be 2026. Um, we know a lot of people that are operating off a game plan that they had learned w- maybe at Social Media Marketing World 2023 or something like that. Mm-hmm. Um, what do you want to say to people that are just kinda stuck using an old playbook? Hmm. Yeah. Well, it's interesting. Sean just had some different categories there. I think two categories here on Facebook would be... So if someone's really cracked the code and their content is hitting that sweet spot, maybe it's a mixture of Reels images and, you know, questions on the background, uh, colors. Or what's a popular format is providing some, some value or some hook in the large font background color, and then putting all the value in the comments. I'm seeing that working really well. So if that... If you're getting some decent reach, some decent views, the algorithm's gonna take care of you. You're posting for topic authority as opposed to chasing followers because you got those non-followers I like to think of as these giant concentric circles. But then on the other hand, if you've got folks, that second category, you're posting sporadically, you've got heavy focus on link posts, you keep putting links, whether it's a video post, an image post, or just a link post, they're the lowest reaching, uh, post format on Facebook, always have been for the longest time. What happens, and I'm seeing folks like this in my audience, they just eventually get discouraged, they get burned out. They're just like, "Ah, Facebook's for old people. Facebook doesn't work anymore. " And they start, like, blaming Facebook that it's, you know, Facebook's fault. (laughs) But it's really still very much alive and kicking. I mean, Zuckerberg's very good at, uh, copying, as I mentioned, and, uh, you know, uh, it's just, it's just difficult to get people to move to, uh, another platform, uh, when they do tend to spend a, a big chunk of their time on Facebook. So it's worth it to dig in and crack the code and find what are the topic... What is the one topic you're an authority on and then to build around that. Gary Vee's often talking about being comfortable sharing your, you know, personal pursuits, weaving that in, so you're this more whole, robust human-to-human, uh, brand as opposed to, you know, more kind of homogenized and only talking about, about one thing. Sean and Mari, one thing I heard both of you say is people are approaching burnout. And, um, I'm just gonna throw this out there. Um, I think that data is your friend. And so many people that are creatively minded don't look at the data. (laughs) Sean, what's your thoughts on that? Do you agree? I agree 100%. I think that, um, it can be a little bit overwhelming. I know for me, uh, the chance to get to learn from both of you and, and Mari is like, I've really mastered YouTube analytics, but as I start clicking behind the scenes in Instagram, I'm like, "Where, where do I even find my insights? How do I look at the range of days and how do I look? " And it can be easy to try to even discern what's happening in your data and be pretty confused. And so, yeah, digging deep in the data, um, is one of those things. What gets measured, gets improved. And Mari mentioned it earlier, that audience retention curve is like the thing. And you're getting summaries on all platforms right now. Meta is telling you, "Hey, you know, your, uh, viewers watched longer than average. They're really, they're really enjoying this content. " You know, and for me, if I can get people's... A lot of times, it's three seconds, whatever the measure is. Oh, they only watch three seconds. If I can get that to like seven, eight, or nine, all of a sudden I'm getting 10 times the views on, say, Instagram Reels. And so, yeah, thinking about the data and audience retention curve is a big one. We see that hockey stick effect, which generally can be normal, but how, how much attention can you hold and retain? And, uh, I know, um, you've had like Adley on here before and, uh, she would talk about, uh, testing also with paid ads when they're doing viral content, even 14-second videos and realizing they would study that by second seven something would happen and they would change that. And it was the difference between virality or the post absolutely falling flat. And so it's a lot of attention to detail, but if you can learn that math and just get 1% better with each post you're crafting, then the results can be exponential. I have always said, and I believe this as a marketer who's also a creator, that there's always opportunity for us to improve. learn from other people. And it's really easy for us to kind of like be myopic and just focused on our craft and say we're the best in the world at what we do. But at the end of the day, if no one is viewing it, (laughs) for

lack of a better words, then you might be the best in the world, but what, maybe what you're not in the best, the best in the world is figuring out how to like actually tap in to give the algorithms what they want. Because when you give them what they want, they're going to give you what you want. And that's one thing I think we hear over and over again. And that's why we have 19 sessions, 19, at Social Media Marketing World 2026 dedicated just to this organic thing, 'cause it's not simple, it's complicated. Um, so Mari, um-What is something that you find very effective, um, right now, either for yourself or for your clients, that's working? Um, if there's just, like, one thing, you know, that- that you wanted to focus in on, what w- what would be the thing that you're experimenting with right now or that you see as something maybe people ought to focus on? Sure, sure. So Meta has really created a- I mentioned ecosystem earlier. So you've got Facebook, Instagram, and Threads, uh, predominantly. Like, if you're scrolling through your Instagram, all of a sudden you'll catch, "Oh, so-and-so just posted on Threads. " They want you to hop over there, and now you're on Facebook. "Oh, so-and-so's posted. " It's like this whole ecosystem. And what Facebook or Meta wants us to do is this- this four-step process. You got your content, you got the eyeballs on it, people watching it, then DMs. Not clicking on external links. Get people into the conversations in the DMs, whether that's Messenger, Instagram, you know, WhatsApp. Threads now has the DMs. Then the fourth part is the conversion. So, and, you know, I think probably Zuckerberg has an agenda with this because they've got the business AIs coming out and, you know, platforms like ManyChat have been around for a long time. I know that Meta works closely with them. You've got other chatbots like that. So they really are a powerful conversion tool, or in- initially a conversation tool. So getting people into the one-on-one DMs is exceedingly powerful way to just build those relationships. And yeah, you can do the automated with the AI, the chatbots, but once you get into real people, Sean was mentioning that earlier, I know I spend a lot of time in the trenches with my community, real me talking, and I don't- I don't use AI for my comments or, you know (laughs), to engage with people or in the DMs. So it's really about building those relationships, and that's what Meta is wanting with this ecosystem is get people into the DMs. Do you have any tips on how to do that? Yeah, well, for starters, you could deploy a system like ManyChat where in your post you'll say, "Comment with the word," you know, "free gift," uh, or whatever the trigger word is, and off they go into the DMs, and it's all automated. But at any point, you can step in there and begin the- the reel. And you can literally say, "Hey, no, this is the real Mari here. You- you know, we were just talking to my bot. Uh, we'd love to- to... You know, here- here's my calendar link. You know, you wanna, uh, book a call with me? Or here's a link to a free download. " And that way, 'cause especially on Instagram, is you don't really have the links, but on Facebook, your links can go in the first comment. But yeah, just those comment trigger words is probably the easiest way to get people into the DMs. Otherwise, you just outright ask them. Or even on Facebook, you can append as a call to action, you can literally say, "You can append the Messenger or the WhatsApp, uh, call to action button. " Love that. And this- this is a distinct advantage that meta platforms have over YouTube, right, Sean? Because there is no DM, uh, on YouTube. Um, just out of curiosity, from your perspective, what is something people should be experimenting with? We know that YouTube has lots of functions and features and capabilities. Um, what's your thoughts on- on something people can try? Yeah, I think we touched on one, which would be improving your videos and every second counts. And here's a metric for individuals. Value per minute. Ask yourself, "What is the value per minute? " Now this could be subjective, but it's how efficient, how many, in a way, dopamine hits are people getting? Like, "Ooh, I learned something. Oh, that was funny. Oh, good story, but not too long," right? How much value can you pack in per minute on long form content? And it's really value per second, especially on sh- short form content. I think also on platform is gonna be, um, there's a new collab feature where two channels can agree to collab on a video and share audiences. Been experimenting with that, and what's cool is you can then see the analytics of it, and yeah. Well, what's your take on that? Do you feel like it- it matters? I feel like, um, it's not revolutionary. Like, um, I was recently... I collabed my podcast channel, which has 350,000 subscribers or something, with a newer channel. And it's not like it made the video skyrocket, um, but it is something to certainly experiment with, and it's one of those s- it's those small things that you could start embracing. Another one is the community tab. I think that most marketers are not using the community tab well, meaning that you can do creative posts to even re-promote and re-educate your newer subscribers about

your old content. I think that when you look at the community tab on YouTube right now, you could do up to 10 square images, like a carousel. Hmm. And if you're doing well built out carousels on Instagram, that c- content could be repurposed to YouTube to educate, to add value. Um, these community tab posts can also get reach on their own merits. They can reach non-subscribers. Um, surveys and polls that happen there can be, um, can get a lot of reach. And so it's just, these are, like, some of the new tools that are able to, you know, get one yard at a time as you're driving your business goals down the field, um, and wanting to continue to reach your audience. But I think the other big idea that we are especially seeing as we're coaching our community is asking yourself, "What's kind of the smarter business I could run? " Because even if views are down, your income can be up. So this has forced me personally to ask myself, um, "Am I thinking about all of the things? " Because I know that sometimes marketers can get a little lazy, or content creators especially. Like, "I just want to create content, get all this reach, and all these views and hope it fixes 100 other problems. " But when views go down, I start asking myself, "Okay, how many people are making it to my email list? How effective am I even being with email marketing? " Like, is that, "H- how's my deliverability over there? How are my subject lines? How's my content? "How am I doing reaching my existing audience and tapping into these different, um, aspects of business where conversion rates on a landing page, as we know, you know, it could be 20%. You make some changes, it could be 40%. You make some more 60%. So how many people- How I wish. (laughs) I mean, you're talking about a free offer though, right? (laughs) Yeah, a free offer, yeah. How many people are getting over to that p- But those are those small tweaks where we maybe invest all of our energy on the content side, and then what they're sent into, the funnel, if you will, there's so many optimization opportunities there. And so I think asking, what's your LTV? What's your lifetime value? And what are you doing with the attention you do have? How can you run a smart- smarter business? I understand this is an organic conversation, but I think about this, we spend a lot of money on paid advertising, and we, again, we might focus on the front end side of that, as opposed to what about the back end? Like, how many people are effectively being reached? And I know this is a brand new, one of the most important trends we're seeing in social media right now is I think the opportunity to do, um, like the on-platform optimization, like to lead capture directly on Facebook, as opposed to sending people off platform, which could drive ad costs down. But to Mari's point, like, not only taking it to the DMs, but how effective you even are in the DMs. Where I get stuck, 'cause I love just being that front end content creator, like how much reach and views can I get on a post? And I think where all of us as marketers can really grow is think about, yes, that, but what about the back end business? And you- you start tweaking some of those things, and lower views and lower reach doesn't mean that income has to be down. I love this because, you know, I think that there's a trap that a lot of people get into where they have a viral hit, but they don't realize it's totally the wrong audience, you know? They get- they get a bazillion views on a video, but it had absolutely nothing to do with really what their objective was on the platform, right? And then they just say, "Okay, I'll create more videos like that," and they realize there's like, uh, we're all marketers here, right? We have an objective. And it may be that video went viral for all the wrong reasons, not because... And we could, well, it- it could go viral for the right reasons, but it could be in front of the wrong audience, right? And I think that's the most, that's really critical, which leads me into my next question about, um, metrics and a- analytics. Mari, um, you mentioned that, um, across, uh, the Meta properties, the new, um, metric is views, right? Yes, yeah. Um, is that the only metric we should be looking at? Oh, God, no. No, it's a vanity metric still. You know? Okay, talk to me- Views don't pay the bills. (laughs) Yeah. Yes. I totally agree with what Sean said. It's like, you gotta look at your whole business, like how are you doing with your leads? And then the back end, and then the email marketing and conversion rates. All of this is so important. Views are nice, but they're not the be all, end all. And definitely with Meta, like, wanting marketers and creators to be more, you know, in the DMs and conversation, then you don't have to be in the DMs. You might run a really s- active Facebook group or with the comments, any comments that you have, either yourself or your team, the getting in there and answering as many comments usually as quickly as possible, I mean, speed can really make all the difference in making somebody's day and making them feel seen and heard and using their first name, you know? So I would be more like focusing on, uh, conversation metrics versus consumption, because that's- can really kinda open up the funnel and get you- get you more folks into- into your, uh, business.

By the way, I wanted to speak to something else real quick when you were just talking about, like, the- getting the viral reels with the wrong audience. Have you seen the incredible, uh, translations that Meta has brought out for both Facebook and Instagram? You can now translate into Spanish, Portuguese and Hindi and English if you're in other- uh, those languages, you can trans- translate back to English. It is insanely good, the lip syncing and the voice matching. I always say that me with my Scottish-Canadian-American accent speaking fluent Portuguese, rolling my Rs, and it's like... Then people are questioning, "Well, wait a minute. Okay, so now you're gonna have these people in these foreign languages watching you. That's nice bump in your views potentially, but does your business offer services and products in those languages? " (laughs) It's like, what's the name of the game here? Who knows? (laughs) Okay, um, first of all, both of you are going to be speaking in April at Social Media Marketing World 2026, and I want you to put on your futurist caps, imagine what the talk is going to be while you're there. Um, I'll start with you, Sean. Where do you anticipate by April, and even leading into 2026, um, things are gonna be heading, changing? Yeah, I think that some of the biggest changes, especially on YouTube right now, are pretty established, and so I think the algorithm is gonna look similar in April and beyond. I think that, uh, the big... You know, my talk is on the shifts, and recently, I did deep dive research. I don't know if I'll be able to cover them all. I'll give away a free list of all the different, uh, shifts that I discovered, 'cause there's 15, and some of those shifts include, uh, personal brand is the only differentiator left in the age of AI, or company brand and your brand voice, um, that even if views are down, income can be up. Um, master packaging, or else you're gonna get ignored. And so I think that, um, it's actually really an exciting time, and when I think about some of the shifts, um, I think about the movie Forrest Gump. And there's a scene in Forrest Gump, a lot of us have seen it, but for those who haven't, where Forrest starts a- a shrimping, uh, business. And so he gets a boat, he starts to go out with Lieutenant Dan, and they're doing this shrimping business, but they're catching nothing. And then one night, there's this crazy storm, and it actually knocks out, uh, the competitors. And the next morning, the scene shows them trolling along, uh, the beach, and there's a bunch of shipwreck boats around, and now when they put down their net, boom, they start getting all this crazy shrimp that they've caught. And I think that's sort of the state of social media right now, and really kind of just the economy and business. There's a lot of disruption happening, but Steve Jobs made this quote once, and he said that business is a game of attrition. So I think for those who lock in, double down, that's why it's so smart to continue to attend industry events and to continue to get educated and retool your skill set and network and collab and get around other marketers. And so those who just embrace these shifts and learn these new skills can tap into the fact that these platforms all want to stay in business. They have advertising businesses, Meta, YouTube. There- there's a lot of opportunity to be had, but I think that learning a new mindset and learning a new skill set is key, and I'm excited to be unpacking that in my session. Nice. Mari, where do you see everything heading? Well, you know, Meta, Zuckerberger's exceedingly competitive, so, you know, they got their vibes. If you go to meta. ai, you now got this just flood of, uh, a feed of, of nothing but AI created videos. Competitor to OpenAI's Sora, and I don't know, but do people really want 100% AI feed? Um, (laughs) regardless, it's coming, right? And I've been citing for the last several months a, a statistic or a, a quote from Tom Bilyeu, an entrepreneur that I really admire and respect, and he predicts that 90% of all content will be AI, fake AI content by 2027. And he says that your only moat is community. So, really leaning in to doing more, like live streams and connecting with your audience, running a group. If it's not a Facebook group, it might be other different third party, you got, you know, Skool and Kajabi and Circle and Slack, and you guys use Heartbeat, and so on and so forth. So, really doubling down on those DMs and the Facebook groups, and just showing real human clients that you're a real human person. And yeah, AI is just gonna get louder and stronger, but I just really think that your authentic self is, is a competitive edge. Well, if you want to be around real human people and a real community, (laughs) perfect transition, um, get your tickets to Social Media Marketing World 2026 where you get a chance to hang out with Sean and Mari, because they're always present, they're always there, they're approachable. They are real humans. I can trust you. These are not their AI avatars. (laughs) Um, Mari, if people want to connect with you, what's the best way for them to get in touch with you? Uh, Facebook, I'm @Marismith. Instagram, @mari_smith, and I always check my own DMs.

Sean, how about you? Where can people reach you? Yeah, if people want to connect on, uh, YouTube, the Think Media Podcast is, uh, we're dropping two episodes a week helping people with YouTube. And then, uh, personally, I use Instagram the most, seancannell, rhymes with YouTube channel. And, uh, would love to, uh, talk in the DMs or whatever over on Instagram @seancannell. And for audio listeners, is your podcast also discoverable wherever audio podcasts are? The Think Media Podcast is distributed everywhere. Awesome. Sean and Mari, thank you so much for sharing your insights today. My pleasure. Thanks for having us.