The 2025 Social Reset: Eight Trends Every Brand Must Know
Why social media has just become even more critical.
Instagram just passed 3 billion users. TikTok is reshaping search. Reddit is fuelling AI models. And for the first time, social spend has overtaken paid search.
Despite this, far too many businesses (especially in B2B) still view social media as a non-business-critical channel. But that thinking is quickly becoming outdated. Social has become the place where reputation is formed, preferences are set, and buyer journeys begin.
Here are the eight shifts that show why social has never been as crucial as it is right now and why 2026 is the year to accelerate marketing investments in social media.
1. Platforms Keep Growing
Instagram has just hit three billion users. That means Meta now serves nine billion monthly active users across its three core platforms (What’s that about monopolies??) But, the thing that makes social both complex (and fun) is that, despite Meta’s insane scale, ten social platforms have more than 500 million monthly users, which gives us such a wide range of opportunities to get in front of our target audience.
Source: Social Media Today
2. The Battle for the Digital Town Square
Despite the dominance of the top-five platforms, the “town square” is fragmenting. Threads’ daily actives are already close to X, while BlueSky is steady but small. But what matters for brands is not the size of these platforms, but where conversations amongst our target audience are happening. It’s essential to do the research here: Where does our audience spend time? Who do they follow and on what channels? That will help us orient ourselves in the right direction. That said, Threads feels built for longevity: link-friendly, multi-format, and backed by Meta’s distribution. I expect Threads to be the next billion-user platform.
3. Short-Form Video Dominates
TikTok leads in watch time, YouTube Shorts wins for reach, and Reels across Facebook and Instagram apps make up 50% of all time spent on the platforms. Our approach with short-form is to go broad. We can easily repurpose content across channels, and we don’t need to concern ourselves with follower numbers when reach and distribution are determined by content quality. We’ve never had it so good to get eyes on our content.
4. The Creator Economy Matures
Budgets are flowing downstream. Nano- and micro-creators (<5k followers) are capturing more investment because they carry deeper trust in niche communities. B2B brands are waking up to this. The 80/20 rule applies: 20% own content, 80% collaboration. Influence comes from showing up in other people’s feeds, not just your own. Pay attention to how businesses are adapting to this shift, such as tl;dv. They have built an outstanding growth engine on LinkedIn by hiring creators to represent their brand online. Personality-led brands are more differentiated, culturally-relevent and more memorable as a result.
5. Social Spend Overtakes Search
According to Sprout Social, marketing budgets are shifting from paid search to social. In fact, social media is capturing an increasing share of the marketing budget from many other marketing channels. Platforms are adapting: LinkedIn’s thought-leader ads, Meta’s inclusion of Threads Ads, and even X reviving post boosts. Attention drives budgets, and attention has shifted.
6. Social Search Goes Mainstream
Zero-click search is now the norm. 60% of Google searches end without a click (SparkToro). Meanwhile, TikTok is building a dedicated search business as consumer behaviour shifts to social search. Discovery is moving from Google-first to social-first. Every caption, transcript, and keyword matters: your social posts must be findable and indexable. This means social media is increasingly the first interaction that your audience will have with your brand. This is so significant that in Sprout Social’s report, they highlighted the most in-demand marketing roles. The top one? Social SEO.
7. Reddit Fuels AI Search
Reddit has become the backbone of AI training data. That means your community strategy isn’t just about engagement, but discoverability. Brands that make their knowledge public on Reddit, in reviews, in open forums, will surface more often in AI-generated recommendations. Community sentiment now shapes search visibility. Community management has just become business-critical.
8. Rethinking ROI
Too many still define ROI as followers, likes or leads. We need to elevate our definition of success on social media. The real measure is influence: memory, mentions, and momentum. Social is where buyer preferences are shaped long before they fill in a form. The brands that win are the ones that shift their metrics to match. I wrote a newsletter on this a few weeks ago, if you want to dive deeper into that.
Final Word
The old digital playbook of SEO > clicks > traffic is fading. Social is no longer a supporting act. It’s the main stage.
If you want to listen to the recap of the deep dive on all of these trends, you can view that here and view the deck here.
PS.
If you want to see how B2B leaders are adapting to these changes and explore this topic in person, join us on 12 November in London for SocialDay B2B — the only event dedicated to social in B2B. Get your ticket here (earlybird pricing ends next week, so grab your spot)
If you enjoyed this, please drop a like or let me know. I hope you found this useful!
Andy