The social media updates you need to know.
Social media trends, updates and content ideas to fuel your inspiration.
Well, it’s fair to say that 2025 has got off to an interesting start in social media…
But, underneath the headlines and presidential pandering, some useful new features and trends have emerged that can help us grow our businesses.
That’s what this newsletter is about. We strip back the noise and focus on the changes that we can harness to help us grow our social media impact.
This month, we’ll focus on:
A round-up of all of the most important social media updates
The media consumption trend that’s driving the direction of all social platforms.
The Instagram algorithm update that will help us reach more people.
Two social media growth tips.
Right, let’s get to it.
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📣 The social media data, trends and new features you need to know
Here’s the slide deck, and the recording of our LinkedIn Live giving you a network-by-network run through all the most important updates you need to know for this month.
TL;DR These are the themes that are dominating
Instagram’s algorithm changes signal how we should treat each format. Instagram has been offering us clear guidance on how we can maximise our impact on the platform (more on this below). It’s becoming clear that different formats serve different purposes, and engagement metrics are treated differently as a result. For example, if we want to reach new followers, the Reels are the way forward. If we’re looking for deeper engagement from our followers, Carousels are the way to go.
Video content continues to lead the way. Time spent consuming vertically-orientated short-form videos across all social media platforms continues to rise. This month, both X and BlueSky dropped a dedicated video-only feed, Substack launched live video and LinkedIn continues to evolve its vertical video offering. It’s clear that the rise of short-form, vertical video is not going away. This means that if we’re already doing short-form video, it’s never been easier to trial and test content across multiple platforms.
Smaller communities will continue to evolve. Social media continues to fragment. The ‘big’ platforms are shifting to entertainment-first short-form video content that’s algorithmically served, leaving many people yearning for more private, dedicated spaces to connect - whether that’s Substack, Discord, Reddit or any other platform. As businesses, we have an opportunity to diversify our platform choices - thinking about our social strategy in two vectors. Firstly, we choose platforms based on driving reach and awareness, and secondly, we think about where we feel we can create more dialogue and connection with our audience.
The US TikTok decision will impact us all in some way. TikTok is saved for now, but in just over two months time we’ll face the same situation. Even if you’re not US-based, the outcome will have a lasting impact on the landscape of social media. What a crazy time this is!
📊 Data Highlight of the Month
The latest data shows how short-form video consumption is dominating across all platforms. Of course, TikTok leads the charge, but what’s notable here is that Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube are seeing significant growth in viewer time spent on their video features.
X and Bluesky have also joined the trend, launching dedicated video-only feeds – making cross-platform content repurposing and experimentation easier than ever.
Basically, this year needs to be the year that our businesses lean into the vertical format.
👀 Instagram makes some significant changes
In a significant policy shift, Instagram will now recommend Reels up to 3 minutes long, reversing their previous 90-second limit.
While this opens up new creative possibilities, engagement metrics (like average watch time) will ultimately determine the optimal video length for your audience.
Our friend Adam Mosseri also dropped some guidance on how Instagram has three key signals for content ranking: Watch time, Likes and Sends.
To harness this change, when looking at your insights, pay close attention to average watch time, likes per reach, and sends per reach. Perhaps Instagram’s shift to longer videos might be something that can help us drive up that average watch time?
Though Mosseri also notes that there is some variance, depending on where content is shown and who it’s shown to.
“Likes are slightly more important for connected content, and sends are slightly more important for unconnected content.”
So if you want more of your followers to see your posts, likes are the key factor. The more people that tap like, the wider the reach will be among your audience.
👉 Growth tip of the month
You lucky things, I have two tips for you this month to help you drive growth…
Firstly, in December Instagram released ‘Trial Reels’, which enables you to share a Reel with a brand new audience to see how they react. Some people have been using this feature to repurpose previous content and are reporting incredible growth in reach.
Secondly, if Trial Reels is more of a short-term ‘hack’, then this tip should be the foundation of a social media strategy.
Where possible, include collaborators in your posts. As you likely know, when you involve a collaborator, your post goes to both of your audiences, increasing your distribution. I've been saying this for years, so it's nice to have some data to back it up. This approach has been the cornerstone of how I’ve built businesses on social media. Oh, and under 1% of all posts involve a collaborator, so the opportunity is ours for the taking.
📬 That’s it! See you next time!
I hope you found this useful! If you have any questions at all, I’m always happy to help!
Made with ❤️ by Andy