How the internet works now
A special-ish report on promoting yourself in the current social-media blackhole
Hi there!
This is a special edition of the huuman Layer, because it was a long weekend for some of us and usually we see that as a good reason to take a quick breather. But today we’re going to - instead - have a think and a ponder about what the internet is now. Because why not?
In the halcyon days of the internet, if you were a Small Business, you could put up a website, buy a few Google clicks, post some stuff on Facebook and call it a day. Those halcyon days are not that far behind us - maybe a few years now - so you’d be excused if you’ve missed the recent shift in ‘how the internet works’. But they are well and truly dead and buried.
The first major thing that happened was mobile. This transition started a while ago, but it’s now the new normal. Google started to ‘reward’ websites in its search algorithm that performed well on mobile browsers. That means that if your website loads quickly on mobile browsers, doesn’t have a lot of big images and videos, and is designed to look good on an iPhone - then you’ll be further up the search results than another similar business that has a website that hasn’t been updated since 2010.
A lot of small businesses figured that out quickly, but there’s no shame in reading that above paragraph and thinking ‘oh, wait…’ That’s because it’s pretty nuanced and the ‘changeover’ happened slowly. If you were giving Google money to promote your website you probably bypassed the worst of the traffic redirection. But for organic leads - i.e the people who arrive at your website through searching for a service or product via search - Google does push mobile-friendly sites more than desktop friendly websites. If you use a web service such as Shopify or Squarespace, those services invested in mobile-friendly elements early on. But if you run your own website, it’s worth checking on how it behaves in the Google mobile-first mindset.
The second major thing that happened is much more recent, and it’s to do with social platforms. It used to be the case that you could link things on social media and you’d get traffic back to your website or service. Maybe you auto-linked things to Facebook or used Twitter to send customers to your site.
We’re now in a post-viral internet. The dominating social networks are now all becoming more tribal and hardening their demographics and reward behaviours - and it’s causing drama. There just isn’t a catch-all network anymore, or even a guaranteed recipe to generate wide-reaching content on a single network, since the concept of ‘going viral’ has now kinda lost it’s meaning. It’s a huge opportunity for those socially-minded, because the iron-grip on what gets seen and what doesn’t has slipped - and in many ways, it’s never been more possible to get ‘eyeballs’. But in a social-network landscape where there aren’t any easy answers, no one-size fits all approach, with Twitter - now X - in a state of degradation, and Facebook traffic in North America slowing pace, it’s probably worth looking at the current consumer-heavy social platforms again.
X (FKA Twitter)
Twitter used to be the place that ‘digested’ culture and discourse and had stupid conversations about it. It was one reason why news was so big on Twitter - Twitter had a huge following of ‘experts’, with a user base that tended towards the professional and skewed towards ‘media’. No-one really went ‘viral’ on Twitter, rather ‘viral’ posts arrived on Twitter 24 hours later and got discussed. Since the transition to X, many ‘experts’ have left, and the algorithms are now skewed towards people who pay for the service (Twitter Blue). X’s metrics have also degraded, and in some cases are highly suspicious - if you advertise on X, do you even trust the engagement metrics anymore? Me neither.
Bluesky
When Twitter downgraded to X, most of the people who left Twitter found a home on Bluesky, the platform founded by Twitter’s ex-founder. The issue with Bluesky from a business point of view is its glacial invite-only system and questionable metrics. Oh, and without an invite to the platform you currently can’t access it. So, one to keep an eye on, but it’s early days and it’s not really found its feet yet in terms of community. It is ‘buzzy’ though.
Tumblr
Come sweet summer child, and bask in the early 2010’s EMO social web of Tumblr. If you’re a millennial, you probably know Tumblr well and perhaps forgot about it when you got a ‘real job’ and stopped posting day-one memes. But it’s still alive and well and working hard for the 18-34 year old demographic. Tumblr was and still is at heart a microblogging platform, with less algorithmic ‘feeds’. It’s about finding a niche and blogging into it and carving space in a community that has a creative slant to it.
Threads
After Twitter came Bluesky - and Threads. Threads is Twitter by Facebook (although it runs on the Instagram platform). It behaves much like Twitter used to, and it’s the home of established brands thanks to its advanced advertising platform. If you’re a Facebook / Meta user for your business and haven’t yet moved to Instagram, Threads might be a good bridge given its more text and link heavy Twitter-esque approach to things. Threads users are also older and more likely to buy things and want services.
TikTok
Unlike any other social network, TikTok doesn’t prize ‘size’. That’s to say, if you have 1M followers on TikTok, you’re no more likely to go viral or be seen by the public than someone with 100 followers. TikTok also prizes videos that are generated using its own app, so cross-posting from Facebook, YouTube or Instagram won’t help much. TikTok’s audience skews very young, so it may not suit your business unless you’re selling hype-flavoured DTC cosmetics - having said that though, I’ve seen some incredibly sticky content from small independent auto-repair businesses leveraging TikTok, although who knows if anyone goes on to use - and pay for - their services. Being TikTok famous doesn’t always mean money in the till sadly.
Instagram (Reels)
Instagram has been around for a long time, and has for a while now embedded Reels - and recently Threads - into its app. There’s some good e-commerce tools mixed into it, and it feels polished. But Instagram - in light of TikTok’s success - has skewed towards video. This means the Instagram algorithm is hungrier than ever for short video content, and it wants to be fed daily. This is an older millennial demographic who tend to play it safer, but they do click on stuff given the chance. Where would DTC be without Instagram?
YouTube (Shorts)
YouTube has always been about video, obviously, and we’ve all (probably) learned about the secrets of drywall / plumbing / keeping a 4 year old entertained at dinner using their long-form video product. Shorts is their take on Reels and TikTok, and it requires 60 seconds or less of video content, preferably content that has been custom made or edited for the low-attention format. Demographics-wise, YouTube is very broad, and it really depends on the content you’re producing - though Shorts is definitely skewed towards the younger end of the spectrum.
Substack (Notes)
You receive this wonderful, deeply considered email in your inbox via Substack each week, and Substack is all about email. It’s a loose social network designed for longer form content where journalists, experts and consultants (I guess?) can publish and push articles, emails and essays to their followers, and start discussions using Notes with their 30 or 40-something ‘intelligent’ readership. We’ve found Substack to be really good for big topics and general brand stuff, but slower on clicks than short form content. There’s also no advertising platform on Substack to speak of.
Facebook
You know all about Facebook. It’s an older crowd, and if you’re a hyper-local business there are coins to be mined in local community groups. But if you’re a bigger business? It can be a hard - and often expensive - slog. Certainly more than it used to be.
Ok, so those are the main players. So - how do they all behave? Where should you spend your time? Well, Bluesky and Tumblr tend to love ‘sharing’ - it’s easy to repost in those apps, which is what those apps are about at their core. This means you’ll get less ‘clicks’ typically, as instead of going to a site, Bluesky and Tumblr users are more focused on ‘engaging’ with your content. Great for discussion and not much else, so alter your expectations accordingly.
Threads is great for advertising and general click-through links. We think it’s replacing Facebook and Twitter / X for general traffic conversions. People click on stuff in Threads for some reason (?), and its audience is growing again after an initial post-launch bust. If you have a Meta advertising account, it may make more sense to trial threads than head elsewhere for the near-term.
YouTube / Shorts, Instagram / Reels and TikTok are all about video, and if you’re even looking at cross-posting to save cost, time and energy then under 60 seconds is what you’re aiming for, and regular, punchy, subtitled, high-energy video is what you’re after. If that’s your thing, use DaVinci Resolve - film, edit and subtitle and post and keep it cost/time effective as possible. But ultimately it’s about content and timing, and ‘considered’ content combined with regular posting will give the best results.
In the post-viral internet, as you may have gathered, video is now undoubtably king. It’s been headed this way for a while, but there’s no denying that every facet and product in the emerging social ecosystem is prizing video over pretty much everything else these days. The question is - is any of it worth your time? And, to be quite honest, it’s a question with no definitive answer. Video isn’t going away anytime soon, that’s for sure - and if you’re thinking of investing time in video, the one piece of advice I can give is - track your metrics. That advice goes for advertising too, but in advertising working out your ROI is much easier because you pay per click. In video-led social creation it’s about working out effort vs return, sure, but it’s more about knowing your audience, where your audience spends it’s time, how you spend that time with them - and how you both use that time to talk about products and services.
The modern internet is more of a black hole that it ever was, but through careful research and tracking, it’s more possible than it was before to find a true niche for your business and develop a following. In many ways your customers are more accessible than ever - they’re just in places you probably hadn’t previously considered.
BTW - did you know you can reply to this email? We always read the responses and welcome feedback. Let us know what you like, what you don’t and what you’d like to see more of in the future!
If you find this report useful, why not share it with the other small business owners in your network? They’ll join hundreds of subscribers in accessing the best Small Business insights in Canada - for free!