Beyond the Algorithm: Influence, Impact and the Real Economics of Social Media
Social media promised brands a gold rush of reach, relevance and revenue. But while its potential remains vast, most businesses are still digging in the wrong place. For too long, brands have chased likes, followers and impressions, but what really matters today is participating in culture, not just advertising within it. In our new reality, where cultural relevance matters more than media budget, the problem of why the return on social remains elusive needs to be reframed. FSC’s new white paper, The Power of Social, provides a roadmap as to how brands can do this.
Introduction
The past 15 years of social media culminate into a story of missed opportunities. What began as a revolution in human connection has become, for many brands, a costly experiment in chasing attention.
While marketing executives in boardrooms debated whether social media was a fad, teenagers in bedrooms built empires that now dwarf the cultural influence of global corporations. Social platforms rewired how we shop, connect and even think. They offered brands a persuasion engine unlike anything we’d seen before – connecting roughly two thirds of humanity in real time and commanding more collective attention than television, radio and print ever could. And yet, despite this extraordinary potential, many businesses struggle to see the returns they expect.
In our new white paper, The Power of Social: Influence and ROI in the Attention Economy, we unravel the tapestry of innovations, cultural shifts and misconceptions of today’s social reality – where culture and social media are symbiotic, and where algorithms dictate, rather than reflect, what we want.
Unimaginable scale
Social media has rewired human behaviour on a planetary scale. Over 5 billion people now use it daily, contributing to the largest attention marketplace in human history. With so much of the global population plugged into this networked system, spending a collective 500 million years of attention on social platforms every year, this is not just media: it is the infrastructure of modern culture – a global nervous system where every post reverberates through billions of nodes.
“Social media has rewired human behaviour on a planetary scale. Over 5 billion people now use it daily. For brands, the opportunity is intoxicating. But this same reach also means vulnerability: a single misjudged post can undo years of careful brand-building in seconds.”
For brands, the opportunity is intoxicating. Social offers reach, intimacy and influence on a scale that legacy media could never imagine. But this same reach also means vulnerability. A single misjudged post can tank share prices, spark outrage and undo years of careful brand-building in seconds.
Social has become the single most disruptive force in modern capitalism. It has levelled the playing field between brands, media and individuals, and turned culture from a top-down broadcast into a bubbling, peer-to-peer ecosystem.
The gold rush that never was
In recognition of its potential, marketing budgets shifted quickly towards social, leading to the largest reallocation of marketing spend in modern history. Social now commands nearly a quarter of global ad spend, surpassing both search and traditional media. In the UK, the social media advertising market is projected to reach £9.95 billion in 2025, with 89% of UK businesses deploying social as their primary digital marketing channel.
But only 62% of marketers report positive ROI on Instagram, and only 46% on Facebook. The same influence engine that promises limitless reach can amplify brand missteps at lightspeed, wiping billions off market value with a single tone-deaf tweet.
The fundamental problem is strategic sophistication. Most brands approach social media as traditional advertising with better targeting, when social operates on entirely different physics. They optimise for corporate metrics while ignoring the network effects that actually drive business outcomes.
The age of the algorithm
Our current environment, for both businesses and individuals, is one defined by the nexus of rapid technological, behavioural and societal change. The rules governing brand-consumer relationships are unrecognisable from the marketing playbooks of even the recent past. Broadcasting a message to the masses is long dead; even conversation is becoming old-hat.
The new protocols, as our white paper sets out, rest on community co-creation being the central feature of brand behaviour on social. As one of our white paper collaborators, Ramon Isaac (Adobe’s Head of Social in EMEA) told us, being on social today is about “having a genuine two-way conversation, where you are meeting where they are… it’s not the content, but the community management side of things that plays such a huge role in changing perceptions and getting closer to the audience.”
Technology’s role in the transformation of the brand-consumer relationship is even more profound. The algorithms and architectural design on which social media operates don’t just find and convert likely buyers into sales: they actually change self-perception, increasing the likelihood of converting behaviour over the long term.
Algorithms don’t just reflect what we like and want – they tell us what we like and want.
Algorithmic culture
One of the leading thinkers in this area, and another of our white paper collaborators, author Kyle Chayka, told us how social media has become the main filter, or mediating force, that we experience culture through. And further, that we’ve now entered an era of marketing which he describes as ‘algorithmic culture’ – where machines, not traditional gatekeepers, increasingly set cultural trends: “The algorithm is a dominant, inescapable force in our cultural distribution ecosystem now.” Whereas brands used to be able to rely on building followings who would reliably see their content in feeds, today's interest-driven algorithms have altered that direct connection. Platforms like TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels now surface content based on passion points.
“The comfortable predictability of traditional media buying – guaranteed placement and audience – has been replaced by an algorithmic lottery where cultural relevance matters more than media budget.”
Modern algorithms don't just show us what we like – they understand our deepest, unspoken feelings and feed us content that shapes desire itself. Not appreciating how algorithms surface content encompasses one of the common pitfalls that brands make when it comes to social media, described in our white paper as The 7 Deadly Sins of Brand Behaviour (shown in image below).
What’s changed – and what to do about it
With the landscape around us changing in ways it is difficult even to fathom, let alone harness to our benefit, our white paper breaks down the main elements of how we’ve arrived at the current moment – and, most importantly, what to do about it.
The always-on world: Brands gained access to an audience that continuously consumed, and the smartphone turned every moment in a consumer’s life into broadcastable content. This meant unprecedented opportunities for engagement and influence – but also created ‘content fatigue’.
Fighting for ‘mindshare’ in the attention economy creates pressure to keep up with pace and volume of content. But to avoid the first deadly sin – random acts of content – brands have to have strategic clarity on what they're trying to achieve on each platform.
User creativity: Social media’s ascendency is as much about user-generated innovation as it is about technology, with the most enduring formats created by individuals experimenting with self-expression. This redistribution of cultural power meant brands could promote their products through user-generated content with more credibility than official brand messaging – but in so doing, they no longer have control of the story.
To avoid the second deadly sin – trend chasing without context – it’s a question not of trying to control the narrative, but of enabling co-creation. Successful brands become amplifiers of community creativity, rather than traditional content broadcasters.
Peer-to-peer influence: Individual influencers built a new model of trust, where a shout-out from a trusted micro-creator drives purchasing decisions more effectively than a megastar. Brands could tap into these readymade, highly-engaged audiences where recommendations felt like advice from friends rather than corporate sales pitches.
But the pressure to appear genuine led brands to attempt to script authenticity – which audiences can quickly detect, and reject. To avoid the third deadly sin – faceless brand syndrome – the key is to remember that people follow people (not corporate logos), and understanding your own brand’s persona is fundamental.
Weapons of mass persuasion: AI-powered algorithms combine real-time behavioural data, psychographic characteristics and contextual information to create ‘hyperpersonalisation’. This is so far beyond demographic targeting – predicting not only what you want, but when, where, and in what emotional state you’ll want it – it has created unprecedented precision in persuasion. Yet, only 31% of companies are fully satisfied with their ability to stitch customer data together.
To avoid the fourth deadly sin – data blindness – brands must invest in cultural intelligence and first-party data infrastructure that creates prediction engines based on belief systems, and target audience behaviours rather than demographics.
The rise of the tribe: Social media has shattered universal culture into hyperniche communities. We now inhabit echo chambers where Person X and Person Y can scroll through their phones without sharing a single reference point. Products have become badges of identity, symbolising membership to a tribe. In tribal environments, satisfied customers become brand evangelists, driving exponential growth through authentic word-of-mouth. The challenge for brands is that universal messaging becomes systematically impossible when audiences inhabit separate cultural realities.
This network effect is the new engine of growth, but to avoid the fifth deadly sin – mass appeal = no appeal – brands must mine real insights into motivations, pain points and sub-cultures, and optimise content for specific communities.
Addiction and attention: Social feeds run on the same “variable-reward loop” that keeps gamblers glued to a slot machine: our dopamine system lights up with every ping of a like or a share. These sophisticated systems exploit our deepest neurological vulnerabilities, transforming human attention into the world’s most valuable commodity. The reach afforded to brands is unparalleled – but algorithms optimise for scroll-time, not quality-time; messaging from brands has to compete with a finely-tuned onslaught of attention-grabbing (but often meaningless) content.
To avoid the sixth deadly sin – sludge – brands need to reject the dopamine-driven race to the bottom, and provide true value at every step, offering genuine utility that audiences seek out rather than scroll past.
Viral culture: Cultural trends are now amplified at incredible speed and scale through viral mechanics. Novelty, scandal and antagonism are gamed to capture our attention. And brands that understand these mechanics can achieve exponential reach overnight: one perfectly timed cultural moment can transform unknown brands into household names. The very big risk, though, is that viral culture rewards polarisation and shock over nuance and sensitivity – platforms promote controversial content because it drives engagement – and brands can quickly lose control over their narratives.
The speed needed to take advantage of cultural moments is in conflict with corporate processes for quality control and strategic alignment. But brands can respond quickly without losing their identity. To avoid the seventh deadly sin – playing it safe – brands need to build unshakeable foundations before entering viral culture. A clear north star allows brands to be part of the conversation without exposing themselves to reputational damage.
“Audiences are sceptical, creators hold cultural power, and attention is more fractured than ever. What hasn’t changed is the need for clarity and authenticity. The future of social won’t belong to the loudest voices: it will belong to the most trusted ones.”
In short, brands need to prioritise cultural intelligence over demographics, design for participation, and be anchored in authenticity. These are the ways that brands can succeed where so many stumble.
Social media is not the future – it’s the present. It is where culture lives, where communities form, and where brands can either thrive or falter. The choice is not whether to participate, but how.
Read the full white paper for all the insights and more strategies you can implement today, available here.
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Get in touch to find out why our values, approach and commitment to our clients makes us the creative partner you are looking for in a constantly changing world: hello@futurestrategy.club.
