Likes & Dislikes

“Know your audience, not your algorithm” is advice I get a lot when I talk about frustratingly inconsistent engagement rates when I do things “by the book” regarding algorithm.It’s 100% true that knowing your audience will get your farther than relying only on metrics and stats, but there should be some method to the madness. We have had direct messages from people (granted, our audience is in the older demos), that they don’t see ANY of our posts come up on their timelines anymore, even though we post multiple times a week, sometimes even twice in a day. I do like a lot of things about both platforms, but I feel like I’m continually re working our posting strategy to fit the new algorithms to maximize the likelihood of our audience actually seeing our content.  Does anyone have any advice / can relate? 

So, here are my thoughts on AI.  You may have read them already on the thread for the contest, but apparently they want us to post our answers as new posts (nothing more authentic than feeding the algorithms).AI is here to stay, so learning where it can streamline your workflow is important.I appreciate the suggestions it makes, but I still feel it need a human to add the human touch.Where AI will really shine is analyzing the analytics and making predictive suggestions, such as when is the best time to post, or where to find similar target audiences.It is amazing in it’s creative abilities, but it also tends to be identifiable as AI artwork as opposed to an artist’s work.  This will improve over time, so some universal AI labelling is going to have to be implemented.AI will replace people who don’t learn how to work with AI.  Prompting is the new creative art.

What I love about AI is that I us it to short circuit my overthinking brain. Like I am quicker to assign “good enough” to AI output rather than when I start from the ground up. Which means I am responding to emails and other smaller tasks quicker. What I hate about AI is the hype around it. Because of the hype there’s very little basic education. What it is, how to spot it, how it comes up with answers, and how to engage with it.  I think this is important AI is becoming weaponized in that people who don’t like something or don’t agree with something call things AI to invalidate truth. Alternatively things that are obviously AI draw people in because they don’t see it coming. So general teaching about this new tool would be great. I think eventually AI will become so prevalent, that we’ll be paying service providers for mistakes so that content and marketing feels more human. 

I think we have all been hit by the recent metrics depreciation in April, but our engagement rate FYoFY dropped by OVER 50%, which is the craziest thing I have ever seen. That’s when we report out on the profile level. However, when we report on the post performance level and filter out paid ads, our engagement rate drop is only around 25%. That is still a significant decrease that is concerning, but I have a feeling that our paid ads are causing this extreme decrease and I am not sure the best way to prove that. I am only responsible for our organic social presence.My questions to the group:Does anyone have a good source for the argument that paid ads can affect the engagement of social content?  Does anyone know of a “sweet-spot” number for the amount of ads that should be running concurrently? Does anyone have any other opinions of why we may be experiencing such a decrease in engagement?Thank you for your help and insights!  

The business credit card we use for Google and Facebook Ads is repeatedly shut down for fraud. It’s probably happened three times already in 2025. It’s the only company card that it happens to.The credit card company doesn’t say how it happens, but once the help desk person said, “this happens with Facebook all the time.” The cc company doesn’t offer any advanced fraud prevention options like text approvals. They now deny every Facebook charge, which deactivates our FB account. I call them, they allow FB charges for 24 hours and then locks the card again. I’ve done everything I can think of security-wise with the card, our accounts, etc. I am at a loss at what else to do. Does anyone have any experience with this? Does anyone use a credit card company with excellent fraud prevention options that we could switch to? 

The ease of using AI cannot be ignored. It helps make posting quicker and easier. However, I do not like how I can scroll through a feed and immediately know which posts are AI generated. There is not enough variation in the tone or vocabulary of the responses generated. 

Social media naturally comes with its share of challenges and I’ve had plenty of venting moments with my team, but when I think back on the year, there are so many wins to celebrate! We’ve already surpassed all of our social media goals and KPIs for the year. I was able to double our goal for number of reels posted, and I created a TikTok channel from the ground up this year. One of my favorite wins: I had a couple instances this year of posting reels highlighting local businesses (I do destination marketing), and then hearing from business owners that they saw an influx of business after the reel was posted. I can look at analytics all day, but none of it is quite as motivating as knowing my work has real impact on my community! It’s so easy to get sucked into the day-to-day frustrations, so rounding up our EOY reports and stats and looking back on the year is a really needed opportunity to look at the bigger picture and see how much my and my team’s hard work has paid off! 

💪🏻 A couple weeks back, I finally figured out a to-do list system that works for me, which is a really big win! (I change my system every couple of years depending on the circumstances - if I don’t have a working system, my life literally spirals out of control 😂) 👎🏻 Our parent company decided that we should all share a Canva account, so I had to transfer everything (uploads, designs) from my current into the new account - which was an absolute nightmare. You can’t “bulk download” or “bulk transfer” anything in Canva - whatever you do, it has to be done individually.First, I had to download every single upload (500+) from my account to upload them again in the new account. That completely messed up the order of the material in the new uploads folder. I had already gotten so used to that specific order. 😅Then I had to share every individual existing design with my new account via email and open the link I was sent in my email program in an incognito tab (because I had to have two

Over the course of 2024, I’ve used the time to learn AI prompt engineering using online courses, eBooks, podcasts, YouTube videos, etc. I feel it’s critical to know how to optimally leverage the technology rather than be overwhelmed by it.As the quote goes, "You will not be replaced by AI, but by someone using AI," Laurence Liew, director for AI Innovation at AI Singapore. So, I’ll be someone who is able to use AI when and how I want to in the course of my work. Keeping with the curve, if not ahead of it, feels like a win!

One of my recent wins I wanted to share was a collaboration post we did on Instagram with another account, and it has been gaining a lot of traction. Our follower growth has significantly increased, and the engagement on the post itself is constantly growing. I’m glad to see that this collab has been successful for us, and I am excited to do more in 2025 😊 Has anyone else done any collaboration posts that benefited their pages?

LOL, I’m kind of joking with the title, but sometimes it’s a nice break when all of Meta goes down! Unless you desperately needed something to go out, then it’s a big dislike. 

ChatGPT helps me with a lot of things every day, so I asked it: “based on what you know about me, what do I like about social media?” And she nailed it! Based on what I know about you, one thing I think you like about social media is its ability to build authentic connections through storytelling and personality. You seem to enjoy blending creativity (like humor, emojis, and visuals) with meaningful messaging that resonates with both audiences and brand values. Social media, for you, seems to be a space where you can celebrate team wins, share clever takes on trends, and highlight the human side of businesses—whether it's through employee stories, event highlights, or showcasing volunteer efforts. It’s about making content relatable, impactful, and engaging. Let me know if I’m on the right track!

Who else is endlessly frustrated with reach on Instagram? Or changes to Meta platforms that nobody wants?Mosseri talked last week about wanting to boost small creators, but doesn’t address the problems we’ve been dealing with for years. And this Meta AI is nothing but annoying. Some days I wish I could leave IG altogether, if I’m being honest. 

We’ve had a ton of success posting Carousels (Document posts) on LinkedIn this year. The engagement is off the carts - typically about 3-4X the engagement we’d see from an image post, and even higher than a video post (most of our image posts perform better than our video posts on LI). Plus, they’re a great format to share more complex/in-depth messaging. 

Hey Arbors,Here’s a WIN!  We recently upgraded to paid Canva at work (I went 2.5 years on the free plan.  NOW being able to resize my creative to other social channel sizes is a HUGE WIN for me.  What an incredible time saver.Here’s a CHALLENGE. - Meta’s dashboard is a nightmare at times to figure out.  So, I recently had them shut me down.  I applied twice with challenges.  The 2nd time, they lifted the restriction and said it was a mistake made by their technology.  But, when I go to Ads Manager I have 2 big notifications on the page saying my account is suspended.  It says go to “Business Support Home” for more info.  When I go there, it has the message, “We removed your restriction because we made a mistake.  I am able to run campaigns from Facebook Business Suite, but I can’t do anything in Ads Manager.  I sent support screenshots asking why I have two different, contradictory messages (about 3 weeks ago) and have heard nothing back.Did I mention I don’t like Meta’s system much?Ha

A la South Park Step 1. Collect underpants.Step 2. ?Step 3. PROFITI’m seeing AI become the go to for people who want something done on social (or really anywhere that’s not their realm of expertise)  and when there’s push back on how it’ll take longer, or a certain skill set or resources, it’s “to the GPT!” as if you don’t have to do the thinking to have GPT deliver the results.  Really having people understand Gen AI, it’s capabilities and limits will be the best thing for everyone. But we’re still in an era of it’s a magic wand just wave it and everything you need appears. A win is that I am almost done planning 2025 and very very excited about the aligned and well paced direction! 

Hello friends! As Threads is ramping up, I’m working on a strategic plan to keep momentum going on our account. One of our goals this year (and ongoing) is to engage more with a younger audience to increase brand awareness. The only thing that’s really seemed to work for us is my being unhinged on Threads. The only posts that get literally any engagement are those that have nothing to do with our brand / usual content. So my Threads slide on my 2025 social media strategy pitch deck that I have to present to our exec team literally says “shit posting = not shit engagement” 😅 

Here’s my tiny little social media hill that I’ll die on. I think all social media management tools should have a minimum of two users provided in a plan. Since social media doesn’t take weekends off, many teams have a weekend and/or night person to manage social media so one person doesn’t have to be on call 24/7. It’s the only healthy way to do it! So every tool should have two users given by default or they shouldn’t prohibit the sharing of one account. I’d even be happy if they increased the price and included two seats. Charging double for a second seat just encourages leadership to stick to the idea that social media management is a one person job. There, that’s my end of year dislike! 

We have not lost a lot of our following on X but our posts don’t get a lot of impressions. We just recently tried posting our hyperlinks as replies instead of in the initial post to see if that helps as we have heard that links in original posts get down regulated in the algorithm. Has anyone else tried the links in the reply and have been successful? Or tried and haven’t been successful?Do you have other suggestions on how to get more impressions on X? 

This year has been full of big wins, with one of the highlights being the redesign of our analytics reports. As a one-person social team, I typically take the lead on everything social-related, and one of my first tasks was to develop an analytics report. What we had before were just a few slides showing the growth of each channel.Over time, I’ve refined the report—adding and removing certain metrics—and I’m finally at a version I’m really proud of. I’m happy to share it with anyone, including senior leadership (I even presented it to the CEO earlier this year)!On the flip side, one challenge I’ve faced is managing other users in our Sprout account. I often find myself going in to correct errors or mistakes in the posts they create. It sometimes feels like it would be faster to just do it myself rather than reviewing everything they do. To be fair, I’m the one who trained them, so maybe I need to improve my training approach 😅 Does anyone else experience this?

I like having someone to bounce ideas off of. I can be a smidge snarky, so it’s good to have someone to help me make sure I’m staying on brand with my responses! I know some people don’t have that here in Social, so I’m extra grateful for it!

Our team is celebrating our community being included in the latest Michelin Green Guide for Detroit! We were awarded a three star “do not miss” rating, and individually, most institutions were awarded two star rating on their own. *Cries of happiness* And yes, we used Sprout to post all about it this morning. 💃As many of you know, Marketing/Communications is often everyone’s scapegoat for organizational failures (real or perceived) so it’s been hard to properly get excited about this achievement.It’s incredible for the city and greater metro area but it feels some people just *assumed* it was a given. My Director created two separate extensive visit experiences for their writers and so many hours went into coordination, communications, meetings, and more to get to this point! Our small team of three is split between two institutions of this community and we handle PR, Email, Websites, Social, Advertising, and more.Cheers to all the small and mighty teams out there! Your marketing peer

One thing that I’ve really liked seeing this year is our team experimenting with more meme-like interactive posts. We’ve done a “tag yourself” style carousel with humorous costumes related to our industry and a funny bingo card for a national event related to our work. They both went over really well and I’m excited to hopefully see more these posts in the coming year. Anyone else have any similar posts that have engaged with their audience well?

Hello everyone! Wanted to share some insights on my role. Some Wins / PositivesI have an incredible team who creates social media content for 4 different properties. It’s a crazy amount of posts.We recently upped our game on TikTok and have gotten multiple videos to reach over 30K views.  ChallengesTrying to determine our KPIs and how heavily we should focus on revenue vs other metricsWe probably have a unique challenge vs. most - we have too much content. Prioritization can be a challenge.  What are your challenges that you are facing?

We launched our TikTok channel a month ago (11/11) and have grown to almost 2K followers! Now, we’re watching to see if it will get banned next month. LOL