How Companies Should Shift Their Social Media Marketing Strategy

This is the published version of Forbes’ CMO newsletter, which offers the latest news for chief marketing officers and other messaging-focused leaders. Click here to get it delivered to your inbox every Wednesday.

For many consumers, trust in generative AI is increasing as they’ve had a chance to use it. A new study from consumer research platform Attest shows that about two-thirds of Americans have used generative AI tools, and nearly seven in 10 trust the information it gives them. In fact, they trust AI results just about as much as traditional search engine results—both organic and paid.

Generative AI is seen as a sort of personal assistant, with 49% of Americans likely to use it as a tool to research purchases. Two out of five look to AI to answer questions or explain complex topics, while close to a third use it as a study aid. More than a quarter use AI to help generate ideas, and to help write letters or emails.

As a personal tool, AI is here to stay. More than half—57.4%—expect to be using these tools more in the next six months. Just 5.1% say they will use it less. And a total of 35% of consumers—an increase of 4% over last year—trust AI companies with the data they collect.

The study also bodes well for marketing. Attest asked consumers a variety of questions about brands’ use of AI technology. Opinions on campaigns and AI-generated models remained largely unchanged since last year, though recognition of benefits increased by a couple percentage points across the board. The biggest jump came from consumers recognizing that AI can help with more creative advertising, a sentiment shared by 38% this year as opposed to 34% in 2024.

If you’re not fully making the AI transition yet, there’s also good news for you in this study: 56.6% of consumers said they’re going to use traditional search engines the same amount in the next six months. And more than a quarter—27.4%—plan to use them more.

The fate of TikTok is still pending, but its brief blackout in the U.S. in January was a wake-up call to many creators and influencers who rely on the platform. Jonathan Goodman, an entrepreneur behind online fitness-based apps and author of The Obvious Choice: Timeless Lessons on Success, Profit and Finding Your Way, built his brands without an overreliance on social media. I talked to him about how to build brands in today’s atmosphere without leaning too heavily on social apps. An excerpt from our conversation is later in this newsletter.

And a reminder that we’re seeking feedback from leaders to help compile Forbes’ next installment of the New Ivies—the public and private colleges that are graduating the most prepared and competitive young talent. Please share your experience in this survey.

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

While AI might be good for consumer research, it’s terrible for publishers. Forbes’ Rashi Shrivastava and Richard Nieva report that AI search engines send 96% less referral traffic to news sites and blogs than traditional search, according to a report from content licensing platform TollBit. The report showed that OpenAI, Perplexity, Meta and other AI companies scraped websites 2 million times on average in the fourth quarter of 2024, with each page being scraped an average of seven times. This seems to show Gartner’s prediction last year—that traditional search traffic would drop by 25% by 2026 due to AI chatbots and agents—is coming true. (Forbes has taken action against two AI companies for accusations of republishing and training models on its content without permission. Forbes sent a cease-and-desist notice to Perplexity, and is part of a group of publishers suing Cohere.)

But AI bots aren’t just a problem for publishers. A report from B2B marketing agency and media connection hub DesignRush finds that 80% of all web traffic is made up of bots. While bots’ share of web traffic has been increasing, DesignRush says it increased by 7% in just one year. This massive increase means that most digital ad spend is likely being wasted on bot traffic, DesignRush says, as well as increasing business server and security costs.

IN THE NEWS

Hollywood’s brightest stars came out on Sunday for the Oscars. At the 97th Academy Awards, 19.69 million viewers tuned in on ABC and Hulu—a five-year high for the awards show, writes Forbes senior contributor Marc Berman—to watch Conan O’Brien host as Oscars were handed out for actors and producers of films including best picture winner Anora, while Adrien Brody won his second career Oscar for his performance in The Brutalist.

But a lot of the action—quite literally—took place during the commercial breaks. L’Oréal Paris, Carnival Cruise Line, Kiehl’s, MNTN and Samsung teamed up to run six ads highlighting stunt performers. The lineup was the largest multi-brand ad stunt in Oscars history, and featured more than 75 stunt performers in starring roles, according to a press release about the campaign. Forbes senior contributor Celia Shatzman focuses on the L’Oréal ad, in which stunt performer Samantha Win repeatedly crashes through a plate glass window in a slinky red gown—and her makeup still looks perfect, thanks to L’Oréal’s Infallible 3-Second Setting Mist. L’Oréal Paris USA President Laura Branik told Shatzman the spray is a top seller—one sells every 23 seconds—and the ad shows that it can help makeup stay put in any condition.

RIGHTS + SPONSORSHIP

Baseball’s last team without stadium naming rights or jersey patch sponsorships is likely to get one or both this year. The Washington Nationals hired marketing and talent representation agency Excel Sports Management to take both of these partnership deals to market, and initial conversations started in January, writes Forbes’ Brett Knight. Forbes estimates the sponsorships could be worth more than $20 million annually. Nats Chief Revenue Officer Mike Carney told Knight that any announcement would be likely to come at the height of baseball season in the summer. The Nationals are pursuing a stadium naming deal that would last at least 20 years, while a jersey patch deal would have a minimum three-year term.

Although the 2019 World Series champion Nationals have only had two winning seasons since then, Excel Senior VP for Properties and Corporate Partnerships Preetam Sen told Knight that the stadium’s waterfront location—in the up-and-coming Navy Yard neighborhood in Washington, D.C.—makes it extremely visible to tourists visiting the nation’s capital. So even if it takes some time for the Nats to draw viewers outside the D.C. area, the stadium is guaranteed to get exposure.

ON MESSAGE

How To Market Effectively When You Don’t Own The Social Media Platform

The fate of TikTok is still up in the air, and many marketers and influencers who depend on the platform were shocked when it went dark for part of a day in January. But should so many marketers really be dependent on one social platform? Jonathan Goodman, a fitness entrepreneur who has built business without overreliance on social media, says there’s a better way to use social media tools for marketing. His recent book, The Obvious Choice: Timeless Lessons on Success, Profit and Finding Your Way, addresses the issue. I talked to him about using the tools more effectively. This conversation has been edited for length, clarity and continuity.

The TikTok sell-or-ban bill was passed by Congress last spring, so those who depended on the social network for marketing presumably had time to prepare. Would you say that the brief shutdown of the app in January took them by surprise?

Goodman: I think anybody who’s done business online for any period of time knows that these things come and go, but the reality of it is it’s become so loud and so in your face in the last couple of years. Not just TikTok—Instagram, what’s been going on with X and how insane that community has gotten. It’s like if you’re not famous where you exist, you don’t matter. Ignoring the fact that there’s an entire world outside of that, of course.

I think we all intuitively understand this thing, but our world that we’ve decided to silo ourselves within is so insulated that it’s all that we see, and therefore it’s all that matters to us. So yes, I think people were probably very surprised by it, and I think people probably feel like they were blindsided by it.

TikTok went back up like three hours after it went down, but I think it showed people [that] maybe you don’t have control here. Maybe you don’t own this platform. The general sentiment is pretty clear, which is: What are we even doing here? But the [answer] that always results is: I don’t know another way. That’s because these platforms have been engineered to become addictive to the producer of the content.

Social media seems to be getting more fragmented by the day. How should a brand that has been building a strategy on social media for the last decade reevaluate what they’re doing?

Try to figure out what’s the 1% that’s different about you, not the 99% that’s the same. What’s the uncommon commonality that you have in common with your best customer? Can you work backwards from that? What’s weird and different? What’s that kind of geek flag? Where are these people hanging out in these tiny little pockets online?

Instead of just creating content that you hope is going to get as many likes as possible, would you prefer to have 15 or 50 [from] people who are influential in that space that you have really tight connections with, or have 5,000 people who tangentially are interested in fitness follow your post because you were able to articulate something that frustrates them?

How can a brand authentically connect with new potential customers outside of the generic social media strategy that many have used?

I’ve got four stages of social media growth that I think every company goes through. Stage one is you create content for yourself. Stage two is for your customers. Stage three is for your industry. Stage four for the world.

I believe that the vast majority of businesses should actually stay at stage two for their entire business life cycle. Which means that you view your social media accounts, you view your online platforms—it might be your email list, you might decide to have a podcast—as a place to nurture your existing customers and to answer common questions. You don’t view it as a place to generate leads. You view it as a place to nurture, retain leads and generate referrals from your existing customers.

When doing that, you actually build it out kind of like a sales page. You create content genuinely to help the people that you’re already serving, and, of course, that’s probably going to resonate.

Now, will that go viral? Maybe, but this really is a call for you deciding to play your own game with your content platform, and also figuring out what metrics you need to measure in order to be successful on the platform. The metrics that the social media platform is going to give you are the metrics that are going to reinforce their goals, which are for you to become a famous entertainer. That’s probably not your goal in using social media.

For my mentorship company, we measure the amount of inbound DM inquiries that we get as a result of our content. We’ve become more sophisticated now: we measure the amount that turn into customers that retain. What we’ve found out is that there’s almost an inverse correlation between engagement and the type of content that actually generates customers. Whatever you’re doing, figure out what tangible business outcome you need as a result of your content. Measure that and look past the amount of engagement that you get. Engagement perhaps is an instrumental step, but it’s not the final goal. Goodhart’s Law states that when a measure becomes the goal, it ceases to be a good measure.

FACTS + COMMENTS

The New York Toy Fair took place this week, and a wide variety of companies took the opportunity to show how they’re reimagining themselves for a world in which adults are the fastest growing market for sales, writes Forbes senior contributor Joan Verdon.

Close to 900: Companies that exhibited at this year’s show, ranging from industry giants to small startups

46%: Proportion of U.S. adults who bought a toy for themselves last year, said Hasbro President of Toys, Licensing and Entertainment Tim Kilpin

‘[We] think about toys as art and art as toys’: Mattel Chief Brand Officer Lisa McKnight said about a partnership with 80 artists to create works of art interpreting its products

STRATEGIES + ADVICE

Want to send better marketing emails? Here are five ChatGPT prompts to help you improve them.

You may be close with your team members, but you shouldn’t call them “family.” Here’s how to build a more effective work relationship.

VIDEO

QUIZ

New FBI Director Kash Patel proposed bringing a branded product to the law enforcement agency in a teleconference last week. What is it?

A. Tesla Cybertrucks for top brass

B. Ray-Ban Meta glasses for agents to wear

C. UFC physical fitness training for agents

D. Diet Coke-dispensing fountains in all office break rooms

See if you got the answer right here.