Transcription
Social media is changing rapidly. In 2025, it's going to look completely different than it does today. But the good news is these shifts will create a ton of opportunity. Because if you can skate where the puck is going, you're going to win big.
I know this because I spend all my time on the cutting edge of content marketing and distribution. In the last year alone, I drove 400 million views. So in this video, I'm going to walk through the six biggest social media trends coming in 2025 and exactly how you should adjust your content strategy to take advantage. If you want to beat the competition in 2025, this is where you have to focus.
All right, so the first trend, and the biggest one, is that AI content is going to start taking over in 2025. I know you don't want to hear it; I don't want to hear it either, but it's the truth. AI content is inevitable. Up to this point, you could easily tell the difference between human versus AI or created versus generated. Much of the AI stuff I've seen in 2024, especially the creator avatar and generated video stuff, is uninspiring, unoriginal, and, to be honest, unreal. It doesn't look real to the eye.
But that all changes in 2025 because 2025 will be the first year where AI content becomes indistinguishable from human content. This is the big trend; this is the mega wave that you need to figure out how to surf if you're a creator or a business owner. When we look back on history, there will be the original social media era from 2003 to 2024—social 1.0—and then there will be the AI social media era starting in 2025—social 2.0.
As someone who studies content all day long and has a deeply vested interest in figuring out how to win here, this is all I've been thinking about. What does the AI social strategy look like? How does it work? What matters? What is the winning strategy?
Here's what I think will happen: There will be creators that show up on your For You page that do not exist in real life. You will watch their videos, comment, like, and be a super fan. You will buy their products, and most importantly, you will believe they're real. You will become invested in their story just like you do with your favorite creators today.
I know you think you won't do this, but you will. Because you will have no idea that these creators were generated out of thin air. They will sound real; their inflection and mouth syncing will be perfect. They will be designed with visual imperfections. Their walk will look real; their environment will look real. Everything will seem real. If you come across a new creator for the first time, you will not be able to tell if they are real or fake.
Now, this is scary, but this is how advanced I believe AI content is going to get as soon as 2025. There are many business implications from this, but the biggest one for you as a creator or entrepreneur is that you will now have to compete for attention with all human creators as well as anyone else that can generate one out of thin air. Winning with content is going to get way harder starting in 2025 because content volume is going to go way up—100 to 1,000 times more posts per day.
This is simply a result of people being able to set up content factories and literally print 1,000 posts in a couple of minutes with just a few clicks of a button. The biggest reason this is going to impact you as a creator or business is that this is going to create a lot of noise on social media. Mathematically, even if your handmade stuff is better, it's much harder to cut through 10,000 pieces of content than it is to cut through 100.
Think of this like trying to sell an artisanal handmade scarf versus going up against the big brands that have hundreds of factories that sell millions of scarves per year. If a customer really wants to seek you out, they can find it, but the cheaper and more easily accessible version is going to come from the big brands with the factories. Content is going to evolve in this exact same way.
Now, social platforms will be forced to react to this. I expect this shift is going to start happening in 2025 and really be in full tilt by the end of the year. Maybe social platforms create AI-only feeds. Maybe they create really good filtering detection that can tag AI and filter it out. Maybe some new social platform designed for human-only verified content emerges as an anti-trend.
We don't exactly know what the reaction will be or even when it will happen, but personally, I don't want to rely on social platforms bailing me out. So if you're a creator or an entrepreneur, you need to assume AI content is coming, volumes are going way up, and you're essentially going to be competing with content factories.
Now, if you're watching this, I want you to win, and I want to win as well. To do that, you need to proactively start shifting your content strategy as the AI content wave starts happening.
I could go into a bunch of other trends on social media that are honestly rounders because the big one, the mega trend, is AI content. So for the rest of the video, I want to break down exactly how you attack it. These are the five tactical changes that you should make to stay on offense.
The first one is that you need to get faster at making content in 2025. Getting faster means integrating AI agents into your content creation workflow. Now, the positive side of AI content emerging is that companies are going to build AI content agents that you can use to speed up your process.
We're already seeing AI content tools like MidJourney for images, ChatGPT for writing, and all these writing tools. But these are web-based tools; they're not agents. Web-based tools are things that you use. Agents are digital employees that do stuff for you.
Maybe instead of spending five hours per week researching ideas, you can toggle a switch and send out the AI research agent to do all that work for you. Maybe instead of editing your video, eventually down the road, you can train an editing agent to copy your style and do all the edits for you. Agents are essentially digital task rabbits that you'll be able to easily switch on for like $20 to $50 per month.
Now, these content agents are going to start coming online in 2025, which is why I'm proactively calling it out as a trend. We're already seeing the first prototypes of what an agentic world could look like. For example, Devon, which is a very popular AI coding agent. Meta even launched Creator AI within Instagram, which was the very early prototype of what a creator agent could look like.
I'm building my own version of this for script writing specifically with Sandcastle. Because the through line is, in order to compete with AI content factories that can instantly print content, you need to be able to speed up your content workflow as well. I think AI agents are going to allow you to do that.
The truth is, I believe posting at low volumes—one or two times a week, especially as a beginner—is just not going to be enough volume to cut through the noise. You need more volume, and so you need more efficient content workflows.
One of the things I'm going to be covering in 2025 on this channel is a comprehensive look into how I'm building and optimizing these AI content agents. I'll make a bunch of videos detailing my process and how I speed it up. I'm also going to be covering that in Short Form Academy. All the links are below in the description for that.
This is a critical part of becoming a creator in the next era. I believe that combining human handmade creativity with these AI-powered workflows is the best way to cut through the noise at the appropriate volume. This applies for individual creators and businesses. This is a massive, massive trend.
Now, the second major content shift that you need to make to keep up with this AI content era is that you need to build direct pipes with your audience as soon as possible. This means when you make something, you need to be able to alert your audience directly so that they can come and engage with it.
In the current social 1.0 era, this manifested as features like turning on the bell notification on YouTube or turning on post notifications to get a DM on Instagram. These types of features become 100 times more valuable when there's a thousand times more content on the feed that people need to sort through. The feeds are just going to become too noisy to rely on to get people to see your stuff.
What's interesting is that the need for these direct pipes is going to reveal the bifurcation between the haves and the have-nots when it comes to content. The haves are people that have already built large audiences that are willing to turn on post notifications. If you have a large follower number, that's not what really matters. What matters is, are they willing to turn on the notification? What is the depth of that following?
The have-nots are people that have not built this yet. Maybe they had a rapid rise in follower count, but they haven't yet had the time to build the depth in a high-volume AI content type environment. I predict it's going to be really hard to get new followers to pay attention to your stuff on the feed because the For You pages will really become dominated by AI content.
This means you're going to have to rely on direct pipes as the major way to get existing fans to engage. It'd be like if you had a single nondescript page in a magazine versus a phone book. Let's say you had one person flipping through each. Which would be more likely for that person to stumble across your page? Obviously, it would be the magazine because the more pages, the harder it is for someone to find.
I think For You feeds are going to evolve into phone books. With so much volume and so many pages, it's just going to be impossible to cut through. So tactically, as a creator or entrepreneur, I would pour as much energy as possible in the next six months before the AI content really takes off into building those direct pipes and growing that audience as fast as possible.
This also means building direct, non-algorithmically dependent relationships with fans. Things like email newsletters and private communities are so critical because these are surfaces where AI cannot dilute your reach. Instagram is even trying to build features like this inside their platform with things like broadcast channels.
This is why live streaming is actually my number one platform pick in 2025. Because live streaming is basically appointment TV that doesn't require algorithmic feed push. If you could build an audience via live stream, you basically embed a notification to pull that person in every single time.
Newsletters, private communities, broadcast channels, live streams—these are the surfaces that you need to start piping your audience into so you have a hedge for when the feed becomes too noisy. I can't overemphasize how important it will be to be able to ping all of your audience when you post something to pull them in. Because feeds will become polluted. No longer will your stuff get pushed to the right people; you're going to have to pull them to see what you want.
This builds on a broader theme where I believe the unlimited free distribution era may be coming to an end. There's a world where social platforms offer a way for you to push your content to followers, but you'll have to pay for a premium tier to do it—kind of like an in-between of organic and paid. Call it lightweight paid.
It sounds insane to say, but I could see a world where platforms build a super sophisticated human-only detection and then charge creators a premium to be able to cut through and use it. The free tier would just be posting into the sea of everything. I don't mean to be a doomsayer; I'm generally really optimistic. This is just me playing out the game theory of what might happen once you have unlimited AI volume.
2025 may be the final window to build an audience at scale on easy mode for free. You'll, of course, still be able to build an audience after, but it's going to be way harder, and it might cost money to reach the right people. Think of it this way: Imagine if I told you in order to qualify for the championships in your sport, you had to beat 10,000 teams instead of 10. Yeah, it's obviously doable, but competing against 10,000 is much, much harder.
2025 is the start of the 10,000 team tournament. So the tactical takeaway is to start making content aggressively right now before this kicks in in the later half of next year.
And one last point on this: If you don't think direct pipes are important, why are all these traditional mainstream celebrities starting to create content channels and piping people into newsletters? Tom Brady on YouTube, Arnold Schwarzenegger on Beehive, Kevin Hart and Snoop Dogg on Kaisen. More and more celebrities are building these direct pipes. Why? It's because they realize the importance of being able to reach their fans outside of algorithmic feeds.
First came the death of traditional media; next will come the death of the gameable feed. It's going to get much, much harder in the feed, so you got to sprint at it.
All right, the third tactical shift to take advantage of this whole AI content era is to stay weird and unique in your content. If you have a series or a format that's high quality and unique and it works, just keep hammering it. If you have a personality quirk or you like to include humor or jokes in your content, keep doing that. Let your individuality be the North Star that guides your content.
Because while AI content will gobble up the low-quality formats first, the best way to cut through is to keep this high-quality uniqueness that can't easily be replicated. Coincidentally, those are the types of things that people turn their notifications on to see. That's how you become a one-of-one personality.
My gut feeling is that eventually, creators will be able to one-click upload their entire library and create a content agent that can replicate even the highest quality and quirkiest of styles, but that's likely a few years out. So in 2025 specifically, you should be protected with super high quality and unique formats.
Again, this is great for those that have already figured out; it's tougher for those who haven't figured it out yet. I suggest you triple down here and really let yourself be yourself in the content. I expect to see a lot of experimentation and wilder attempts in 2025, almost as an anti-trend as we converge to the middle with all this AI content.
This is an interesting byproduct of the AI content potentially flooding the feed. Because of the diminishing feed, creators are not penalized as much for wilder and wackier attempts. So I expect to see a lot more of that. In fact, as we shift to more of a direct piping relationship with fans, existing followers may enjoy wilder and more experimental takes.
We just saw Instagram release a feature called trial reels, which literally lets you experiment with wilder content that doesn't show to your followers until it's high performing. Now, obviously, this is a feed feature and appeals to non-followers, but this is a great thing to start sprinting out in the first half of 2025 to test wilder experiments without holding yourself back with the existing audience.
In the era of noise, being unique is signal.
Now, the fourth tactical shift to take advantage of this AI content era, and this is especially for businesses, is that you have to re-evaluate your ability to generate demand. Business is super simple: you have to make something people want, and then you have to get them to pay attention long enough so that you can tell them about it. The former is product, and the latter is content.
With AI development tools and advances in robotics and manufacturing, I actually expect it to get easier and easier to produce compelling products. Eventually, making a product, especially a digital one, would just be a couple of clicks. This means products become commoditized, and distribution becomes the harder thing to crack.
So if AI content begins to rip in 2025, how does that impact the distribution ability for businesses? Well, the first thing is the skill of being able to generate attention on demand will command a massive premium in the next era. I think it's the hottest skill to learn right now because the rise of AI content means way more noise on social. So if you can cut through the noise consistently, you're going to get paid a massive premium.
Now, the most valuable thing for a brand to do right now is to develop that on-demand attention generation in-house. This is why new brands really shouldn't start unless they have that solved for on the founding team. But for existing brands that don't have it in-house, they're, of course, going to have to pay for that distribution expertise.
Now, here's what's interesting: Traditionally, a popular solve for this was influencers. In a way, influencers in the social 1.0 era were kind of like mob bosses. A few of them controlled most of the attention for a specific category, and then brands basically had to pay a tax to get their message out.
But the invention of the For You feeds kind of shattered that influencer scarcity, and the AI content era is going to shatter the feed because the feed will be noisy. So this is a big prediction of mine for 2025: the death of the influencer and the rise of the creator in residence.
When I think influencer, I think of someone that's built an existing audience and then profits off influencing that audience over and over. When I think of creator in residence, I think of someone that can create a content strategy and generate demand for any audience at will.
Here's what's interesting: In the AI content era, as things get more competitive, existing audiences really only matter if you're good enough to engage with them consistently. I believe that's going to get harder and harder as the noise on the feeds goes up. So what really matters is the skill of content, regardless of your audience size.
I believe brands are going to start paying a premium for people that have that skill, regardless of if they've built a big audience or not. I believe 2025 is going to be the death of the influencer and the rise of this creator in residence role. You're going to start seeing more creators go in-house to work with brands. It's less risk for the creators, and the brands are going to start paying a lot more for it.
If you want to learn that skill for yourself as a creator and you want to start getting paid $500,000 a year to go in-house for these brands, I have all the resources linked below for free. I have Wavy World, which is a free school. I have Content Department, which is a free newsletter talking about these trends. I can't believe how much free stuff I have in the description. Make sure you go check that out.
All right, now the last shift to stay resistant to this AI content era is world building. World building means having a consistent aesthetic across every platform. Anywhere someone goes—whether it's digital, physical, print, in-person, or digital experiences—everywhere they go, they see a consistent brand experience, consistent messaging, and consistent colors. You show up everywhere the same. That is building a world.
Because with more noise, you need more and more reps to plant more and more seeds so that customers notice you everywhere. The easiest way to do this is to show up similarly and intentionally on every surface.
Some of my favorite brands are the best in the world at world building: Pool Suite, Kith, Apple, and Tesla are obviously icons at doing this. No matter where you engage, you always feel their signature brand. You could argue that these brands were ahead of their time with kind of leading with consistent design and messaging.
But this world building idea becomes so important in the age of AI content. In 2025, I expect you're going to see a lot more intentionality around world building from the leading brands. Brands are going to hire world architects whose only job is to make sure there's consistency across every platform that a brand shows up everywhere the same way.
This is a really critical thing in the era we're headed into. For you, tactically, what that means with content is to have consistent bios, have consistent messaging, and make sure the content looks, feels, and sounds the same on every platform. Be as many places as you can, plant seeds, and build the world for your target viewer.
All right, that's all I've got for this video. I know it was a long one. I really wanted to hammer this AI content point. I think this is the biggest macro shift that we've seen in content, in marketing, in social media in the last 20 years. I think everything is going to change starting in 2025.
If you focus on some of the things we talked about today, you will be resistant to that change. It will come, and you will be able to circumvent around it and keep winning. If you like the type of stuff I talk about, make sure to subscribe. I kind of mix between tactics and strategy in theory. So if you like this video, leave a comment and let me know so I can get feedback.
I'll see you guys on the next video. Peace!