Social media marketing services for platforms where your follower count stopped mattering
Over half of the average feed now comes from accounts the user does not follow. Facebook Pages reach about 2.2% of their own followers. Building an audience to broadcast to is no longer the strategy, because the platform decides who sees a post and it decides on the content.
Channels run as a distribution system rather than a posting schedule, measured on what they send to your business.
What are social media marketing services?
Social media marketing services cover choosing which channels are worth your effort, building content designed for how each platform actually distributes it, publishing on a cadence the algorithm rewards, engaging in the places where reach still holds, and measuring the channels on what they contribute rather than on follower growth.
One boundary worth stating. Social media automation services cover the workflows and tooling that get content published and responded to without manual effort.
This page is the strategy, the content and the channel decisions. The automation makes it sustainable, and it cannot make a bad channel choice work.
What changed, and why old advice stopped working
The model shifted from distributing to your followers to recommending your content to strangers. Almost everything follows from that.
Feeds are recommendation engines now. Roughly 54% of the average Facebook feed comes from accounts the user does not follow, and AI is reported to drive over 80% of content recommendations. Who subscribed to you matters far less than whether the system thinks a given post suits a given person.
Reach to your own audience has collapsed. Facebook Page posts now reach around 2.2% of followers, down from roughly 5.5%. Instagram feed reach sits somewhere around 5 to 7.6% per post and fell about 12% year on year. An audience you spent years building is no longer an audience you can reliably talk to.
Where reach holds up tells you where to spend effort. It is holding where content is filtered by interest and community, such as TikTok, groups and niche communities, and collapsing where it is filtered by follower relationship, such as the Instagram feed and Facebook Pages. TikTok engagement reportedly rose 49% year on year to around 3.7%.
The signals changed, so the content has to. Saves and shares now outweigh likes, video generates substantially more engagement than static formats, and Instagram rewards direct message shares, saves, watch time and profile clicks, compounding for accounts posting several times a week rather than daily bursts followed by silence.
Platform figures move constantly and vary by industry, so treat these as direction rather than benchmarks. The structural change is the durable part: distribution is earned per post, not accumulated per follower.
The old playbook against the current one
Most social media proposals still describe the left hand column. It is worth checking which one you are being sold.
| The old approach | What works now | |
|---|---|---|
| Goal | Grow the follower count | Earn distribution on each post |
| Content | Announcements to your audience | Made for someone who has never heard of you |
| Format | Graphics and static posts | Video, and formats that get saved or sent to a friend |
| Cadence | Daily, then quiet for a month | Consistent several times a week, which compounds |
| Success signal | Likes and followers | Saves, shares, watch time and profile clicks |
| Channel choice | Be everywhere | Be where reach still holds for your audience |
| Reporting | Impressions and engagement rate | Traffic, enquiries and revenue attributable to the channel |
The content row is the hardest change for most brands. Posts written for people who already know you perform badly in a system built to show your work to people who do not.
What our social media marketing services cover
Channel selection first, because doing four platforms adequately usually beats doing one properly is the exact opposite of true.
Channel selection
Which platforms your buyers actually use and where reach still holds for your category. Most brands are spread across too many and committed to none.
Content strategy
Themes and formats built around what gets recommended rather than what your team finds easiest to produce. These are rarely the same thing.
Content production
Video first, because it earns substantially more distribution than static formats and is what the recommendation systems are built to surface.
Publishing cadence
Consistent several times a week, because the signals compound. Sporadic bursts perform worse than a steady rhythm at the same total volume.
Community and engagement
Groups, comments and conversations, which is where reach is genuinely holding while broadcast reach falls away.
Creator and partner work
Borrowing distribution from people who already have it, which is frequently faster and cheaper than building your own from a standing start.
Paid amplification
Putting budget behind the organic posts that already earned attention, rather than boosting whatever went out on Tuesday.
Social search optimisation
Captions, on screen text and profile copy written so your content is findable by people searching inside the platform rather than only scrolling it.
Reporting that means something
Traffic, enquiries and revenue attributable to the channel. Follower growth is a vanity metric that has become actively misleading.
The individual parts of social
Some clients want the whole channel run. Some arrive with one specific need.
Social media management
Day to day running of the channels: planning, publishing, community management and reporting, on a consistent rhythm.
See management →B2B social media marketing
Where the buying committee is the audience, the sales cycle is long, and the channel builds familiarity rather than producing same-day enquiries.
See B2B social →TikTok marketing
The platform where reach is still genuinely available to accounts without an existing audience, and where the content rules differ most.
See TikTok marketing →How the channels get run
Cut the channels you cannot serve
Usually the first recommendation and rarely the popular one. Two platforms done properly beat five kept alive with reposted graphics nobody engages with.
Build content for strangers
Formats and hooks aimed at someone who has never heard of you, because that is who the recommendation engine is showing it to. Announcements to existing followers reach almost nobody.
Publish on a rhythm and hold it
Several times a week, sustained. The signals compound for consistent accounts and reset for sporadic ones, which is why bursts of activity underperform steady output.
Amplify what already worked
Paid budget behind organic posts that earned attention on their own, rather than boosting on a schedule. The organic result is the test and the budget is the multiplier.
What social will and will not do for you
This is the marketing channel most often bought on the assumption that everybody needs it. Not everybody does.
It is rarely a direct response channel. Social builds familiarity, demand and recall. If you need enquiries this quarter and nothing else, paid search reaches people already looking for what you sell and will do it faster. We would rather point you there than take a retainer that disappoints.
Posting is not a strategy and neither is presence. Maintaining accounts so they do not look abandoned costs real money and returns very little. Either commit to earning distribution properly or reduce to a profile that simply confirms you exist.
Follower counts have stopped predicting anything. With over half of feeds coming from unfollowed accounts, an audience number is a historical record rather than a reach forecast. Anyone selling you follower growth as the outcome is selling a metric that stopped working.
Where social genuinely earns its budget is products people can see working, categories where trust is built before purchase, and businesses whose buyers spend time on a platform where reach still holds.
How much do social media marketing services cost?
A flat monthly fee covering strategy, production and management, scoped to the number of channels rather than the number of posts.
Channel review
Which platforms are worth your effort, what your current content is earning, and whether social is the right place for this budget at all. Free.
Strategy and setup
Channel selection, content themes, formats, cadence and profile optimisation. A one off, before anything ongoing begins.
Ongoing management
Production, publishing, community work and monthly reporting on contribution rather than followers. Flat fee, cancellable.
Production volume drives cost more than channel count. Video made properly is the expensive part and it is also the part that earns the distribution, so cutting it to save money removes the reason the channel works.
Social alongside the rest of the marketing
Social media automation
The workflows that make a consistent cadence sustainable, including publishing, responses and reporting without manual effort every day.
See automation →TikTok Shop management
For brands selling directly on the platform, where content and commerce are the same activity rather than adjacent ones.
See TikTok Shop →PPC management
When you need enquiries now rather than familiarity over months, paid search reaches people already looking for what you sell.
See PPC →Common questions about social media marketing
Because the platforms changed what feeds are for. Roughly 54% of the average Facebook feed now comes from accounts the user does not follow, so distribution is decided per post by a recommendation system rather than by who subscribed to you. Facebook Page posts reach around 2.2% of followers, down from about 5.5%, and Instagram feed reach sits somewhere around 5 to 7.6% per post. Nothing you did caused it.
Far less than they did, and treating the number as a goal is now actively misleading. With over half of feeds made up of unfollowed accounts, your follower count is a record of past interest rather than a forecast of reach. What matters is whether a given post earns distribution, which is decided on the content each time it goes out.
Wherever your buyers are and reach still holds, which is usually fewer platforms than you are currently on. Reach is holding where content is filtered by interest and community, such as TikTok, groups and niche communities, and collapsing where it is filtered by follower relationship. Two channels done properly outperform five kept alive out of obligation.
Consistently, several times a week, and then keep going. The ranking signals compound for accounts with a steady rhythm, so the same total output produces better results spread evenly than delivered in bursts. A month of daily posting followed by six weeks of silence is close to the worst pattern available.
Saves, shares, watch time and profile clicks as leading signals, and traffic, enquiries and revenue as the outcome. Likes and follower growth are the easiest numbers to report and the least useful. If a monthly report leads with audience growth, ask what the channel sent to the business instead.
For some businesses substantially, for others barely at all. It builds familiarity, demand and recall, which is valuable and slow. If you need enquiries this quarter, paid search reaches people already searching for what you sell and will do it faster. We would rather say that on the first call than take a retainer that quietly underdelivers.
Partly, and not as a whole strategy. Content written for people who already know you performs badly in a system designed to show your work to people who do not. Repurposing works when the substance is adapted for a cold audience, and fails when a newsletter or a product announcement is simply reformatted into a square graphic.
Find out which channels are worth your effort
We will look at where your buyers actually are, what your current content is earning against what it costs to produce, and which platforms you should stop maintaining. Sometimes the honest answer is that this budget belongs in search instead, and you will hear that if it applies. No obligation, no sales pitch.
Get my free channel review- Channel fit
- Content performance
- What to stop doing