Knowledge Paper 029 · Social Media Marketing
The Appearance of Marketing
How the platforms taught small businesses to post, imitate and count, without necessarily growing.
The short answer
Small businesses didn't all independently arrive at the conclusion that marketing means posting generic content on Instagram and Facebook and then counting the likes.
They were taught to think that way.
Social platforms dramatically lowered the cost of publishing.
That was genuinely useful.
But they also collapsed the perceived discipline of marketing into the operation of publishing tools.
Open an account.
Post something.
Watch the numbers move.
Repeat.
The result is a platform-designed version of marketing in which:
Activity is mistaken for reach.
Engagement is mistaken for effectiveness.
Followers are mistaken for buyers.
Content production is mistaken for strategy.
The business feels busy.
The feed looks alive.
The platform gets more content.
But none of that means more people are likely to buy.
Marketing used to begin before the media.
Before anybody made an ad, there were questions to answer.
Who are we trying to reach?
What category are we actually competing in?
Why do people enter that category?
What should they remember about us?
Where can we reach them?
What are we trying to change commercially?
Social platforms shortened that process dramatically.
Now you can open an account and begin “doing marketing” within minutes.
That democratised publishing.
It did not democratise expertise.
Owning Photoshop or an AI never made someone a designer.
Owning a treadmill does not make someone a sports scientist.
Having access to a publishing platform does not mean you understand marketing.
Yet the interface creates precisely that impression.
The platforms teach businesses to serve the platform as a master.
The interests of a social platform and a business sometimes overlap.
But they are not identical.
A business needs:
- more category buyers
- greater mental availability
- more distinctive memory structures
- greater physical availability
- more purchases
The platform needs:
- more content
- more viewing time
- more reactions
- more comments
- more creators
- more advertising spend
So naturally the platform provides feedback around the things that matter to the platform.
Views.
Likes.
Comments.
Shares.
Followers.
Posting streaks.
Trending formats.
Recommended tunes.
Suggested posting times.
The platform is not malicious for doing this.
It is simply optimising for its own system.
The danger comes when businesses mistake the platform's scoreboard for their own.
TBH we should stop calling it social media anyway, it's algorithmic media.
The small business becomes the content.
There is something slightly lopsided about this arrangement.
Businesses believe social platforms are supplying them with an audience.
But really the business is supplying the platform with content.
For free.
Photos.
Videos.
Advice.
Entertainment.
Staff stories.
Recipes.
Behind-the-scenes footage.
Reaction posts.
Seasonal greetings.
The platform then decides how much of that material the business's own followers are allowed to see.
And then offers to sell more reach back to them. That's nice of them
This may still be a perfectly sensible commercial exchange.
But it is worth understanding what the exchange actually is.
Likes are easier than growth.
Real marketing outcomes are inconvenient.
They take time.
Did more people become aware of us?
Did our penetration increase?
Are more category buyers thinking of us?
Did revenue rise because of something we did?
Did this create customers who would not otherwise have bought?
These are difficult questions.
A like arrives immediately.
So does a comment.
A number goes up.
The brain gets feedback.
And when an important measure is difficult to obtain, humans often substitute something easier.
Instead of:
“Are we becoming more mentally available among potential buyers?”
we ask:
“Did Tuesday's Reel do better than Thursday's?”
The substitution is a neat trick.
And then eventually everybody forgets it happened.
It's Goodhart's Law with a ring light.
Goodhart's Law is usually paraphrased as:
When a measure becomes a target, it stops being a good measure.
Social media gives us a perfect marketing example.
Engagement may occasionally indicate that something resonated.
But once engagement becomes the objective, marketing starts being designed specifically to generate engagement.
Questions.
Polls.
“Tag someone who...”
Manufactured controversy.
Giveaways.
Trend participation.
Content engineered to provoke reaction.
And the marketing organisation slowly begins optimising for the platform's visible metric rather than the business outcome.
The engagement score improves.
Nothing much happens in the business.
Marketing as corporate presenteeism.
Posting also performs another useful function.
It makes 'marketing' visible.
Doing stuff.
There's a calendar.
Monday: staff introduction.
Tuesday: product photograph.
Wednesday: inspirational quote.
Thursday: behind the scenes.
Friday: weekend offer.
Things are happening.
Management can see them happening.
Reports can contain screenshots and numbers.
Nobody can accuse marketing of inactivity.
Doing Strategy is less theatrical.
Thinking hard about Category Entry Points may produce nothing to publish today.
Fixing a booking process might take a month.
Working out which 20,000 people locally do not know you exist might not produce an Instagram reel.
So organisations naturally gravitate towards activities that visibly resemble work.
Then everyone copies everyone else.
Then social proof appears.
If you run a hotel, what does hotel marketing look like?
Look at other hotels.
Rooms.
Breakfast.
The view.
The chef.
A sunset.
The same generic crap.
If you are an accountant:
Tax deadline.
Budget update.
Meet the team.
If you are an estate agent:
SOLD.
SOLD.
SOLD.
If you are a restaurant:
Plate.
Plate.
Plate.
We all know what a steak looks like.
The competitors become the template.
Which makes complete psychological sense.
When people are uncertain, copying others is a cheap and often useful heuristic.
Evolutionarily, social learning is enormously valuable.
If everybody else is eating the red berries and surviving, copying them is safer than conducting your own toxicology experiment.
But marketing contains an awkward paradox.
The category becomes a monoculture.
Once everybody observes everybody else, communications converge.
The same photography.
The same tone.
The same awareness days.
The same captions.
The same Canva templates.
The same “We're delighted to announce...” language.
The same generic claims.
Authentic.
Passionate.
Local.
Quality.
Friendly.
Innovative.
People are not necessarily copying individual posts.
They are copying the category's idea of what a post is supposed to look like.
That is memetic selection.
Certain formats survive because they are easy to reproduce and socially safe.
Not because they are particularly effective.
The result is a communications monoculture.
There has been plenty of slop before AI arrived.
The follower fallacy.
There is an even bigger problem.
Who is actually seeing all this content?
Mostly:
- existing customers
- employees
- friends
- family
- suppliers
- other local businesses
- competitors
- other marketers
- people who habitually engage with the account
- and that's if the algo even shows them anything
In other words, the people most likely to react may already be the people most familiar with the business.
This is almost the opposite of what marketing science tells us about growth.
Ehrenberg-Bass research repeatedly points towards penetration.
Growth generally comes from reaching more category buyers.
Especially light and occasional buyers.
The person who likes every post from your restaurant already knows your restaurant exists.
The person who might need somewhere for an anniversary six months from now and has never heard of you is probably more valuable.
Reach matters more than applause.
Imagine two posts.
Post A:
1,000 people see it.
120 react.
Post B:
15,000 relevant people see it.
90 react.
Which one worked better?
The platform will probably encourage you to admire Post A.
The marketer should at least ask whether Post B created more potential future buyers.
Because most advertising recipients are not currently in the market.
They don't need to click.
They don't need to comment.
They may not even need to look for long.
They just need to notice something sufficiently distinctive to leave a useful memory behind.
Creativity becomes congeniality.
Social media also creates pressure towards content that is immediately legible and agreeable.
Do not interrupt.
Do not confuse.
Do not be difficult.
Do not make people uncomfortable.
Stay recognisable.
Stay positive.
The result can be material perfectly engineered to produce a tiny nod of acknowledgement.
A like can mean:
“Yes, I recognise this convention and have no objection to it.”
That's nice.
But advertising historically had a harder job.
It had to create memory.
Distinctiveness.
Association.
Sometimes surprise.
Sometimes emotional force.
Sometimes irritation.
The danger is that social platforms gradually redefine “good creative” as content nobody minds.
The fear of selling.
There is another psychological layer here.
Selling creates vulnerability.
The moment a business makes a strong commercial claim, that claim can be rejected.
We make the best coffee in town.
Maybe you do not.
We are worth driving twenty miles for.
Maybe nobody drives.
You should choose us instead.
Maybe they will not.
Generic content is emotionally safer.
“Happy National Coffee Day!”
Nobody can object to that.
“Lovely sunrise this morning!”
Safe.
“Meet Dave from Accounts!”
Safe.
Platform culture gives businesses a way to appear commercially active without confronting the discomfort of making an actual proposition.
From strategy to ritual.
Eventually the behaviour becomes ritualised.
Why are we posting four times a week?
Because consistency matters.
Why does consistency matter?
The algorithm.
How do we know?
Somebody on LinkedIn said so.
Which formats work?
Reels.
Why?
The algorithm likes them.
When should we post?
7:43pm apparently.
What happens if we stop?
Reach will die.
Perhaps.
Perhaps not.
But the language begins sounding less like marketing science and more like folk religion.
Appease the algorithm.
Observe the correct rituals.
Use the sacred format.
Post at the auspicious hour.
Avoid angering the machine.
Humans are very good at developing rituals when outcomes are uncertain and causality is difficult to observe.
The Platform Metric Trap.
ARE NOT THE SAME
Platform success and business success can overlap. The mistake is assuming they are the same thing.
Social media is not the enemy.
None of this means stop using Instagram.
Or Facebook.
Or LinkedIn.
Social platforms can deliver inexpensive reach.
They can help demonstrate expertise.
They can build distinctive assets.
They can distribute useful ideas.
They can support customer service.
They can create social proof.
They can generate demand.
The mistake is treating them as marketing itself.
Social media is a tool.
Sometimes a good one.
The question should always be whether it is the right tool for the particular marketing job.
What small-business marketing should ask instead.
Before posting anything, ask eight questions.
Who actually has the potential to buy from us?
Are we reaching beyond the people who already know us?
In which situations should people think of us?
What do we want someone to remember after seeing this?
Could this communication unmistakably belong to us?
If somebody wants to buy, have we made it easy?
What might reasonably change if this works?
Is social media genuinely the best way to achieve that?
That is a marketing strategy.
A content calendar comes afterwards.
The small-business visibility system.
Social media should sit inside a much larger system.
PR.
Search.
Reviews.
Email.
Signage.
Partnerships.
Events.
Packaging.
Word of mouth.
Local media.
Sponsorship.
Vehicle branding.
Retail presence.
Existing customers.
Staff.
Social.
Each one creates opportunities for category buyers to encounter the business.
The question isn't:
“What should we post?”
It is:
Common mistakes.
Treating posting frequency as marketing discipline.
Consistency can be useful, but regular production is not a substitute for strategic purpose.
Judging performance mainly by engagement.
The people most likely to engage may already know you extremely well.
Copying the category.
Imitating competitors feels safe but often produces indistinguishable communications.
Confusing followers with the market.
Your future growth may depend disproportionately on people who do not follow you at all.
Optimising creative for approval.
Material that nobody dislikes can also be material nobody remembers.
Posting because stopping feels dangerous.
Habit is not evidence of effectiveness.
Allowing the channel to become the strategy.
“We need more Instagram” is not a marketing objective.
TheSignalWorks View
Platforms have done something.
They gave almost every business in the world access to publishing infrastructure that would once have been unimaginable.
That is genuinely valuable.
But they also gave businesses a model of marketing shaped by the economics of the platform itself.
Post.
React.
Follow.
Repeat.
The danger is forgetting that marketing exists for a different reason.
The goal isn't to produce content.
The goal isn't engagement.
The goal isn't to keep a feed looking busy.
The goal is to make more potential buyers notice you, remember you and choose you when the relevant buying situation arrives.
Likes can sometimes help.
Followers can sometimes help.
Content can certainly help.
But they are means.
Not ends.
Marketing begins before the post: with the much harder work of deciding who must notice you, what they must remember and why they should choose you when the buying situation arrives.
Posting is not strategy.
Engagement is not growth.
Activity is not effectiveness.
The appearance of marketing is not marketing.
Key Takeaways
- Social platforms have lowered the cost of publishing, but publishing isn't the same thing as marketing.
- Platform metrics reflect the needs of the platform and should not automatically be treated as business outcomes.
- Likes and engagement are seductive because they provide immediate feedback while real growth is slower and harder to measure.
- Organic social audiences are often disproportionately made up of existing customers, employees, friends and habitual followers.
- Marketing science suggests growth depends heavily on reaching more category buyers, including light and occasional buyers.
- Copying competitors produces a communications monoculture that weakens distinctiveness.
- Social media can be highly useful, but it should sit inside a broader reach and availability strategy.
- A content calendar is an execution tool. It is not a strategy.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is social media marketing ineffective?
No.
Social media can be highly effective when it is used to perform a clear marketing job such as increasing reach, building memory, demonstrating expertise or supporting purchase.
Are likes meaningless?
Not necessarily.
They can provide some evidence of response, but they should not be confused with reach, penetration, customer acquisition or business growth.
Why are followers not the same as customers?
Followers are a self-selected audience and often overrepresent people who already know or interact with the business. Growth frequently depends on reaching people beyond that group.
Should small businesses stop posting regularly?
No.
The point is to stop treating regular posting as an objective in itself. Frequency should serve a strategy.
What should small businesses measure instead?
Relevant reach, customer growth, penetration, bookings, enquiries, sales, mental availability, search behaviour and other measures connected to real commercial outcomes.
Why do businesses copy competitors on social media?
Copying is a natural response to uncertainty. Competitors provide an immediately visible template for what “marketing in our category” appears to look like.
What is the follower fallacy?
It is the assumption that the people who follow and engage with a business on social media represent the whole market or are necessarily the most valuable audience for future growth.
What should come before a content calendar?
A clear view of the category buyers you need to reach, the situations in which they should think of you, the memories you want to build, the distinctive assets you will use and the commercial behaviour you hope to change.
Further Reading
- Byron Sharp — How Brands Grow
- Jenni Romaniuk — Better Brand Health
- Jenni Romaniuk — work on Category Entry Points and Distinctive Brand Assets
- Andrew Ehrenberg — research on penetration, repeat buying and light buyers
- Charles Goodhart — work associated with Goodhart's Law
- Research on social learning, imitation and cultural evolution
Related Knowledge
AboutThe SignalWorks
TheSignalWorks applies marketing science, psychology and creative thinking to the practical problem of growth.
Because marketing is not a feed that needs filling.
It is a system for making businesses easier to notice, remember and buy.
Get noticed. Get remembered. Get bought.