Welcome to the mindful marketing podcast. This is the episode
where I get my That's So Raven moment and predict
the future of social media. This is my 6th
time doing an episode like this, and I absolutely love it
because I feel like I can pull out my crystal ball and talk
about where I see social media and really marketing
going at large. So let's dive in to the mindful marketing
podcast. Before we do that, though, wanna share a little word from our
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at checkout. Now let's dive in to the predictions
episode. This is, an episode that I look
forward to every year. I do a lot of reflecting on
previous years. I went back and listened to all 5 episodes
that I've done so far, and y'all, a lot of my predictions come
true. So I'm not saying that, you know, I am, you
know, gifted or anything, but, I know I think a thing or 2
about social media and marketing. So I will start
the episode with a little bit of overview of what the difference of
tactics and strategies are. I'm gonna talk about my predictions from
last year and previous years, how those have come through. I'm gonna talk about the
next year's predictions. And at the end, I do share a little bit of a
personal update on where I am at in my business and how
I see that going into 2025.
Now, I also always like to start off this conversation
with the tactics versus strategy, because
tactics to me are different than strategy. Strategies is
your overarching marketing plan. It's how you show up in the world. So
for me, for instance, I'm a talker. I love audio and video.
And I love being tactile in the way that I talk about marketing.
That's my strategy. Tactically, that shows up in my
podcast, and it shows up in micro video content, specifically right
now on Instagram and TikTok. Okay? So
tactically, Instagram and TikTok. If something changes and
there's a new micro video platform, you bet your bottom dollar, I'm gonna take that
over to the new micro video platform. Right? So that's the tactic that's working right
now. Alright. I will also give a little bit of a teaser of my
word of the year because that's gonna show up a few times in this episode.
I every year give myself a word of the year. It's my guiding light,
my North Star for how I approach my business.
This year, I'm entering in my Taylor Swift reputation era, so
my word of 2025 is reputation. To
me, this is all about owning my impact, making intentional
connections, and building strong and authentic brand image. I
want to be known for social media mindfulness and mindful
marketing. That's my goal for this year, become a known entity in that category.
When you think of social media mindfulness, you think of Andrea Jones. Okay?
Alright. So let's take a look at past episodes. I was listening back
through them, and one of the thing that stuck out to me is in 2022,
I predicted that there is going to be a focus
on human centered real content.
It feels like real life is taking center
stage, and this has become even more apparent this year
in 2024, and I think it's gonna continue into 2025.
Brands, entities aren't really,
people don't really wanna see, like, polished brand ads. Right?
Like, as soon as we identify something as an ad, what do we do? We
wanna skip it as quickly as possible. And so it's not the
advertisements themselves that are capturing people's attentions in their
hearts. It's the real, the raw, the humanness of it all.
People based content is going to be emphasized. K? I'm
not saying if you're a brand and an entity, you can't
be. Right? Think of, you know, your Starbuckses, your Nikes of the world.
They're still brands, but notice
who is sharing their brand message and their brand stories? People.
Usually, right now, influencers and celebrities. K? So people based
content is still going to win. That was a prediction I had in 2022
that will continue. And in 2023, I talked about the rise of
AI and AI driven marketing. And I talked
about this from a lens of digital burnout
and how we will have a lack of trust
in brands who use AI. And interestingly,
this is a prediction that hasn't really,
manifested in the way that I predicted. AI driven marketing is
still here, and it's here to stay. But there's not
this digital burnout with AI specifically. In fact, I think
AI is becoming more and more widely accepted. There are
certain communities that are very against artificial intelligence. But on the
whole, it seems like people are kind of adapting to this new way of thinking.
Specifically, I wanna call out Meta AI, which I did not
like when it first launched. But recently, I was scrolling through
Facebook as one does, and I saw a post with, like, 500
comments. And then Meta AI popped up at the top and
said, here's a summary of the,
sentiment of these comments. Most people said this, some people said that, and I was
like, oh, this is great. Okay. So I think AI
tools in that use case, people are actually really
enjoying them. I can see this applied to other platforms. Like, for instance,
I would love to see this Amazon, and
Amazon's checkout. Like, they already have, you know,
certain things like, you know, you are this size, so this
product may probably fit you with this size. But I would also love the
comment section to be like, most people found this to be too small or most
people found this to wear down. Like, I would love to see that
happen with artificial intelligence. But I think the key
thing going into 2025 with AI and
marketing specifically is that brands need to be very sophisticated
in how they leverage AI. Like, we as marketers, as business
owners, need to uplevel the the sophistication
behind AI. We're not talking about putting in chatty bd saying, write a
social media post. K? But one of the things that we done we
did recently in, my mindful marketing lab
is take all of our testimonials. K? The the the nice things
that people say. Put them into your AI tools, your
ChatGPT, your Gemini, your Claude, and say, hey. Can
you give me the running feedback of all this
client testimonial? You know, tell me the sentiment. What do
people like about this product the most? What do they find most impactful?
And then you can use those words in your marketing. To me, this is
where sophistication with AI is going. And,
I think impactful use of AI can actually free
up time for more humanness behind
the brand. K? Alright. So here are my predictions
for 2025. We're gonna start with AI. So I
believe that there is going to be an increased amount of trust
with AI and using AI not as
the star of a show, but more of a a background and supporting role.
AI is going to become a tool. It streamlines content. It
makes connecting easier and faster, but we
need to. We absolutely must have a distinctly
human touch to the things that we do with our interactions.
Okay? So making artificial intelligence and
AI distinctly you. I think, again, Meta is playing
around with this in a very interesting way. I don't think we're there yet, but
they created these AI characters this year.
You know, things like you could talk to Snoop a Snoop's AI,
or you could build one for your own brand. I think that that's
interesting. We're labeling it as AI, so there's no confusion.
People know they're talking to a robot, but the responses are
in a voice that is very distinct and unique. I think that could be
interesting. I also think that, there's gonna be
continued premium on human content.
So the content that only humans can make, mistakes and all.
So for example, behind the scenes content, personal
stories, how I content versus how to
content is going to be on the rise. K? It's going to be on
a rise, and this is where that reputation word comes back into play.
A brand's reputation is going to be at
stake if we don't clarify what what is
AI and what isn't. And I see this
specifically with people doing deepfakes. This
year and last year, this has been like, it's just so
wild. People are creating deepfakes of certain
celebrities, putting them as advertisements, and
then using those deep fakes. So AI created video
content or image content and then, you know, scamming people.
K? Scams will always be a thing. However, I
think with AI, the scamming is going to be even more
I think even more people are gonna start being scammed. Okay? So as a
brand, as a business owner, really tripling down on, like, we're humans
here and tripling down on, like, if it's AI
generated. I don't think AI is bad.
I think it's just different. And to me, this feels a lot like, when people
when when televisions came out and people were like, oh, it's the end of
radio. Radio's going away. But radio hasn't gone away. It's
just evolved. Right? It's just changed. It's it's
caught up with the times. Now we have Internet radio. Right? Now we have
podcasts, and we have lots of audio experiences like audiobooks.
Those have not gone away. The medium of audio has not gone away. It's
just changed over the years, and I think that's gonna be the same for AI.
2nd prediction. So the first one was AI driven
landscape and building trust with your people by
being clear about how you're using AI. The second prediction is
that community is going to be an ecosystem, not one platform.
And I've been talking about this for years, but,
the first time I brought up was in the 2022 predictions episode, but it's
gonna become even more apparent going into 2025.
K? Community is an ecosystem, not one platform.
When people talk about my Instagram community, my YouTube community, my
Facebook community, it is an ecosystem. And I'll give a very real
example of this. One of my members in my
community, posted in our community, like, hey, does anyone know this specific
thing? Then she DM'd me on Instagram. It was like, hey. Here's something
that I'd love to get your thoughts on. And I know she's probably also gonna,
like, be on Facebook with me and on threads and in my
inbox. And I consider her a community member in all of those
places, not any individual single place. And so community
isn't about a single Facebook group or a LinkedIn page
or an Instagram account. Community is going to be about
cultivating that, here's the word again, reputation across
multiple platforms and building trust that carries over no matter
where you are. And this is gonna become even more important as more and more
social platforms kind of rise and fall. I recently signed up for Blue
Sky. Again, purely as an experiment
and as a test, because that is my job. However,
I know that there are pockets of my people on Blue Sky
who don't just only follow me on that one platform. They probably
follow on multiple platforms. I think this also can be very
challenging, though, as a business owner because tracking the value of your
community is going to become harder. It's nuanced. K?
We're not talking about looking at Instagram and going, okay, what's
the value of my Instagram account? We're talking about something far
more abstract of looking at a community member and going, okay,
they found me on Instagram, they signed up for my email list, and now they
listen to my podcast. They don't check any of my emails or my
Instagram account anymore. They just listen to the podcast. And that's
gonna be really hard to track. It's really hard to track that number.
So I think the value of word-of-mouth,
influence and micro communities is gonna be even more
important. How do you connect your community not only to you
but to each other? That's through word-of-mouth influence where
someone goes, hey. Have you heard of so and so? No. I haven't. Here, check
out their Instagram. Or when they're on your Instagram, you
go, hey, the main way that I connect with my community is in my email.
Make sure you subscribe there. Okay? It is, again, more
challenging but more effective because we are having
meaningful conversations and we're building brand loyalty no matter what the medium is, no
matter what the platform is. But that also means there needs to be consistency
across all of your marketing channels. And this is why I'm
so invested into mindful marketing and marketing ecosystems.
Because, yes, we have marketing distribution across
multiple channels. But, ideally, we have one
signature way that people can connect with us. 1 or 2
signature ways that people can connect with us. So signature content is,
again, so important in this community as an ecosystem,
model versus community as a platform model. So I'll give an example with
my own brand. My podcast, this very here
podcast is the main way that I want people to consume my, let's
say, thought leadership for simplicity's sake, my podcast. So
if someone meets me, I'm like, listen to podcast. Listen to podcast. Listen to podcast.
Podcast comes up in every single newsletter. Podcast is every single
social media platform. I talk about my podcast. Because to
me, this is the primary way that I want people to consume my content.
Secondarily is my emails, my email newsletter,
and social is actually, 3rd on the list. K?
And even within social, there's a hierarchy. I tend to
put more, emphasis on platforms like Instagram and threads,
less emphasis on platforms like LinkedIn and Facebook, TikTok
somewhere in the middle. And I don't even really log on to
Pinterest. YouTube is like, it's on my wish list,
but, you know, the podcast goes on YouTube and sometimes I create some YouTube videos.
Right? It's not that, important in my marketing strategy for 2025.
So I want you to think about what your marketing ecosystem looks like,
but also the hierarchy within that ecosystem because community
is so important, but and your community
members will come into your community and bounce around in your community in so
many different ways. K? So we talked about AI. We talked about
community as an ecosystem. I gotta talk about the algorithm,
mister Al. K? Mister Al is getting more
sophisticated. And because of that, follower
number does not matter as much as it did. K?
People are discovering you. Your relevance to them
is based on how the algorithm views your
content, not based on whether they follow you or not. I don't
know if you've noticed, but every single social app is like this now. You
log in to Facebook, you log in to Instagram, you go to YouTube, you go
to TikTok, every single one of them is helping you
discover new content, and your feed is, very mixed
bag of people you follow and people you don't follow.
So your actual follower count, it doesn't matter. What
matters is how the algorithm views your content.
So you, as a content creator, as a business owner, need to speak
the algorithm's language. Algorithms will favor brands who have
positive reputation, who have established community connections. That means people are not
just talking to you in the comments, they're talking to each other, and who
they're sharing your content. K? And Instagram has been really great.
Adam Messeri, head of Instagram, has been really great about breaking
down what this means specifically. Recently, he said that
content that is shared, so share worthy content, is a number one
signal of relevance to the algorithm. So that
means if people hit that little paper airplane emoji and share your
content, the algorithm goes, oh, this must be important.
Let's share it and show it to more people. K? It's giving your
content credibility when people share it. Secondarily,
engagement other forms of engagement outside of sharing is still important.
It's not likes and comments, though. It's it's nuanced.
It's watch time. It's quality conversation. K?
Not just any old like, any old comment, but are people talking to each other?
Are people not just starting the video, but watching a significant portion
of it? Are they completing watching that video?
K? This is even more important now more than ever.
I see the types of content in my feed that the algorithm,
you know, assumes that I wanna watch. It's not business
related because lately, I haven't really been consuming a lot of business
related content. I'm consuming stuff like how to, you
know, how to feed my picky toddler who's not eating anything
but cheese and bread right now. Right? And so the
algorithm's like, here's meal planning for your 2 year old. And I'm like, how
does it know I have a 2 year old? It's because I continue to watch
that content even though I never like it and I never share it.
K? And so the advanced
nuance of the algorithm is gonna be even more important to business owners heading into
2025, and you gotta learn to speak that algorithm's language.
Lastly, as we head into 2025, I want you to think about your
own reputation as a business owner, especially outside
of a singular marketing platform. Because we talked about how AI is on
the rise. We talked about how community is ecosystem. We talked about
how the algorithm is even more advanced. And so my
prediction is that going into 2025,
all content marketing is going to need to be
reputation building marketing because
we're entering into the era of sophistication in
marketing. This is, what I've I've seen this term thrown around a
lot, social media 3 point o. We're headed into social
media 3 point o. It's not simple anymore. It's not take the
same graphic, square graphic, post it to Facebook, to
Twitter, to Instagram, dust off your hands, and call it a day. K?
It's far more nuanced than that, and it focuses
in on, a more advanced user. We have been
engaging on social media for 10,
15 years now. K? Like, as as a collective, as, like,
something that has mass appeal. Right? When Facebook, I think,
first became available to everyone is really
when social media 2.0, in my
opinion, took off. Okay? So social media 1.0, it's like
you were a nerd, you had to get it, Or you were just young and
didn't and had all the time in the world. Right? And you were on, you
know, Myspace or LiveJournal or whatever we were on back in the
day. And then Facebook became publicly available to everyone. Now everyone and their mom
is on Facebook. That's social media 2.0. Social media 3.0,
more nuanced. We are more advanced as a
collective in how we experience social media. So brands will
actually need to develop a character. I think
about this from all the way from big brands to small brands and
everything in between, and that characterization will go across
all of your marketing channels. I taught a class recently in the
mindful marketing lab called profit from your POV where we talked about this
in-depth. Your your brand's unique point of
view is why people will connect with your brand, why they will follow
with your brand, why they will engage with your brand, why they buy with your
brand, and then why they become a brand advocate. It is not
because of one post they saw one time. K?
Sometimes that works. It rarely works these days. We
wanna see something on Facebook, and then we ask a
friend indirect message. We sign up for an email newsletter. We listen to the
podcast for 2 years, and then we buy something. K?
We research the heck out of it. We're reading Amazon reviews.
We're we're going to Facebook groups. We are
interacting with the community on an entirely different level.
We want recommendations. We want people to say this is good.
We want people to vouch for it, and that requires
character development and a deep, deep understanding of your brand's
reputation. K? I think reputation is gonna
be, reputation means that you're gonna have to be actively involved
with your community. Pull them into the process. I talked last year about
interactive marketing, and interactive marketing is gonna be even more
important in the future. It's no longer a brand
saying, buy my stuff. It's a brand listening and using things
like memes, using things like trending content, using
things like what's happening in the world around you to speak the
language of what's happening here now and stay in that moment. Because
we're so connected on social media too, we have higher expectations of
brands. Like, if a brand just comes out here like,
okay. Let's say, Starbucks, for instance. If Starbucks just comes
out and says, it's pumpkin spice latte season, buy it
now, we go, okay. Like, we knew that this was coming,
and the people who like it like it and the people who don't don't. If
Starbucks is trying to bring more people into the p pumpkin spice
latte fold, they need to do something different to attract
different audiences. Okay? We can't just have the posters that are
just like, this is the thing. Buy it. We kinda wanna have
customer involvement. We wanna see the movement behind it. And is that harder?
Yeah. But it's just where we are now as business owners.
Because of that, less is more. K? We are into interactive
content and is the reputation era, but less is more.
This is great because the algorithm will show your content if
it's great. We don't need more content. We need better content. K?
And that means listening to what your people
are saying. So as we head into 2025,
here are some of my practical tips, especially since I'm in my
reputation era. I want you to be in your reputation era as well.
I wanna focus in on authenticity, not
just being transparent, but being real. I
think there's a difference in a curated authentic moment and
not just saying, like, here's everything exactly as it is.
I talk about this a lot, but it's almost like a reality TV show. There's
a producer behind the scenes, right, producing that moment. I do think
as business owners, there's a production level that we need to lean
into into being authentic. And, again, I'm not saying manufacturing
something that's not there, but curating it so that
it's a really tight story. K? And it's not just like word
vomiting everything out into the Internet. I think that there is gonna be
even more power and consistency across platforms and even
creating micro consistency moments, Shamelessly
or or maybe I should be ashamed of this, I follow an account on TikTok
where it's a guy, chopping wood. I don't know how
else to describe this, but, if you know, you know.
He just chops the wood, y'all, And he is a very attractive
looking fellow and has millions of views on his videos of chopping
wood. There's a consistency in how he's creating content, not just on TikTok, but
across all the platforms. He's in, the know.
Okay? He knows what people want, and there's a consistency
there. I actually don't even know his name, but if I saw his
video, I would recognize it. K? So I want you to have consistency
that's recognizable. Listen to your
community, establish regular touchbacks with your people.
You wanna understand what they're feeling. This requires
listening. K? Reading the comments, but also being proactive, asking
people. Have ask me anything sessions. Create
feedback forms, especially from your your buyers. Like,
learn what they want. I mentioned earlier about taking your
testimonials and turning that into marketing. That's gonna be even more
important. I record my sales calls. I record the feedback that
I get from my people. I even, created a new form
for, like, first time buyers. If you come into my community, like, into the
mindful marketing lab, I have a form for you to fill out right away immediately
so I can get a better sense of what you need as a community member
so I can put that into my marketing. 4th
thing, quality over quantity. Less is more.
Less is more. Thoughtfulness, mindfulness is going to be key
here. It's no longer, like, post up a quote
and leave it. Like, we can't just have that moment.
There's gonna be a thoughtfulness that's needed there. And then
lastly, collaborative community driven content. I see
this a lot on threads right now where the impact is
in the conversation. K? The impact is in the conversation.
Posting content is not the central focus of your marketing
on social media. Community and conversation
is. And either you're creating that conversation, so you're
starting it, or you're joining other conversations. It's
not really about broadcasting. And social media, frankly, never has
been, but as marketers, we slip into broadcasting mode very easily.
It's no longer about broadcasting. It's about
conversation and intentionality and the strength that comes
from having those conversations. So
as I head into 2025, my word of the year, as I
mentioned, is reputation. I'm headed into my reputation era, but I
encourage you to think about your brand's reputation as well. What do you wanna
be known for, and how can you align your marketing
to reflect that? I wanna be known for social media mindfulness.
So I'm aligning my marketing to reflect that. That actually means
posting less on social media as an expert, as a social media marketer. I've been
doing this for 10 years. That means I'm
walking the talk. K? There's
a value as well in building lasting assets.
K? Social media is fly by night.
It it comes and goes. Trends rise and fall very
quickly. I want you to think about the assets that outlast
that. The assets that outlast social media
fleetiness. K? I'm not saying social media isn't important. It it plays a very
important role. It's just not that important. Okay?
As I sign off on this episode, this predictions episode,
I want you to think about what you're doing for 2025.
How are you leaning into accepting or
utilizing AI in your marketing? How are you making community
an ecosystem and not a platform? How are you leaning into the
advancements of artificial intelligence? All of that is very
impactful. And then, of course, if you have any questions, I'm here. I'm
available. I I will be continuing to talk about it in this podcast,
my YouTube channel. And if you're ready for more in the mindful marketing
lab, coming up in December, I do my
seasons of giving and I have lots of new content,
AI content, algorithm content, and marketing ecosystem
content that I'm releasing to my members. Plus, I'll be doing audits for all of
the members as well, taking a look at your marketing ecosystems and giving you
feedback there. So stay tuned if you're in the lab. If you're not, come
on in and join us. I hope to see you there. That's all for today.
Bye for now.