"Back in 2015, many brands were just starting to come around to the idea that they needed a presence on social media. Slowly, early adopters began joining social media, first to just post the same traditional messages they had used for ads, billboards or print items. Eventually, they started creating content tailored specifically for social. They held photo shoots that were just for Instagram. Then, of course, there was the TikTok boom."
"There are now 3 billion users on Instagram compared to only 400 million back in 2015. Brands are competing for attention, and original ideas essentially no longer exist. A brand can come up with a cool video concept, and another brand can lift that concept not even 24 hours later. Not only is this often socially acceptable, but we have terminology for it: a trend."
Social media has evolved from brands republishing traditional ads to producing platform-specific content, including Instagram photo shoots and short-form videos on TikTok. Userbases have massively expanded, with Instagram growth from roughly 400 million in 2015 to around 3 billion today, increasing competition for attention. Trends enable rapid idea replication across brands, making originality rare and timely relevance essential. Content strategies now require more than color schemes and pillars; they must be serialized, contextually relevant, and brand-aligned. Treating social media content like a TV series supports regular, episodic storytelling that meets multi-screen audience behaviors and sustains engagement amid fleeting trends.
Read at Forbes
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