A completely honest overview of where social media is at in 2025
This is a completely truthful take on where social media is at right now. We are not here to dress things up, over-promise, or pretend everything is incredible just to win clients. We called ourselves Honest, which in hindsight was probably a branding mistake because it leaves us no room to sugar-coat. So here we are, being completely honest about the state of social media in 2025.
And to be clear, we are not saying it is a waste of time. We are saying the goals need to be re-evaluated.
Don’t hire us for business advice, considering we’re slagging off one of our offerings.
Followers do not mean anything anymore
Follower count used to be the simplest measure of credibility. That is no longer true. You can have 100,000 followers and still drive fewer clicks to your website than someone with 3,000.
Most of the time your followers are not even seeing your content. Unless you have a very strong algorithm working in your favour, and we do help clients with this, posts simply do not reach the majority of people who follow you. Unless someone is scrolling a lot, your posts will often go unseen.
What does get seen are stories, which is where most engagement now sits. But if you share your post to your story, the likes or reactions it receives there do not translate to the post itself. Very few people actually click through to view the post unless they are extremely interested. It is a surprisingly low percentage.
We have spoken with major financial businesses, companies with thousands of staff and billions in revenue, who have Instagram accounts with fewer than 100 followers. From a reputational point of view, it looks bad. A business that successful, yet only 52 followers on Instagram, feels like an “oof” moment. And the reality is, nobody wants to follow a B2B fintech there. Even if they had a creative team or agency working with them, it would still be a battle to find the right audience, because Instagram is not where those audiences naturally are. LinkedIn is.
That does not mean they are doing anything wrong as a business. It means they are using the wrong tool for the job. And we are not afraid to say that, even if it risks losing us clients. We would rather be upfront and set expectations than take the money and disappoint later when the account inevitably does not grow in the way they were hoping.
The saturation problem
Every business has an account now. Feeds are drowning in content and most of it is the same. Every brand is jumping on the exact same trends, trying to be funny, repeating what 8,000 others have already copied because three businesses managed to do it well. We are not anti-trends, but they rarely work unless you are one of the first to jump in. Otherwise it is just incredibly boring. Haha.
If you excel at trends and you are quick, they can work. But that is rare, and the odds are against you. If you are a GP’s office that noticed a trend last week and you post your version a week later, just don’t. It looks slow, it looks off, and it makes you look out of touch. In reality, you need to post within an hour of the trend breaking to have a chance.
Start-ups sometimes believe humour will save them. But you can count on one hand the number of businesses who have successfully made humour their main growth strategy. And every time potential clients point to examples, it is the same handful of names. They are the ones who got lucky, broke the algorithm, and became case studies. For every one of them, there are tens of thousands of others across the country trying the exact same thing and getting nowhere.
And when we explain this, some potential clients scoff. They will say, “well, this other agency said they can do it.” Lauren knows how that game is played. Before founding Honest, she worked at a large agency where she saw it first-hand. A founder once made promises to a potential client that were completely unachievable. When Lauren explained quietly that it was not possible in a month, the founder told her: “we will worry about that once the dotted line is signed.” That moment stuck, and it is why Honest does not operate that way.
We would rather be transparent and risk losing a client than say whatever someone wants to hear. Our fees are lower than the cost of one full-time employee, yet we are often expected to produce the work of five full-time employees for a single client. This is not us being negative. It is us being human and transparent. It is the kind of thing we would casually explain to a friend over dinner. Social media has got out of hand. Expectations have spiralled because of how performative the platforms have become, the shift to video, and the sheer competition when every Tom, Dick, and Harry now has an account.
That does not mean it is impossible to succeed. It just requires the right expectations. If you are chasing followers, you will almost certainly end up disappointed. But if you are using social media as a tool to promote your business in a positive way, build trust, and drive a bit more profit, then it is still worth it. That is where social is a benefit now.
Followers are a vanity metric. Nice to have, but not the point. One of our smaller clients recently hit 10,000 followers, and of course we celebrated, sent them a hamper, and cheered. But has it made any difference to their ROI? No. The good content has.
The SEO reality
Instagram now works more like Google than a traditional social feed. People type in “hotels near Central Park” or “best hairdresser Shoreditch” and the platform decides what content to show. Captions, keywords in the post, and even alt-text descriptions all play a role in whether your content appears. Hashtags are irrelevant.
We used to love hashtags. Before COVID, we would sit with clients and brainstorm clever campaign tags, and it was fun. But those days are over. Hashtags do not help discoverability anymore. We have tested them extensively, and they do not work. Stop using them.
Even with strong SEO, results are not guaranteed. The algorithm is constantly shifting. We have our tricks for making it work, but the rules change relentlessly, sometimes daily. One week your content ranks, the next it disappears.
The expectation problem
Another big issue is unrealistic expectations. We are in a cost of living crisis, budgets are tighter than ever, and businesses understandably want more value for money. But the expectations some come with are impossible.
We have had potential clients ask for 15 or more videos a week. To put that into perspective, a single good video can take half a day to produce. Then come rounds of feedback: “move the text slightly higher,” “make the logo bigger,” “change the background colour.” Suddenly one post has taken a full day. Multiply that by 15, and it is not achievable.
The worst trap to fall into is producing content just for the sake of it. Every piece needs to be valuable and worthwhile. Put out a weak post and you risk people unfollowing you. Quality matters more than volume.
Targets are also rarely realistic. Even if an agency could hit a specific number, brands will always want to add edits, push their own ideas, or override content. That means the outcome is judged on decisions that were not solely the agency’s. It creates an unfair situation, where agencies are measured against results they never had full control over.
If you want five to ten videos a week across multiple platforms, the answer is not an agency. It is an in-house content team of three or four full-time people. Even then, it will be a stretch.
The faces problem
Another expectation we are seeing more and more is businesses wanting agency staff to literally be the faces of their content. By that we mean front-facing, talking-to-camera videos, often with the green screen style that has become popular with Gen Z audiences. For certain brands, it does improve engagement, and we can see the appeal.
But you are not going to get our team becoming on-camera talent for multiple companies. Lauren, as founder, has been very open with clients. She will never put her team in a position where they feel uncomfortable filming themselves just to satisfy a brief. If we agreed to do it for one brand, we would then be expected to do it for others, and before long one of our team members would be the public face of four or five different companies. That is not fair, and it is not their job.
If this is the type of content you want, the honest advice is to hire in-house. It will cost more than an agency, but at least you can make it clear during recruitment that on-camera work is part of the role.
And even then, it is not right for every brand. A casual green screen explainer might work brilliantly for a food delivery service, but it will look ridiculous if you are trying to position yourself as high-end or if you are a professional services firm. Just because you are seeing these videos in your feed does not mean they will work for you. In some cases, they will actively harm your reputation.
The problem with likes
One of the biggest changes on Instagram recently is that likes are no longer private. Your followers can now see which reels you have liked.
Instagram’s logic is that if people see what their friends like, it will spread good content further. But people are more cautious. Even in our own team, we have admitted we have pulled back from liking certain reels because it feels embarrassing for others to see.
Do you really want your colleagues, clients, or friends noticing that you liked a random fish restaurant’s reel about its new haddock delivery? Probably not.
Instagram was already a place where people limited who they followed. This new feature has made the culture of “playing it cool” even stronger. People are now thinking twice before liking anything that could look cringe. For brands, that means lower engagement numbers. Not because the content is necessarily bad, but because users do not want to advertise what they have engaged with.
If your likes are down, this new feature is almost certainly a big part of the reason.
TikTok vs Instagram vs LinkedIn (and everything else)
Every platform has its place. Restaurants can do brilliantly on TikTok. Hotels tend to thrive on Instagram. Professional services usually get more value from LinkedIn. But trying to be everywhere at once is a waste of time and money.
We have even had start-ups ask us to cover every platform — Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, YouTube, Pinterest, Snapchat, X, and BlueSky — with five posts a week on each, all different, for a very low budget. That is not strategy. It is unrealistic.
And here is a real example of ROI. We worked with an influencer who has 35 million followers on TikTok and 2 million on Instagram. He posted the same brand collaboration on both. On TikTok, to 35 million people, it resulted in 2 sales. On Instagram, to 2 million followers, it resulted in 1,490 sales. That is the difference in audience quality. TikTok makes it easy to build big numbers, but those audiences rarely convert. Instagram followers are far more selective, and therefore more loyal.
Meanwhile, X (formerly Twitter) has become increasingly toxic, widely seen as leaning right-wing under Elon Musk’s ownership. It was once the go-to customer service platform for brands, but many companies and public figures are stepping away. BlueSky tried to position itself as the left-wing alternative, but it has not gained real traction, particularly for brands.
The algorithm stress
No matter how good the content is, we are always relying on a third-party platform. We had a client we worked with for two years whose reels consistently reached 40,000 to 50,000 views. Then an Instagram update happened overnight. The same reels, same strategy, same quality, suddenly dropped to 1,000 views.
The client was thankfully understanding, but it was stressful. Nothing had changed on our side. The only variable was Instagram’s algorithm.
It is similar to SEO on Google. We know how to make websites rank and we are good at it, but results are still determined by a third party. We could offer SEO as a service, but we do not, because we cannot guarantee the outcome. PR works the same way. A story might be interesting, but if a journalist is not in the mood that week, it might never see print. Agencies who guarantee coverage are not being truthful.
Anyone promising predictable results from organic social is ignoring the fact that we are all working within systems we do not control.
The AI problem
AI has exploded across social media in the past year. Brands are using it for captions, graphics, even entire strategies. On paper, it sounds efficient. In practice, it usually backfires.
AI captions in particular have become a pest. They read the same, they flatten a brand’s voice, and audiences can spot them instantly. You do not win trust by sounding like everyone else. The emojis give it away too. AI seems to have a very limited library it leans on. The clock emoji for deadlines. The pinpoint for locations. The loudspeaker for announcements. Red exclamation marks everywhere. They all scream “AI wrote this,” and the effect is so naff it makes you want to scroll straight past.
If you are relying on AI to write your captions, the content probably was not worth posting in the first place. Unless you are a massive international business with endless campaigns to manage, you do not need to be posting every single day. That is an outdated idea. There are plenty of rumours that platforms punish you for not posting often enough, and maybe there is some truth to it. But in our experience, you are far better off posting fewer, better things than churning out daily filler that bores people, makes them unfollow, and pushes you towards AI for the sake of ease.
Nothing has been confirmed, but it would not be a surprise if platforms themselves can detect AI-heavy content and give it less reach. Either way, these posts rarely perform well.
In a saturated market, creativity and tone of voice are what make a brand stand out. If you hand that over to a robot, you blend in rather than break through.
What actually matters
Strip away the noise, and these are the priorities for brands on social:
How you look. Your feed should reflect your brand, build trust, and make sense to a new visitor in seconds.
ROI. Website clicks, leads, and conversions are the only numbers that count.
Real engagement. Saves, shares, comments with meaning, not hollow likes.
Platform choice. You do not need to be everywhere. Focus on one or two platforms and do them well.
Content with value. Posts should reinforce your brand, give followers something genuinely useful, or push people towards your website.
Moving forward
This may not be the prettiest picture of social media, but it is a realistic one. And honesty sets better expectations.
Social can still work, but the approach needs to be practical. Less is often more. You do not need thousands of followers. You need a loyal audience that sees your content, trusts you, and buys from you. That means focusing on quality over quantity.
Think about lifestyle content that helps people imagine themselves using your product. Create posts customers would be proud to share on their own feeds. Use humour if it suits your brand. But do not try to be something you are not.
And most importantly, stick to where you belong. If you are a mortgage firm, you could use TikTok to educate with short, clear videos, if you have the right staff member to front them. But if you are just trying to be funny in an office to sell mortgages, it will not work. Nobody is choosing a mortgage provider because they posted a daft video.
Social media is not about being an influencer. It is about being a business. Focus on making good, valuable content that earns trust, shows off your product or service, and drives people to buy.
That is what still works.