What the state of social media saturation means for brands

If you were an MTV devotee between the years of 2006 and 2010, you’ll remember Heidi Montag as Lauren Conrad’s friend-turned-foe from the beloved reality series, The Hills. What you may have blocked out, however, is Heidi’s music career.

In the 2010 single, “More Is More,” she sang: “More is more on the dance floor / It’s f*cking chaos in here.”

14 years later, the turn of phrase is a fitting description for how many marketers feel about social media saturation.

Today, over 5 billion people use social media worldwide, with the average person using more than six networks per month.

Audiences are everywhere and seemingly nowhere, as platform algorithms surface content based on interests rather than tangible connections. The rapid fire pace of trend and meme culture, paired with a stream of AI-generated content flooding feeds, has created a ceiling on the volume of content users are mentally and emotionally able to process.

We sat down with two social media experts to explore the forces behind this phenomenon, and what marketers can do to combat it.

Why we’re at peak social media saturation

As so much about the social media landscape changes, the one constant is content—and a lot of it. On average, brands published 10 posts per day across networks in 2023, according to Sprout’s 2024 Content Benchmarks Report. For certain industries, that number doubles and even quadruples.

“We’re moving toward peak inundation,” says Nathan Allebach, Creative Director at Allebach Communications and former “Steak-umm Twitter guy.” “It’s hard to say how much of it is the saturation versus the lack of content novelty. A lot of the issues marketers face these days might have more to do with the fact that social media has been around for so long and has gone through different iterations. Every kind of disruptive marketing has been so deeply explored across categories, across industries, that it’s getting tough to find new ways to break through.”

Let’s look deeper at what’s contributing to the challenge:

Content production pressures

It’s impossible for consumers to actively engage with all of the social content they see. Literally: One research team found humans’ screen attention spans dropped from 2.5 minutes in 2004 to 47 seconds in 2023.

The irony is, as trends move faster and audiences flock to short-form content formats, the pressure to churn out a higher volume of posts intensifies. The sheer number of accounts competing for users’ fleeting attention exacerbates this dynamic.

“While certainly more convenient to consider that a brand is only competing with its competitors, the reality is, a brand’s content is being pitted up against the latest viral post, an influencer’s giveaway, other brands, and family and friends,” said Carolyn Cohen, Content & Social Lead at H&R Block.

Allebach adds, “It’s everybody versus everybody. So if you’re a brand on the other side of the screen and you’re trying to pull me out of my personal feed, that takes a lot of effort to get right.”

AI’s impact on audience expectations

Bots have been crashing the comments section on social for years. But the recent proliferation of tools like ChatGPT, DALL-E and others have opened up the floodgates to even more AI-generated posts across networks.

More than 80% of consumers feel AI-generated content will make their social feeds more saturated than they already are, and a comparable amount say it’ll add to misinformation on social, according to a Q2 2024 Sprout Pulse Survey. For example, a series of computer-enhanced videos promoting the new season of HBO’s “House of the Dragon” series sent audiences spiraling in June 2024—leading many to believe Westeros flags were really flying on the Brooklyn Bridge.

On one hand, users are becoming more accustomed to AI filters and AI-generated content, which may only desensitize audiences more over time. From a brand safety standpoint, marketers will increasingly have to juggle their own content production on top of monitoring feeds for misinformation about their businesses.

Platform uncertainty

Today’s social media ecosystem is fragmented across networks with unique algorithms and audiences. How consumers use each to meet their needs for connection and consumption is always evolving.

“Back in the day, your brand definitely had a Facebook and Instagram [account], probably a Twitter, and now it feels like those pillars are a lot less sure than they used to be. Now communities are segmented across different, smaller platforms,” says Allebach.

The last few years alone have seen the emergence (and quick decline) of platforms like BeReal, along with steady growth of alternatives like Threads, Bluesky and Mastodon. For many marketers, it’s no longer a question of how to be everywhere all at once—but how to choose the right places to show up for your target audience. With each platform prioritizing slightly different content formats, it also raises questions around whether short-form video is still the best investment, or if teams should reallocate their focus to more text and static image posts.

How to overcome social media saturation

The challenge of social media saturation isn’t going anywhere. AI technologies will continue their ascent and the platform landscape will continue to diversify, regardless of whether marketers are ready. What social teams can do, however, is adopt new rituals to improve their odds of cutting through the noise.

Invest in original content

Nearly four in 10 consumers say the most memorable brands on social prioritize original content over jumping on trends, according to The Sprout Social Index™. Even changes to the Instagram algorithm to crack down on aggregator accounts signal a platform push toward unique IP. While capitalizing on certain trends will always be an aspect of social, trends alone are not a long-term strategy for achieving brand reach or relevance.

“I have found that a mix of original and trend-driven content tends to be the right combination. The trend content brings the audience in, keeps them engaged, tagging friends, etc. This then tells the algorithm to keep showing them content, so when you do have a more product-heavy piece of content, that gets served too,” says Cohen.

Calibrate your content around audience preferences

The first step to capturing your audience’s attention is to deeply understand what they want to consume.

For example, with almost every platform supporting a menu of video options, social teams have to get even more precise with where they post, the length of their content and whether it’s grid-worthy. Over the last six months, Reels, Instagram Stories and TikTok posts were the top three video formats consumers engaged with most, according to our Q2 2024 Pulse Survey. In the next six months, consumers anticipate engaging with Instagram Stories, Reels and Facebook videos most.

“Edutainment” posts—which provide information about your product or service in a fun way—are the type of brand content audiences find most entertaining, according to our Q2 2024 Pulse Survey. By comparison, only four in 10 consumers say this is the case for meme-based posts.

“Trending memes blow up in the zeitgeist and then go away in a week or two, tops. If you’re a brand, there might be an urge to jump in the comments section or recreate it for your own accounts, and that’s fine. You will get numbers doing that. But what is that doing long term? As a user, I might think it’s funny for a moment, but it’s not making me feel a deep relationship to that brand,” says Allebach.

Develop new rituals to spark creativity

The concept of social media saturation goes hand-in-hand with audience content fatigue. But it can also have a strong effect on marketer burnout. Pressure from external competitors and internal stakeholders to keep up with the speed of social, generate more content and drive results with fewer resources is pushing teams to their limits.

These are the times when it’s most important to carve out space for open-ended, creative thinking and other rituals for sharing inspiration. The team at H&R Block has taken this to heart.

“It is important to get out of our bubble, especially in an industry like financial services. One way we achieve this is through a rotating ‘External Inspiration’ exercise,” says Cohen.

“Each week, one person is assigned a presentation on—quite literally—anything they want. The only rule is that we must be able to draw a parallel or direct inspiration to H&R Block. We’ve covered topics including the rise of skincare, a history of denim, the impact of Ralph Lauren, bananas as the original content marketing case study, lessons from 24 seasons of Survivor…the list goes on!”

The exercise is a refreshing way to step beyond their day-to-day roles and learn about topics not everyone the team is familiar with.

Think about low-lift ways you can incorporate similar motions into your existing meetings or processes. Maybe it’s a dedicated Slack space for sharing async social examples (from outside your industry). Or perhaps it’s inviting regular “guest speakers” from other companies to share a behind-the-scenes look at their creative process.

Redefine how you measure success

As social platforms continue to test the limits of just how much content audiences can process, now may also be a good time to advocate for new social success metrics. Our Index data shows that most marketers already prioritize engagement metrics (shares, comments, etc.) over reach and impressions. After all, what’s more valuable: someone seeing your post and scrolling on, or someone finding it so relevant they tag a friend in the comments?

Social teams can use this over-saturated moment to make the case for setting more targeted community growth and engagement goals (rather than reaching a certain number of eyeballs).

“For brands to break out of the algorithmic demise (of losing direct access to followers and competing with other people and brands), you have to get more niche. You have to figure out: What is my value add to the people who follow me?,” says Allebach. “It helps to break through the clutter, and it makes it so you’re not necessarily going up against the macro trends that seem to dictate the discourse on platforms every day.”

Social media saturation is a challenge—and an opportunity

Today’s social platforms (even those that existed back in 2010) are more nuanced, and the people who use them are more plugged in than ever before.

As a result, brands have to be even more strategic—and flexible—to ensure their investments in social pay off.

Despite the obstacles social media saturation presents, it also gives social teams an opportunity to reset their content strategies altogether. Run a short-term experiment to test the impact of lowering production volume and creating more original content. Prioritize a new approach to brainstorming, or a new team ritual to break everyone out of their day to day.

Social media may run on algorithms, but finding success is anything but formulaic.

For more inspiration to break through an increasingly crowded space, check out our masterclass webinar with Rachel Karten.