The social media landscape is being upended: Don’t wait to make a move

We know that social media moves fast. And frankly, marketers don’t have time to consume the same watered down, not-so-takes about the state of the industry. That’s why we’re launching this new series, @MeNextTime, where we’ll invite Team Sprout and some of our favorite social experts to share how they really feel about the latest trends. Our first order of business? Digging into where brands should show up these days.

Nothing is guaranteed—it’s a lesson we relearn everyday in the social media industry.

Between bans, boycotts and algorithm changes, the social media landscape is fragmenting even further in 2025. The race to win brand equity and relevance in new spaces is on.

Which makes social marketers (understandably) uneasy. Most say their greatest fear is their audience moving to private, closed or otherwise niche platforms, according to The 2025 Sprout Social Index™.

The fears are justified—it isn’t just all in our heads. Almost 40% of marketers say their audience is already starting to spend more time on emerging platforms like Threads, Bluesky, Lemon8 and Mastodon, per the Q1 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey.

This seismic shift has been a long-time coming, with clear signals along the way. So, why are so many brands caught on their heels? Social marketers aren’t getting the support they need to take big swings on new platforms.

Betting on emerging platforms

What works today won’t be the ticket to relevance tomorrow. If a social marketer told you their brand’s strategy was built around Vine, you’d probably assume you teleported back to 2013 (#DoItForTheVine).

In today’s social media landscape, you have to keep a constant pulse on where your audience is showing up. Only investing in legacy or established platforms will make it hard to break through on new networks. Being an early adopter gives your brand an edge over your competitors and industry peers.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not advocating for nixing all popular platforms. Your customers are eager to interact with your brand in a variety of spaces.

But the same report found that when consumers were asked where they wanted brands to stop showing up, their answer was somewhat surprising: nowhere. Every network offers opportunities for finding and growing your community, because social users use every platform to meet different needs for connection and consumption.

With a new platform coming onto the scene seemingly every week, that makes things complicated. It’s unrealistic for social teams to build a presence on each emerging network. Even folding one or two experimental platforms into your 2025 strategy would still be enough to diversify your investments and hedge your bets. But your leaders will need convincing that it’s worth doing.

Making the case for platform experimentation to your leaders

We recently asked brands experimenting on Bluesky how they plan to fuel their content pipeline. Almost 60% say their current strategy is reposting content from other platforms, according to the Q1 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey.

While repurposing content can help fill production gaps, every platform and algorithm are different and performance varies drastically. Plus, many new networks require social teams to hone different skills and invest in net new content creation. Even repackaging takes time—whether you’re repurposing a video into a long-form text post, or translating a static image into a filter.

Testing the waters on new platforms will probably require cutting back elsewhere to accommodate your bandwidth. That’s okay. You just need to be transparent about how much time you will need to reallocate (e.g., 20%) and the anticipated impact to your publishing cadence.

The best way to make your case is by proposing a controlled, defined experiment with extremely specific goals in mind. For example, “Over the next three months, we will use this new platform to grow our community by X%.” Keep in mind that metrics like audience engagement and growth are most likely to resonate with marketing leaders, per the Index.

If you meet resistance, ask leaders to consider how much growth is still possible for your brand on networks where you already have a stronghold. The limit does exist. That doesn’t mean new platforms guarantee audience expansion, but they do offer potential. You can also suggest leaning on user-generated and influencer content on established channels to get ahead of performance headwinds.

Remember that nothing spurs leaders on like knowing they’re being outpaced by other brands. Point them in the direction of other companies who have already diversified their approach.

Brands charting a new path on emerging networks

For the past three years, L.L.Bean has gone “off the grid” during the entire month of May in honor of mental health awareness. The brand completely stops posting on all traditional social channels—giving their team and followers a chance to get outside. Their community engagement actually increases during these months, thanks to their outdoor-focused challenges on apps like Strava and NatureDose. The brand has also reported increased YoY impressions, greater awareness of their mission and no negative impact on sales—insights that helped convince their leaders their approach worked.

L.L.Bean’s success is an example of a wider trend we’ve observed: Brands accounts are popping up on community-driven networks (especially retail brands). From Louis Vuitton’s Discord server to The RealReal’s new Substack, brands are creating spaces for authentic community and forging stronger parasocial relationships with their audiences.

In the face of so much network volatility, doubling down on community management makes a lot of sense. Platforms come and go, but a strong community can withstand (and even prosper in) an era of network diversification.

If you’re unsure which alternative platforms you should invest in, start where conversations about your brand are already happening. For example, at Sprout, we’ve been fostering community engagement on Reddit. On the platform, users talk about their martech stacks and offer unfiltered feedback about our product. Not showing up was an opportunity cost we couldn’t afford.

Stand out in the social media landscape for the right reasons

We get it—finding the bandwidth to experiment on emerging platforms feels overwhelming, and divesting from core networks is a risk. But maintaining the status quo is a bigger one.

Social teams already have the community management and audience engagement skills to succeed in these other spaces. They just need the buy-in to make it happen.

While no one can predict which platforms will stand the test of time, one thing is certain—building strong, engaged communities will always be a worthwhile investment. By experimenting with emerging networks and meeting audiences where they already are, brands can future-proof their social strategies against platform volatility. The key is to stay adaptable, listen to your community and embrace change as an opportunity rather than a threat.

Looking for more on what social teams should prioritize in 2025? Read the latest edition of The Sprout Social Index™.