The State of Social Media in 2025 with Emily Dolton

Join us for an in-depth conversation with Emily Dolton, a Facebook ads specialist turned data-driven marketing strategist. In this episode, we unpack the rapid evolution of social media in 2025, the rise of platforms like TikTok Shop, and what businesses must do to stay ahead. From mastering creative strategies to leveraging customer data and AI, Emily shares insights on adapting to a dynamic digital landscape. 

Whether you're a marketer, business owner, or just curious about the future of social media marketing, this episode is packed with actionable strategies and thought-provoking ideas.

Prefer to watch? You can find the video version of this episode here on YouTube:
https://youtu.be/Rjbt9uNEftI

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Transcript

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Heavenly Dalton. The change in social and how it's changing and also where it's going. It's a heavier shift towards what the creative is doing. I'm totally confused. I would say it's largely a messaging issue. You reckon that is changing at such a rapid pace? The ones that don't adapt will get left behind quicker. I also think those that do adapt will rise quicker. Absolutely. Welcome to the fight, Mark, sir. Today is a little bit different. We haven't got necks. We haven't got Boddington potting some pace. We've got Emily Dalton. Hello, Emily. Hello. The crowd have gone wild. The crowds. Thanks. It's great to be here. Thank you for having me. Okay. Where were the little bit delayed because of a meeting I was in, but, You. Emily, a while you were, but you still are. You're a Facebook ad specialist. I am, is that a fair? That's a fair description. I'm not a specialist, and I have recently pivoted to helping businesses to grow using their customer data. So I am a bit of a mixture of. Yeah, I've I've largely pivoted away from ads, but I still love them. But I kept being told by clients, you end up looking at my whole business, not just my ads. Why did you look at all of this? And I was like, yes, that's what I've done my whole career. So hence the hence the leap. But yes, let's use ad strategies for today's conversation. I wasn't gonna use it. I wasn't gonna use the word strategy. I was way too big a word. Let's, let's make that already clear. Yeah. Let's go out. Strategies. How did it all start a start. How long have you been running ads for? So, my background is, I'm not going to give you a blow by blow for 20 years, but, my background is that I've always worked with data, and I worked for Bravissimo. You know, the laundry company? Yeah. I was someone for 11 years running, sales forecasting and looking at all of their customer buying behavior. And, it's a great business because everything that it's done is done for the benefit of the customers, which is, you know, every business. The reason I'm on this morning, I go, I used to work, I went to school, and she works there. Oh, hey, Lindsay Chapman? Yes. Oh, my gosh. Randomly, Lindsay and I used to sit, like, two seats. Okay, Lindsay. Nine years ago. Go back. What I laughed is, why did she got a job offer? Mesmerized. Lindsay's quite, And that's not the right word. When in doubt. Is that the right word? But. Oh, it made me giggle because I was like, as if you've then got a job at Lindsay. As if it's not what I'm. Yeah, but anyway, I did all these battles. I put names to be like, yeah, thanks. I'll see you. Lindsay. She like, yeah. She's a she's a good girl. Okay. So you ever. So everybody smoked and, so all the work that I did there was all around, looking at how the sales were forecast and also at how customers buy and what the customer buying journey was. And then when I went self-employed, I knew I wanted to work with smaller businesses, but in a similar way, helping them to grow, using their data and using those insights. And one of the ways that I thought it would be good to do that would be to move into paid social, because I knew the customer buying behavior side of things, but I didn't necessarily know slightly smaller businesses. So, you know, running into tens of millions revenue. I was going to be working with businesses who are smaller than that. So, so moved into paid ads and loved it. It's, Yeah, a fascinating world, as I'm sure you would agree, James. It's an interesting world. Isn't that it? And it's changed dramatically. And that was something I wanted to say obviously when we would. So I give a quick text on LinkedIn, which was what we're going to talk about saying is that sort of the change in social and how it's changing, how it has changed, and also where it's going, because obviously with what you do now, obviously a massive change in the e-commerce space, a lot of people are are going more natives are using visit Tick Tock shop and Facebook shop, you know, and I don't have the answer to, but something that Nick and I spoke about in the past is actually, will anyone have an e-commerce store in the future? Or will it just be a a tick tock shop or a Facebook shop? Obviously that's not gonna be any time soon, but obviously you look further down the line. So that's what I wanted to sort of get to today. In terms of going back onto your Facebook ads, what did you love most about it? Well, I loved the most about it is when you can see them really flying and you know why they're flying and ads. I don't need to tell you this, but ads amplify what's already working really well organically. And so when you see the organic working really well and you see the ads amplifying that and it all working like a dream, like it's super satisfying and I think it is possible to run ads well without a huge organic following. It's not that you need to have this massive audience, but you do need to have your messaging clear. You've got to have your organic being your shop front so that if someone clicks through from an ad, you're organic, is representing your brand really well. And if you're organic is already doing a fantastic job, it just makes it easier for the ads to then also perform well. I think we've seen such a shift in recent years from, you know, it's first when I first started working in ads, you know, the audiences you chose were so important. You know, all of that testing of different interests and different look alike and different percentages and different regions and all of that good stuff. Now, of course, it's a much broader audience size doing most of the work, and it's it's a heavier shift towards what the creative is doing. And really because you're because we're we're seeing that actually broad audiences are working much, much better outperform and interest based almost all that. It you know, in many situations, not every situation but in many situations, but because we're going so, so, so but because we're, because we're going out to broad audiences, the creative has to do a much harder work. So you've got to really be calling in your ideal audience, which, again, is so much easier if you're organic, is already working well, and you know how to speak directly to your customers brilliantly. And the prospects, you can then lend that, you know, lead that into the ad space as well. And they just work really well together. So that's my favorite thing, is when they just when it all just works like a charm. Happy days is mad isn't it? With the interest. Because I remember back in the day we had a few clients where there was certain interests, and pools of people that would work amazingly, and then they would just turn them off and you're going, oh, what do I do now? Like, like one was for, mum, mum, it was mama and papa type, prenatal and postnatal and you could basically select on how the child was or if there's someone who's pregnant. Just went overnight, changed our entire game. We went from 210 roles like to and is like, okay, we have to, you know, change effort from, you know, but we don't get any. You know what I think a lot of people forget is that we don't get told that this is going to happen. There's no consideration to us. So the customer's messages go changed and that's it. And then you'll go into another ad account and they'll be there. Yeah. On my account it's not. And that's the other thing we've we've met tribes. Although that the interest in the like for the interested broad audiences is that a lot of people aren't, aware that not every ad manager is the same. You know, we got a lot US clients that will have different ad managers, those in the UK, and you're thinking what is going on? So it's not one size fits all. Absolutely. I think you're absolutely right. And I think it's frustration I've had a million times from business owners is that, nothing stays the same. So it's such a moving landscape all the time, but also simple things which to you and I were in and out of different of council all the time. So, you know, we're having to keep up the interface changes. But actually, as a business owner, when you've just got the hang of something and then you find that half your interests have gone or the entire interface is changed overnight with no warning. It is really unsettling. And I think that's one of the things that's hard for a business owner who's running their own artists. Is that, especially if they're just doing this is like a, an add on to their day, or they might look at a certain ad and we'll look at it in a couple of weeks time. Then they go back in and go, where do I go? Yeah. You know, I don't go in very often now. And even I sometimes go, I'm totally confused. And I, you know, a lot and very often at our at all. I really but even I, you know, who has knowledge of it. Yeah. It's going to change. You have no idea. So it's, you know, which is why when you start looking at, you know, whether it's freelancers or agencies, you know, yes, they are worth their weight in gold, but you've got to make sure that you're definitely profitable. You know, before that, interesting with a broad audience versus interest by. So I'm still saying a lot and typically on LinkedIn people are still having this debate broad audience versus interest. There is not one way to skin a cat. And I think you'll agree on this, is that you could have one out account and you've got a little broad audience that's got a lot of interest base. And the both working is not the one works better. And the other thing is just if your ad gets picked up and it runs just from a vet. Yeah, absolutely. You know, there make sure you're keeping an eye on all the soft metrics. But actually, even if the soft metrics are rubbish, if the actual conversion event is doing what you want it to do, stick with it. You know, if the click through rate is terrible, but actually every person who's getting through is buying, that's a winner over some really high click through rate when someone isn't actually doing anything. Obviously, depending on what you want the ad to be doing. But, yeah, I think it's it's really fascinating how every ad account is different. It's why testing is so important. And it's also why, you know, especially businesses who are just starting to run ads. And they say, well, what kind of ad budget do I need? Like, you can start with a modest budget and doesn't mean that's wrong, but it makes it so much easier if you've got a bit more budget to test with initially, it just means you can learn much more quickly. You can get out the learning phase much more quickly. And yeah, so I think we're only going to see that more as you know, as 2025 continues and the you know, that the prominence of having to test so many more creative variations because the audiences are broader, you know, that that ability to test creative more quickly, especially with AI coming into the fold, you can produce many, many, many more versions more quickly, but they have to be the right quality. And it's about making sure you can, you know, react as quickly as you can, but also making sure you've got enough budget so you're not spreading it too thinly and not actually getting decent statistical results out of every variation that you're running. I don't think many problems know that even there's a learning phase. You know, most people, you know, especially, you know, some of the people that Nick deals with, with the clinic is, you know, we get these people in and, you know, they've been running ads, which is great themselves. They're still learning face because they're not spending enough budget and all they're doing is just wasting money. Yeah. Or, optimizing for awareness. And it's like, well, but your objective of using socially is conversion. You want someone to spend some money over you. Yeah, yeah. The awareness campaign is going to give you that. It's going to give you awareness. Yeah. You know, these algorithms are very, very intelligent. They want to get you a sale. You have to optimize for sale or lead, gentlemen. Absolutely. And naturally, if you want somebody to buy from you, it's going to cost you a lot more yeah, person than it is for somebody to just see your ad. But there's definitely a place for engagement and awareness ads, you know, for having that omnipresence for people feeling like they're seeing you all over the place, especially in recent years when organic, you know, organic reach, you know, people feel like nobody's seeing my posts in there, right? Because it used to be you posted something organically and most of your audience saw it. Of course, in recent years, it's now, you know, you're lucky if it's 5 or 10% of your organic audience. You see it. And I think sometimes businesses feel disheartened and think, oh, what's the point in spending all this time doing the organic? But actually, of course, when someone sees their ad, one of the first things they often do is click through to the organic profile. And if that is then showing us not being up to date or not aligned with the current ads that are running, it's really damaging to the brand. But that's why it's important to to be in a position where you're doing both. But it isn't, you know, in a position where it ends up feeling hugely arduous. You know, that you just kind of stuck on this treadmill of creating content after content after content. It's about having a strategy in place that makes the two parts work really well together. I I've got a bit of a book bag of organic. Ish. Isn't it like it is? It is brutal. It is brutal for businesses producing I mean, in stuff, for example, like buoyancy and it's never seen again. It's never seen again. The churn is just so fast. And yeah, and I think sometimes people feel like they need to do more and more and more and more. And actually that isn't always the case. You know, you can click through if, let's say you see a brilliant ad and you click through, you know, an account is posted on even once a day or even, you know, three times a week. Actually, if those pieces of content are really strong, that's much better than doing three different things a day on Insta. But actually it's all kind of the same. You know, it's it's not really talking to your audience properly. It's not delivering your message properly. It's not doing what you want it to do. You know, it's definitely quality over quantity. You've got to be regular, but you don't need to be. I see organic as it's like you said before, it's that, you know, the lights are still on. Yeah. You know, I weirdly, I think last weekend I was looking to hire a caravan and there's one actually in South and actually and went on to the, Instagram account and it hadn't been updated since 2023. Yeah. So I that instantly makes you think, oh, but I message them, they have a message about. So I'm getting the business. Just no trading. Fine. But already I've gone. Yeah, they probably won't reply to this. So I sort of see that as that light on because I said, you know, at 5% on average across the board, it's less than 2% will say your organic post, which is nuts. It is, you know, you kind of the worst thing is now you can't even use it as a assuming we used to do a lot less that social was the litmus test for paid was how good is, how good it's performed on organic. Yeah. Polymer is you guys sound Sophie bloody people on account. Like it's quite hard to go. Oh, okay. This is better than that one. So yeah. Obviously so cheap test now especially on paid absolute. What would you produce all that content just for organic and then no one's good enough to put on paid. You know these platforms aren't silly. I don't want to spend money. Yeah. Just play the game. Yeah. So cheap. As long as it's my. As long as you're doing it. Well, though. That's. Yes. I think the risk is that I sometimes find business owners who are a little bit earlier in their journey come saying, I want to run ads because I'm not getting sales. And they think that turning ads on is going to fix that. But actually they have to know what their messaging is using organic. That's a that's a really it's time of money, isn't it? So you can either spend the money testing and learn more quickly, or you can spend the time doing the organic and learn more slowly. But it doesn't cost you the money. But it's when people have done lots of testing with organic, not getting the sales, and then think that adding money is going to fix the situation, which sometimes it does. If it's just a question of people not seeing that content, but actually if it's that they're not getting their messaging right, then ads aren't going to fix that. That's just going to be poor. What percentage of which would you say of those two issues? Yeah. What percentage? Averil. Do you mean, what percentage of businesses don't get their messaging right versus what percentage of businesses don't get their content seen by enough people? Correct? I would say it's largely a messaging issue. You reckon I do only because, Oh, this is interesting. Yeah, only because I think well, now I'm going to caveat it. Let me caveat no no no no no no no. It's good. There's no fans like that. No no I wasn't going to say on the fence I started by. But I do have to I do have to give a caveat, which is I think it depends on the stage of business that someone is at. So if somebody is already generating a reasonable amount of revenue and they're not seeing the growth, then that has to do with the not getting enough new eyes on the prize and or they're not doing enough with their retention strategies. If it's that their earlier in their business thinking ads are going to solve that, they're not starting to generate sales. I think that's a messaging thing. So I do think it's to it's different issues. It's different solutions depending on the stage of business someone's at and why they think to the right next step for them. Yeah. It's interesting I would say I my opinion is I don't think enough eyeballs being seen. I think you can have a really bad even a bad. You can have a good product with bad mass, you still get sales. You can't you can't have a really good product if no one sees it. Yes, I do agree with you. I think that well then that takes you onto customer feedback. It does? Yeah, I love a bit of customer feedback. So one thing I don't think customers don't think businesses do enough is actually talk to their customers. People don't get enough feedback from their customers. And actually you you know, if business owners talks and you know, you talk to ten customers a week, they would get more from that than they would from a year of just trying to post content and hope for the hope to the best, you know. And I think that's that's what comes out to. And that would actually answer both of our questions. Both of our viewpoints set out that the customers would tell you it's like your product is rubbish or your messaging rubbish, or I really liked it, but I found it somewhat cheaper or I just didn't. I hadn't seen it and I didn't know about it, which sometimes is the case with existing customers. They then don't hear from you enough, either via organic or paid or emails or whatever IT strategy is. You know that that's why they don't buy again, because I don't hear from you enough. But that initial acquisition piece, I think messaging and focus more heavily on this. Well, that's the most expensive part. You know, acquiring the customer's always, you know, whatever line of work you as always, you must spend part. I think a lot of e-commerce brands, if we're going to focus on those often they're going to I I'll just tell my emails on the no global revenue world. Fine. But you know, similarly sales, you've got to be omnipresent. You know, a firm that does it really well at the moment for me is Zagato and the, the core brand of Nicole as I carried on. They're everywhere, you know, they are everywhere I go. Okay. I'll engage. I've looked at, you know, more because I've been using a very I, look at the comments I missed, but again, I've engaged not see them everywhere. Now they take that literally everywhere. Great. Absolutely amazing. They're all over me like a rash. That is how you do it. Yeah. And some other brands do it very, very well. I've. You've got it got to be on me. Yeah. And also that you're not just only present for a couple of weeks that actually I think. Oh, forever. Yeah. Forever. Because eventually you will probably fly. Especially when you see Nick Byron here. This a full menu and me like I'd like to try some of that but. Oh, what did you say pretty. Tell me off about okay. It's from a terrorist myself, but yes, absolutely. And I think, you know, in the coming year, AI is going to become such a big I think not just with Rupert on the comments, which is super important and awesome, but also in terms of creative and in terms of community. But there's going to be so much more content produced because I is going to make that possible. There's going to be a lot more engagement happening, but it's going to be a much smaller proportion of it. That's actually real true engagement. And I think, you know, customers are really going to want to see more use generated content, authenticity, right? It's going to be even more key. And we see so much content all the time. So it's really easy thing that you've noticed that you feel like they're all over you. Like that's great because they're showing themselves often enough to you. Actually, if you just see one or 2 or 3 of their bits of content that they wouldn't even have registered in your brain. And I think that has that is changing at such a rapid pace. You know, we are so into short form video. We don't you know, they've I've met this really interesting book last year about, you know, how our focus is just decreased so much. We don't, you know, even the way that we read media and the news that we don't read long form content nearly as much as we used to, we just want instant gratification, for better or for worse. But I think we're really going to see more of that coming into this year and that need for omnipresence and that need for rapid, I mean, creative, you know, creative is going to tie much more quickly. And, and again, speaking to customers is going to be absolutely key for that keeping on tone of your comments, keep on top of your customer feedback. You know, it's it's really important to have to, coming in to, again, keep it on to e-commerce. So we've seen the rise and it's not a small rise. It's a meteoric rise of TikTok shop. Yes. Which I spend the money on. There. You know. Yeah, every gadget spend money in and it must be exactly about oh, I bought Necati Chef for Christmas. For the way I finished, I didn't bring only style and know like so I think he had come in. It's amazing because he got as much attention as is on your level. Okay. And, we've seen the rise. It is eclipsing what anyone ever for. Although Nick and I do do a podcast got three years ago when Facebook Live came and we said if they could incorporate the e-commerce size, it's like the, not HMV was are caught it you know, the shopping channel was it caught? Hey, you've got a few. Yes. You know, imagine that online. And obviously, you know, Facebook didn't get it right. They didn't sell. Tick tock. Absolute lutely. Nailed it from from what you do. And so these days you know what's the benefits of jumping on tick tock a shop apart from all the commerciality. Because obviously yeah, it's amazing. But yeah. How does that sort of tie into what you all are doing? Well, I think it's really it's a really instinctual. You're completely like tick tock, have done it fabulously. Sort of talk a few weeks ago. Like I from Lux Collective, you got into that really early is fascinating like that, you know, to your point about meteoric rise and and they've just absolutely flow, I think I think the risk to brands is, of course, is that it's another social media platform and they don't own the data. So that is a trickier beast than having it will run through Shopify or e-commerce or whatever. So it's about how much data visibility tick tock is going to allow you to allow businesses to see, how much they can be able to take from demographics and the buying journeys and all of that, and how that would dovetail at the various platforms that people are using to, you know, monitor their data and make decisions. You know, at the moment, you know, something like Shopify, a pirate trip, a whale, for example. You've got quite a lot visibility there. I mean, the attribution piece is always complex, and it is only going to get more and more and more complex with each year. The past is as the number of touchpoints that goes up. Oh no sir, I like that. So the I really believe and yes, mine is my shop and it's nothing like oh, just how much you make and just do all this well and then just put we got to go for simple buying as much as possible because otherwise you could just get stuck in this ever, ever turning circle. Yeah. Attribution like guys. But I do see that will be really interesting to see as the, as the on platform purchasing continues how that impacts not only the organic side. Yeah. As in that the native sites of the brands, whether anybody ever comes, you know, from Tick Tock Shop and then buys directly from the brands own site, what that what that buying journey is going to look like or whether actually it's a completely different set of customers who buy in tick tock shops. And my words are you buy on tick tock shop versus people who buy on the brands own website. You know, whether that's two distinct groups with very different buying journeys and possibly very different demographics and different buying and buying patterns, particularly with things like, products that go viral on a, on an organic stock, if that's then converted into a purchase from the shop, because that's the product that the brand is promoting on that huge thing to see if they tend to be customers who only buy from a brand once because they haven't actually been through that gloriously long, detailed buying journey. They haven't bought into the brand as much because they bought. I've seen one viral video, or it might be that we end up seeing opposite that, because people feel like they really know the brand, they really know it. Let's say it's the founder or they, you know, the marketing team doing the Tick TikToks. You know, it might be that because they've got to know them on the organic channel that actually they buy more into the brand when they buy through the shop, rather than buy directly through the the brand's own website. So it's going to be really interesting to see the data pound out on that undefined behavior. I think that brands to be very careful because I think obviously, like you said, they don't own the data. It'll be interesting to see how tick tock develop that. I think Tick Tock actually are a lot easier and have a lot, a lot more, focused around keeping their clients, i.e. that B2B businesses on the happy. Yeah, giving them more access to stuff being a lot more a lot of customer service is incredible in comparison to like chalk and cheese. So clearly they've got some really good things going for them. Ivan, brands are going to have to be a little bit careful, because if they don't give the keys to the castle, to the brands and they own the data integrity or the time, they're going to have to change the business models and go, okay, how do we now do that? Tick Tock Shop is so frictionless, you can make a purchase in less than a second. They know your address. They don't have to think, yeah, you don't even look. And they're very clever. Even the, the the way they put in their, delivery fees, you don't really see it. And it's still so quickly made in order. That in comparison to kind of Shopify, WooCommerce, whichever side put any details, again, I don't think in the less I really wants to I don't think I'll do it now. Yeah, it's really interesting, isn't it? And I can agree with you. And I think we're already seeing switch to. Yeah. As a sort of a different so outside the social media space but similar kind of thought process already we're seeing that people are searching ChatGPT instead of using Google. And even six months ago, the thought of us being like, oh, it's a bit of a faff. You got to search on video and then you've got to refresh the results, and then you have to figure out which page you want, and then you've got to try and think, you know, and and whereas on ChatGPT you can just go in search for something. It just gives you the whole answer exactly what you want. And and that wasn't even a problem. We thought we had this Google. I mean, sometimes it's a fact trying to find the answer, but it's exactly the same thing. It's that frictionless, easy, speedy, you know, one click purchase from Amazon. You know, and you're absolutely right there on Tick Tock Shop. It makes it so frictionless and so quick that brands are going to brands are going to have to work harder if they want people to come across them. But if Tick Tock continues the way it is and they keep the customer service amazing and they can keep the brands happy and the way that they manage that data, the brands aren't necessarily going to want to bring people across to them. You know, if it works well, as long as they can see that they get that customer loyalty. I think the retention piece is going to be really interesting. I think acquisition absolute no brainer, tick tock shop. But what's going to be interesting to see is how it pans out in terms of the retention of customers and how brands handle that, and also how Tick Tock handles it. If I look at the brands that I've purchased over the last like, like budget for Christmas. Chris now, if you're funny t shirts for you, Michael, or for Nick or whatever, or stuff for the kids, these aren't brand items. Now, I'm not a brand person, so it's not like I would go out specifically and go, I want to buy a couture. Or, you know, some like, I'm not a brand type person, maybe with things like running trainers, potentially just, you know, but again, it's a little bit different. But I've got no I all the things I've bought, I couldn't tell you the brand is it's stuff that is going viral and I've gone on that's quite cool. Yeah. That's there's no I won't become a repeat customer because I don't know what the brand is. Exactly. That's my point. Absolutely. But that's scary because if I'm buying stuff because it's impulse and they've done a fantastic job and got me. Yeah. And I'm not not worried about what brand is like. I've bought some t shirts. I was a one gym this morning. It's got a little smiley face. That's really cool. I like that design. I'll wear that teacher for ten years and not worry, but I won't. I'm not. I don't care about that. That's not loyalty. Exactly. So yeah, if I, I'm a brand, I like an actual brand. Let's say Zagato. Well, I'm now competing with a bloke in China because that's who they are. Who's going to give a similar t shirt for them for the price. But all I need to do is just get a good ad in front of them. Yeah. You've got to get some proper brand loyalty. And how then do you do that? Which is obviously what it takes on live comes in. Yeah. You know, there's a guy called, the culture Club. And it's a guy in his videos, Marketing America that looks at sneakers and sees this, that really not only does like coin flips to say you might have seen them, but he goes live now every week and he sells t shirts, but they're all his own stuff now. Yeah. From his T-shirt shop. Shop in America. He's flying this stuff out, flying them out. But he's been consistent over that period of time and he's built his followers and they know him as a person. And that's really different from your t shirt purchase, isn't it? 100%. Yeah. It's really interesting. He's a that's then a personal brand. Yes. That's not an ax. Lagasse. Yeah. So then how do you it's interesting to see where it goes. But the data side for me is the bit where, you know, like I, you know, you know, you know, my background, love. Get into the weeds of it. Yeah. If you don't have that you obviously think you've got some great analytics within these platforms, especially, but what is that going to mean further down the line if you can't access who is or isn't purchasing and you know, the demographics behind them, how can you zero point earlier got to reverse engineer and start looking at what messaging is right, what message you needed and correct. And I think also it's really hard for established brands who aren't necessarily personal brand. How do they even go about determining where they're losing their customers to those they're going to be just generally less visibility. You know, they can they can absolutely try and compete. But I think it is going to be a harder ask for them. You know, and I think also the whole viral aspect of TikTok levels the playing field a bit. So for example, your a known person, they can create one amazing ad or one amazing piece of organic content, get it in front of a couple of million people, and they don't have to be a big brand to be able to do that. And of course, going viral has always been a, you know, thing, and that's that's great. But actually, I think it's completely changed now that TikTok is monetized, now that it's e-commerce, because it just yeah, it just it completely revolutionizes how the small guys will be able to compete against the bigger guys. But I think you're completely right. I think the lack of personal brand for some brands is going to be really it's going to be really challenging. I think it's going to be really interesting to see how it unfolds. It's going to be challenging, and I think they're going to look back and go, oh, but there's nothing they could do because if you're like, you're not going to personal brand. No, it shouldn't be like it. So you're not you're not going to do it. They're a faceless brand. So I think you've got those mid tier ones or those smaller like you know that that sneaky Elijah mentioned. You know he'll be framing that for a while for a long time and fair play to him. Yeah. Lutely people are going to you know, rather than going to Nike buy an Air Jordan from him or Jordan T they're going to get him down by because he's not selling it on live. So it's interesting. I, I think it's just going to keep going and keep going and keep going. I think brands are using purely Shopify, Magento, these, you know, WooCommerce to produce revenue. I think you have to move pretty quickly because they're going to be so far behind. Yeah, because you're right. And I think it's interesting because a lot of the advice out there is still you got to do your organic socials, you got to do matter ads. And, you know, and they absolutely have a place on obviously Google and you know, it all has its place. But I think you're absolutely right. This year is going to see rise of much, you know, the the newer side of things and that and that people are going to be it's going to be easier to be left behind this year if people don't act quickly because everything is developing so fast. Do you think how much AI has developed even since the summer, something like Midjourney, you know, Midjourney, yes. Excellent. Seem to it. But you know Midjourney. I remember first seeing that back in April, May, and it was like, wow, this is mind blowing, but also doesn't really do what you need to do at all. And less than a year later, it's wild how, you know, we did some yesterday. I didn't win on Monday. Yeah, we did a couple on, well, as I say in the Nvidia unbelievable. It is okay to me a third second video on why, you know, social media managers need to deal with comments. I was like, it was incredible wasn't it. Yeah. And we and I you know Daniel was it polished. No but no but you could watch those out all day and it got engaged. Absolutely. And it took us well for about 10s to write this prompt. Yeah. And loads in the back at the time. But what's the outcome of that is we're doing that and we're then filling the feeds with even more content. So each bit of content gets even less time. Like it just becomes faster and faster. Unless it's good, unless it's good, which of course it will be good, but it's But but but again, it's the brands that don't do the quality are going to try all of those things, and then probably pretty quickly find that it doesn't do what they need to do. If it isn't quality, it's a bit like on the high street, the shops that have been around for a long time but just didn't up their game end up being the ones that shot sadly. And you know, it's tough. It's going to be a really fast moving space this year. I think it's interesting that the ones that don't adapt will get left behind quicker. I also think similarly to that, on the flip side is that those that do adapt will rise quicker. Absolutely. You know, it's really exciting and there's loads of great growth opportunities. It's just baking, you know, it's about brands keeping an eye out for the good advice versus the not so not so good advice. And there's a lot of that around I'm like a la a la la around, which is what the podcast is air for. Indeed. Indeed. So Emily, we're nearly finished. What's your biggest advice for 2025? Social media managers? Well, anyone running or anyone running paid ads, okay, anyone running paid ads get super, super clear about what your strategy is. I think it has never been more important. Understand exactly what you are trying to get ads to do. I think omnipresence is going to be even more key this year. To your point about the brand that you just keep saying over and over again that feeling of, gosh, we're just showing people stuff all the time. They need to see it all the time. They need to see you everywhere all the time. But it doesn't have to be through creating the umpteenth organic post that week. You know it can be done with paid ads, a messaging, you know, having that hook being super strong so that you're, you know, in those broad audiences, your, your ideal customers really, you know, that you're talking to them. Berlin. That was a good podcast, Michael. Wasn't that we just we also record in this. We record a guy. It's we we've got a new podcast, which I'm going to plug now in the comments. Amazing, amazing great name. And we so we bring on social media manager brand owners and they brought in a big application form where we then like for crew and go through their things. We had our first guest today drove down from Glasgow. Oh congratulations team all tomorrow them. Oh what do you tell them or what does the podcast cover. It just they basically fill in application for and what they're trying to achieve is social. Give me all their social profiles and what they think they're doing. Right. Well they're in the doing wrong. And we basically analyze it with them, tell them what's going to say, on the podcast. Yeah, yeah, we do a lot of yeah, I love that. Yeah. So we, record the first one today and Gordon came down from Glasgow Drive all the way down. How amazing that is. Real dedication I love that. But also, why would he not. Because you know, you guys don't know. It's a long way. But you have a road trip, so I'm like, oh yeah, I've to drive to Glasgow. So. Yeah. So no, he came in and Michael said it was a very good podcast. And I believe Mark, this is us I think this is top tier again. All right. This is what happened the next. Not around. Yeah. I was going to say to just say to everybody yeah top tier. Everybody is top tier. There is no bottom tier or even middle honor. Always bottom. Because next year. Because for Nick, no, no, Nick hasn't been on for a while. Actually. Nick's like upright. We never see him anymore. I saw him just before I came in, so he definitely exists. He is here, is here. But, Emily, thank you for coming on. Thank you for having me. Sorry I was late. Absolute apologies. Blame one day. Fine. Thanks for that. And, everyone, see you next week. Thank you for joining us on today's podcast. Remember, not every form of marketing is right for every business.