← Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
Build Your Tribe | Grow Your Business with Social Media
The Future Of Social Media | 2026 Trends You NEED To Know - 863
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To say that social media is always changing would be the understatement of the century. The algorithms are literally changing on a daily basis. And that's not hyperbole, that's directly from the head of Instagram. And keeping up with these changes is how we keep our business relevant, how we continue to grow as a content creator, and how we make sure that we are hosting the right things at the right time with the right hashtags. But the unfortunate reality is that most of the time we're playing catch up. We're hearing about an announcement and then we're adjusting our strategy. We're hearing rumors that Instagram is testing something, and then, and so we make a change, a new feature is announced on YouTube, and then we adapt. And a big part of my job is keeping you up to date, letting you know about these algorithm changes and letting you know about the strategies and adjustments that you should make moving forward with your social media marketing. And so that's why, if you haven't already, definitely click that subscribe button. But I think it can also be very helpful to give you my predictions for 2026. And so in today's episode, I'm going to be sharing with you my eight major social media predictions for 2026. And while I can't guarantee that these predictions are going to come true, I do have a track record of being pretty accurate most of the time with my Instagram predictions. And I do have inside intel from Meta and Instagram staff. And I do have a full time researcher on my team who literally has a PhD in strategic communications with an emphasis on Instagram, which is a mouthful, but basically she's a doctor of Instagram and she's constantly researching things, running tests, collecting case studies and, and keeping me up to know with what Instagram is testing. Because oftentimes Instagram and YouTube and TikTok will test features to a small group of people before making them available to the general population. And if you can be in the know about those adjustments and those new features before they're officially released, you can adjust your strategy so that you stay out ahead of the game rather than constantly having to play catch up. My first prediction is also the most obvious prediction that I'm going to make, and that is that AI content is going to become indistinguishable from. From real content. I would personally be willing to bet a lot of money that you have already been tricked by an AI video. Maybe you've realized it, but also maybe you've been duped by an AI video And you're sitting here thinking, there's no chance I haven't fallen for any AI. There isn't a single video that I've seen that I thought was real and is actually AI made. I know that personally, I was thinking this until the very end of October 2025 when I saw a video on my TikTok page. I didn't look at it for very long. Like I only watched it for a couple of seconds. And then I scrolled and. And then a few days later I saw another video breaking down. How that video that I originally watched was actually AI and how it had fooled so many people. And when I watched the analysis, I was like, oh yeah, this is obvious. But for the first couple seconds that I watched the original video before I scrolled, I didn't realize, I didn't clock that it was AI. And so my guess is that you have had a similar experience. And I hope I'm not the person who has to call you out right now and show you an AI video that you thought was real, but to the point where it really makes you question what is real and what is fake. One of the most stark examples of the progression of AI generated video is the Will Smith eating spaghetti AI video. Now, I don't want to just leave this first prediction here because I think most of us assume that AI video is going to become indistinguishable from non AI video in the coming months. So I want to take this prediction a step further and talk about the implications of that and how I think we as business owners and content creators are going to have to adapt or change and, and how I think the consumers or our audience is going to adapt as well. Number one, I think that the easier something is to generate with AI, the less trusting people are going to be of said content. For example, I recently saw a surrealist photographer post on Threads about how they posted the exact same image about two years ago. And then they posted it recently and recently it absolutely flopped. They had posted it numerous times in the past and every time they had posted it before, people were blown away. They thought it was the most crazy, cool, surrealist. How did he do that? How did he take that picture? How did he edit type of photography? And so it performed really well. But now when he posted it, because we've become so used to AI generated images and the ability to edit and modify content with AI, when people saw it, they likely assumed this is just an AI photo and they didn't engage if they recognized that this was created by a Human with no artificial intelligence. It was just a camera trick, if you will. They would have thought it was so cool and they would have engaged like they had the previous times he had posted it. But now, because it would be easier to fake, far easier than in the past, far easier to create with AI than ever before, people were less likely to trust it and less likely to engage. I think when we're talking about video content, some of the hardest content to fake is direct to camera talking head video. There are definitely some tools that can create some pretty powerful talking head with lip dub and voice generation, but it's not fully there yet. I would still say that that is the toughest thing to create with AI. Something that is kind of in between the photo example and a talking head video would be like B roll content. I know that Sora has become very popular and a lot of people are using it to generate B roll or engaging video clips that don't necessarily have talking. They don't necessarily have, you know, a single person speaking to the camera. But they're using that to supplement little moments in their content or to create little short snippets. And so I think that people are going to become generally a lot less trusting of B roll content. Speaking of B roll content, a very popular style of reel on Instagram for really the last three or four years has been what's called B roll reels. It's essentially where you take a single short 7 to 10 second clip of yourself doing something that relates to your business, maybe typing on a computer. If you are a business coach for moms who work from home, maybe you are stretching, if you are a yoga teacher. Basically you're just taking like a short little video and then they add some sort of sensationalized hook, some really strong clickbait title or headline and then they say read the caption. Well, this style of reel has been popular and this is kind of like a bonus, I guess, prediction. But I don't think those are going to be as popular in 2026. We've definitely seen them become far less popular in 2025. But there is a layer on top of these B roll reels where a lot of people in 2025 have created AI clones, where it's essentially they're using an AI model to create a deep fake of themselves, to create a twin, if you will, an AI avatar that looks just like them. And then they are creating these hypothetical scenarios. They're prompting the AI to put their AI twin walking down the streets of Paris or kayaking down A river or whatever. And then they're doing the typical B roll reel thing where they put some, you know, clickbaity hook, and then they say, read the caption. I believe that these AI clones are going to really fade in popularity in 2026. One of my predictions coming into 2025 is that faceless marketing would go away. And faceless marketing was basically the same idea that I've been describing, where people take a generic B roll clip, they put a sensationalized hook, and then they tell you to read the caption. But with faceless marketing, people were turning their back to the camera, or they were using a stock video of someone who wasn't them, or they were just generally doing things to cover up their face in the marketing. And I predicted that that would die in 2025. And that has significantly dropped in popularity. But unfortunately it. It's been replaced with these AI clones. So now instead of using generic B roll content or using B roll of themselves, but from behind so you can't see their face, people are creating AI versions of themselves. And I want to make myself clear. I have absolutely no problem if you don't want to show your face on camera. I think you can grow a successful brand or business without showing your face on camera. And I think that you can even use AI avatars to generate short B roll clips, and that might be effective to see spice up some of your content. What I am not a fan of, what I wasn't a fan of with faceless marketing, what I am not a fan of currently with this AI clone marketing. And the reason that I hope these things die out is because it's kind of become a pyramid scheme where these AI clones or these faceless marketers are not actually teaching anything. They're not actually becoming experts in their field. They're not actually documenting their journey. They are simply saying, my AI clone made me $3,000 yesterday. So comment clone and I'll teach you how you can do the same. And the only reason that they're making money is because you're commenting clone and buying their course, and then they're able to repeat the process. In my opinion, it's ultimately very pyramid schemey. And I think that the later that you adopt one of these trends like faceless marketing or AI clones, the less likely you are to have success with it. And again, everything I'm saying relates back to the idea of indistinguishable AI content. I do believe that in 2026, we will see more creators taking a stand, saying that they will not use any AI generated video or AI generated audio. There will be some creators who use absolutely zero AI. And because they make that stand, they will attract an audience who really values that and who really appreciates that they have zero AI in their content. And of course, there will be creators on the opposite end of the spectrum who lean into AI clones and lean into AI video and audio. And there will be people who specifically seek out that content. I do think that most people generally won't notice because like I said, it will become indistinguishable. And I also think most people won't care. They might say that they don't like being tricked and that might be the case, but because they don't recognize it, because they're not even aware that something was AI generated, they don't really care if it was funny, if it was engaging for them, they're going to laugh and they're going to stay engaged. With all that being said, let's swing the pendulum in the absolute opposite direction for prediction number two, which is I believe we're going to see a boom in in IRL events or in real life events. I believe that in person events are going to make a major comeback in 2026, in 2025, and even the tail end of 2024. We've already seen that there are a lot more in person events happening. And I don't mean in person events like VidCon or the ManyChat IRL summit. I think those things are awesome. I love public speaking when there are thousands of people there. But I think that small niche communities, in person events with 10 local creators, masterminds, and just in general more people meeting up in person offline, I believe that whether it's because of the isolation caused by the pandemic, the growing number of people who are working for themselves or working from home, I think that a lot of us are just craving connection. We're craving community. And we're recognizing more and more that while you can connect with people online and you can build online communities, it just doesn't compare to in person events. I know that personally, I have done more than four times the number of speaking events in 2025 than 2024. And you might say, well, Brock, maybe it's just because you've gotten more popular, you got more followers whatever, but 2024 and 2023 were significantly less than even 2022. And so it's been really cool to see over the course of 2025 how many more companies, how many more events, how many More organizations have been having these in person events, but big or small, and from talking to so many people there, that's what they want. They want more of this in 2026. From talking to the organizers of these events, they're planning more events or bigger events in 2026. And so if you're someone who feels lonely working from home or you crave community or connection, go on some local Facebook groups, do some online searching, look on Reddit, find communities in your local area. I know we have a local marketing club here in Park City, Utah, which is where I live, and they do almost weekly in person meetings where sometimes they'll have a speaker come in and train. Sometimes it's just for networking or connecting with other people in the community. But I firmly believe that networking and in person events are going to make a big comeback in 2026. Prediction number three for social media in 2026 is that no niche, no problem. And I can't believe I'm saying this, so I need you to stick around with me for just a second. For the last 10 years or so, myself and pretty much every other social media strategist out there has preached about the importance of niche. Niche, niche, niche, niche down. The riches are in the niches. You've been hearing it everywhere. I don't think there's a social media training in the history of the world that doesn't mention the word niche. But in 2026, I think we might see the death of the niche again. Let me explain. Over the course of 2024 and 2025, we have seen the TikTok iFundation of of social media. And essentially what that means is that every social network has tried their best to copy TikTok's algorithm. And they have done this because TikTok boomed in popularity in 2020. And if you think about the history of all the different social media networks that have risen and fallen, that have come and gone, TikTok is one of the few that has risen in popularity and stayed that popular. It burst onto the scene and it has stuck. And according to many reports, people spend more time on TikTok every day than any other platform. And the reason for this is that TikTok's algorithm fundamentally works different than every other platform. TikTok's algorithm says we don't really care who follows you. If you make good content, more people will see it. Similarly, from the perspective of the consumer, we don't really care who you follow, we care what your interest is. Basically, they're looking at what you are most likely to be interested in this moment, in this hour, in this minute, rather than what you were interested in three years ago when you decided to follow X, Y and Z accounts. So with that being said, basically every social media has deprioritized the value of a follower. The head of Instagram himself is on the record of saying that follower counts matter less than view and like counts. He's also on the record of saying that likes, shares and watch time are the greatest predictor of whether or not your content will get reach and get views, not necessarily if someone follows you or not. Similarly, on YouTube, subscribing is a great way to tell YouTube Hey, I want to see this person's posts in the future. But just because you subscribe to someone definitely does not guarantee that you're going to be shown their videos in the future. So basically in the past if you wanted to have success on social media, it was all about niching down. You had to pick one singular topic and really hyper focus on that topic. And then Instagram would serve up your content to people who are interested in said topic. Those people would follow you and then they would keep coming back for more. They followed you because you do pizza reviews. And so if you keep doing pizza reviews, Instagram will keep showing them your content, you'll keep getting views, engagement, and you'll keep getting more followers. But now, because of the TikTok iFooding, having a niche has never been less important for views. That is the big distinction that I need you to understand as someone who cooks about 95% of their meals at home. And no, that's not an exaggeration. You usually the only meal that Tay and I eat out each week is our Sushi Saturday. What we eat, what we prepare, it matters a lot to us. And that's why I'm so excited to introduce you to our newest sponsor, HelloFresh. HelloFresh allows you to choose between more than 100 recipes every single week, including cuisines from all around the world and bigger portions that satisfy everyone. Over 35 of those weekly recipes are high protein recipes, which fires me up and it allows me to feel great because I know that I'm eating wholesome ingredients like sustainably sourced seafood and 100% antibiotic and hormone free chicken. And of course, most important of all is how it tastes. And let me tell you, it actually tastes really good. This helps me be a better business owner because I'm able to eat meals that taste good and help me feel satisfied. I don't have to spend as much time thinking or prepping each meal and I can make sure that I'm hitting my protein goals in the process. Go to hellofresh.com byt10fm to get 10 free meals plus a free Zwilling knife with which is a $144.99 value on your third box. This offer is only valid while supplies last. Free meals applied at discount on your first box for new subscribers only and varies by plan for the last few years I've been using Notion to basically organize my entire life. It's so much more than just a to do list app, it's truly a one stop shop for organizing any area of your life or business. And it's not just great at organization, it's also great at automations as well. There's so many complex things that you can do and build that can happen automatically and instantly with Within Notion. And now for the first time they are introducing Notion AI agents. The new Notion Custom Agents will allow you to automatically perform advanced tasks without you even having to lift a finger. For example, I built a Notion custom agent that automatically pulls the link to any reel that I have posted and then it pulls out the text that I say or the text on the screen in the first few seconds of the reel. Basically it pulls out my hook and then it's able to look at how that post performed and compare it to the hook, which allows me to see which hooks are actually working so so that I can reuse them and tweak them for future reels. 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Try custom agents now@notion.com byt that's all lowercase notion n o t I-O-N.com by t to try custom agents today and when you use my link, you're supporting our show again. Notion.comBYT Are you ready to take your business marketing to the next level? Meet Brevo, the all in one marketing and CRM platform built to connect you with your customers, boost engagement and grow your business smarter. With Brevo you can manage all of your customer interactions in one place, nurture leads with their built in CRM, reach your audience through email and SMS and keep them coming back with powerful automations. But here is where it gets really exciting. Meet Aura, Brevo's AI Assistant. Aura helps you craft smarter campaigns by suggesting personalized content, optimizing send times, and even analyzing performance data to improve strategies in real time. It's kind of like having a marketing expert on your team 24 7. And of course, Brevo offers advanced analytics, seamless integrations and AI driven personalization. It's basically everything you could need to create seamless, multichannel campaigns that hit the mark every single time. Get started for free today or use code TRIBE50 to get 50% off the starter and standard plans for the first three months of an annual subscription. Just head to www.brevo.com tribe and take your marketing further with Brevo and Aura if you want followers Followers, in my opinion, are still going to come from having one singular primary niche on your Instagram account. But if you just want views, if you want virality, if you want reach, if you want to get your content, get your product in front of more people, you don't necessarily need to stick to one kind of post to say it as simply as I possibly can. If you want more followers, stick to one niche. If you just want more views and engagement, you don't have to stick to a niche anymore. The reason that having a clear niche or a clear primary topic for your content is is still going to be important in 2026 for gaining followers is because that's still human nature. That's still what we look for. If we see a great video, a great pizza review and we click on your profile and there's no other pizza reviews, but that's what we're into. We're into pizza content. Well then we're not going to follow you. Of course if the opposite is true, if we click on your profile and there are tons of other pizza reviews and that's what we want to see more of, then we are more likely to follow you. And I want to make sure we're clear that followers aren't totally worthless. Having a follower, having a subscriber does still increase the likelihood that that person sees your post, but it just isn't weighted as heavily as it used to. Prediction number four for social media in 2026 is that challenges and series are going to be everywhere. For example, personal challenges like this one guy who I follow on Instagram who was challenging himself to do 1 million pushups and he did it over the course of like nine years and now he's challenged himself to do 1 million pull and he's invited all of social media to follow along with his journey as he documents how many pull ups or pushups he's doing each and every day. Another example of personal challenges that I've seen having a lot of success on Both Instagram and TikTok is people doing certain things based off of their screen time or their social media time from the day before. I saw one guy who's doing a challenge that is stroll through what you scroll through. Really catchy name. So basically, however many hours he scrolled the day before, that's how many hours he's going to stroll or walk the next day. I saw another person whose goal was to do something creative for as many minutes as they spent on their phone the day before. So if they spent an hour and 43 minutes on their phone the next day they would spend an hour and 43 minutes writing a song or painting or journaling. Another example is follow based challenges. Gage is a guy who I've posted about on my Instagram before, who is running one mile for every follower that he gains. Now he's gained millions of followers across YouTube, Instagram and TikTok. And so he's doing his best. He's running about four miles a day. He's lost a ton of weight, like I think almost £100, which is so flipping awesome. I'll link him up down in the show notes below. But again, it's an example where you are kind of gamifying the follow. You're encouraging people to follow not just because they're interested in your journey, but so they can literally partake in your journey because their follow is worth something. Their follow in Gage's case is equivalent to one additional mile that he has to run. And then the final example that I have for you is group challenges where multiple people are going to plan out. Maybe they're gonna get together and set the world record for the most people jump roping in a park at one time, or there's going to be a group of people who are going to digitally plan to all do the same thing on the Same day, I've started to see this style of content really pick up steam towards the end of 2025, and I think that it's really going to grow in popularity and boom in 2026. So I want you to pause right now and think what sort of challenge for myself based off my niche. If you're a recipe creator, then maybe your challenge is going to be making one recipe every single day that's recommended by your followers. Or maybe let's say you are a relationship therapist and for every follower that you gain, you are going to kiss your wife for one second the next day. So if you gain 72 followers, then the next day you have to kiss your wife for a minute and 12 seconds. I saw a guy who was doing a similar version of this. He was dancing one second for every follower that he gained. And some of the days he was gaining thousands of followers, which meant that he was dancing for quite a while. Social media prediction number five is specific to Instagram, and I think we're going to see some big changes to the Instagram profile. In 2025, we saw some major changes take place to the entire layout of Instagram as a whole, with the reorganization of where the buttons are specifically in the bottom menu. But I believe that in 2026, we're going to see some major layout changes and hopefully simplifications to the Instagram profile. One thing that I think is going to happen is there's going to be a change with the highlights. I don't know if highlights are going to be totally taken away. My guess is that they might be moved to a new tab in the profile, similar to how you have the main home feed, the Reels tab, the tagged tab, the Repost tab. I could see them giving us a specific tab for your highlights. I could also just see them, like I said, totally getting rid of highlights. Because the reality is most people are not watching highlights. Most highlights get very little views once they're actually made into a highlight, with rare exceptions. And so I know some people absolutely love them. But as a whole, I think most people just don't really use or think about Instagram story highlights. Additionally, another major change that could take place on the Instagram profile is one that they've already been testing and working on, and that's replacing the number of people you follow with a new category called friends. And friends, by Instagram's definition, is basically mutuals. People who you follow and they follow you back. So even though you might follow 4,000 people, you might only have 800 friends again, 800 people who you follow, and they also follow you back. And like I mentioned, Instagram has been testing making this change, and so I could see that take place and actually be implemented as a permanent change in 2026. Prediction number six also relates to Instagram, and it's as much of a recommendation as it is a prediction, and that is that we're going to see more carousels on Instagram, and in 2026, the recommendation post more carousels on your Instagram. According to a Metricool study that came out at the end of 2025, carousels are getting more engagement and more reach to your followers than reels. And we're not talking like minuscule amounts. We're seeing significantly more reach to followers and significantly higher engagement on carousels, regardless of how many followers you have. And I believe the reason for this is that so many people went all in on reels and they learned reels, they learned how to make reels more efficiently, they learned the B roll reel thing, and so they're just pumping out reels. And carousels feel really daunting. Carousels feel really stale. People feel like, oh, it's gonna take so much time, it's going to be so boring, it's going to be so cumbersome to create carousels, when in many cases, carousels can actually be quicker and easier than reels. I recently posted two YouTube videos with carousel ideas. Each of them has eight viral carousel ideas. And I walk you through how to create each of them and quickly and easily. And so I believe that in 2026, we're going to see a resurgence of carousels. I hope that there's going to be more people posting more carousels, because I know I oftentimes enjoy swiping through a carousel more than watching a reel. And so definitely check out those previous episodes that I already uploaded. And if nothing else, just start experimenting with carousels in the new year. Prediction number seven is that we're going to see a really exacerbated, growing dividend between the best content creators on social media and everyone else. Now, I did an entire episode about this a few weeks ago where I broke down how social media has changed. And I essentially made the argument that while the playing field is more level than it's ever been, it's also more crowded than it's ever been. Competition is at an all time high, and now you and your reels are expected to compete with people who are literal Hollywood cinematographers. People who work on music videos and Hollywood films are now making reels and your reels are expected to compete with them. And most people are trying to compete with these professional editors, and they're trying to, you know, add a little transition here and add a little effect there and do a little bit of editing there, and they're trying to sprinkle these little things on, when in reality, adding a couple more dashes of salt to your recipe is not going to make you Gordon Ramsay. And so the thesis of my argument in that video was to embrace the raw, authentic, imperfect content, to stop trying to use little gimmicky editing techniques. Unless you want to go all in. If you want to go all in to be a professional editor, you want to make cinematic content. I saw one of my friends recently who is a professional content creator, who is a cinematic style creator. He was literally having his friends film him from the top of buildings in New York City, zooming in as he's down on the street for his hook. Like, unless you want to go to that level, go to the opposite end of the spectrum, go to the end of the spectrum where you embrace the FaceTime content, where you embrace no editing, no filter, no makeup, where you're just talking off the cuff without a script or without any gimmicks. And something that is so funny that I hear from pretty much every creator and business owner is this kind of contradiction. And it's on one hand, they're tired of the perfect over elid fake content that they're seeing, the content that looks so polished and so refined that it could be a Hollywood film. And yet, on the other hand, at the exact same time, they think that their content needs to be prettier. They think that their content needs to be more polished and more refined and more ellid. And I simply believe that trying to find the perfect level of erling is impossible. There's no such thing as a perfect amount of ehling. And so you end up either over edling over polishing in an attempt to be professional or cinematic, or you just end up with these, like, gimmicky little edits and like smoke transitions and like laser lightning bolts and really obnoxious closed captions. So again, my prediction and kind of my hope for 2026 is that more people are going to embrace raw, real, imperfect content, and they're going to stop fretting and spending so much time, energy and effort editing their content, especially with the gimmicky style editing. And this directly segues me into my eighth and final prediction, which is specific to Instagram. I believe we're going to see the rise of FaceTime content on Instagram FaceTime content has become the norm. It has become what is popular over on TikTok. And when I say FaceTime content, I mean the kind of content where you feel like you're a friend being FaceTimed by another friend. People are yapping, they're more long winded, they're telling stories, they're not using over the top hooks. Like, if you want to grow on Instagram, here are three things you need to stop doing if you want to become a better baker. Watch till the end of this video. They're not doing that on TikTok, they're just talking the way we talk to our friends. And the TikTok algorithm has really catered to this style of content. It has rewarded people who have a long watch time and who can get people hooked in to actually sticking around for the entire video. TikTok rewards people that post content longer than one minute. Instagram. However, this hasn't been the case. Instead, Instagram's algorithm prioritizes interactions more than just watch time or view duration. So while Instagram definitely does want people to watch your whole video and they care how long you're hooking people in for, they weight likes and shares and comments a lot more heavily. I believe that in 2026 the Instagram algorithm is going to evolve to prioritize content that is a little bit longer. I believe it's going to weight things like watch time and view duration more heavily than it has in the past. This doesn't mean that engagement isn't going to matter. This doesn't mean that interactions are going to be worthless. This doesn't mean that likes and shares are no longer the top dog. It simply means that making a longer video that people watch for longer is going to be more valuable than it has been in the past. And like I said, I believe that the way that this is going to be achieved is not through posting really professional, polished, three minute long reels. I believe it's going to be achieved through FaceTime content, through yapping, through storytelling, through sharing authentically what you're going through, your challenges, your triumphs, your ideas, your struggles, talking about those things and really focusing on documentation rather than creation. I want to hear from you though. This is your turn. Let me know. Am I off my rocker? Am I absolutely wrong? Do you agree? Do you disagree? What predictions do you have? What predictions of mine do you disagree with? What predictions of mine do you think are absolutely going to take place? So thank you for continuing to support me and this channel. We have some big plans for 2026. Thank you for being here. And as always, happy networking.