COMMUNICATING MORE DOESN’T MEAN COMMUNICATING BETTER. SOCIAL MEDIA MUST BE USED WITH INTELLIGENCE

In 2024 I wrote an article starting from some reflections by Seth Godin on the future of marketing, observing how authenticity, quality and long-term strategies would end up counting more and more compared to the constant chase for visibility.

Rereading it today, I realize that reasoning still holds, although there is one thing I would say differently: I don’t believe at all that marketing should move away from social media. On the contrary, it has to be there, because they are now part of the way we communicate. But it has to learn to be there better.

In the meantime, the amount of material put into circulation every day has changed too. Artificial intelligence has made it even easier to produce content and this, inevitably, has raised the level of noise. Today making a text, an image or a video takes far less time; managing instead to create something that is remembered, that has personality and doesn’t look like a thousand other things seen the same day has become much harder.

Being present, therefore, is not enough. Nor is publishing continuously, chasing the format of the moment or adapting every time to the algorithm. You need to have something to say, to know how to say it and, above all, to understand when it is really worth doing so, because every piece of content we put into circulation contributes, for better or worse, to the overall perception of a person, a business or a brand.

Using social media intelligently means, above all, not treating them as a shop window to fill every day, but as a space in which what we publish inevitably ends up telling who we are. And frequenting them with culture means giving communication a depth that goes beyond the immediate reaction, without confusing the speed of the medium with the superficiality of the content.

Audiences today are exposed to an enormous amount of messages and quickly develop a capacity for selection. They recognize what is built only to attract attention, just as they recognize when behind a piece of content there is a voice, a quality and a vision.

Seth Godin understood long ago that the most effective marketing is not the one that continuously interrupts people, but the one that manages to earn their attention. Today this concept is even more important, because attention is not won by constantly turning up the volume of communication: it is won by becoming truly interesting.

In my work I have always considered outreach and popularization an essential part of building an image, because communicating doesn’t just mean spreading content, but qualifying what you represent, enriching it with meaning and making it recognizable over time.

That is why I don’t believe the future of marketing lies outside social media. I believe rather that it lies inside social media, but with a different way of inhabiting them: more aware, more selective and also more cultured.

Social media remain extraordinary tools, provided that behind the speed of the technology there continue to be thought, sensitivity and culture.