The platform 92% of social marketers consider a priority

Part one of the Very Online Survey results.

A few weeks ago we sent out the Very Online Survey with an aim to gather results on what it’s really like to work in social media right now. We received over 825 responses from social media professionals across industries—ranging from those working on big and small accounts alike. Today we’re sharing part one of the results. We’ll be covering topics like:

• Which type of post is working best on brand accounts right now

• The top three priority platforms (we were surprised by number two!)

• 15 brand accounts that exemplify great social

• The platform 32.5% of social marketers think is the hardest to crack

• Plus lots more!

Okay, let’s get into it.

- Rachel Karten and Mitch Goldstein

Platform Playbook

In this section we’ll dive into all of the insights around the platforms we post on.

92% of social media marketers consider Instagram a priority platform

Instagram remains the frontrunner priority platform (92%) for most social marketers, but a perhaps surprising second place: LinkedIn (52%) beat out TikTok by 2%. We’ve seen LinkedIn on the rise for the last year (recession indicator?) and more and more brands are finding creative ways to show up on the platform like Apple TV+ creating an account for Lumon Industries, Notion’s big influencer push, and Figma’s educational content. Plus we saw the platform’s impact when this post from Duolingo went viral and potentially changed the trajectory of the brand. This will be an interesting graph to track over time.

Brands are leaving Twitter for good

36% of respondents have launched a new brand account on a new platform in the last six months, with the most common new platform being Bluesky. That tracks given that of the 59% of social pros who reported moving brand accounts away from a platform this year, the most common answer was X/Twitter due to brand safety, ROI, and performance concerns. “Elon” was mentioned 29 times in responses in this section.

Other platforms brands are joining include TikTok, YouTube, and Threads. Substack was only mentioned 21 times, but I’d almost guarantee that answer would be higher if we sent out the survey today.

32.5% of social marketers say they have trouble cracking TikTok

Success on TikTok remains elusive, with 32.5% of respondents ranking it the hardest platform to crack right now. Anecdotally, brands seem to have a tough time maintaining traction on the platform, often referring to themselves in “TikTok Jail”. Sure, there are viral blips but creating a cohesive, always-engaging strategy is not easy. Plus the pressure to stay on (or, ideally, ahead of) trends makes it a complicated medium for brands to find measurable success on.

60% of social marketers would choose Instagram if they could only post on one platform for the rest of the year

Perhaps it is that struggle to crack TikTok that led almost 60% of our survey respondents to opt towards Instagram if they had to limit themselves to one platform for the rest of the year. An important factor worth weighing is the flexibility of the platform—with Stories, Reels, carousels, DMs, Broadcast Channels, and static image posts the platform allows creativity to come through across different formats and hit different KPIs compared to TikTok or LinkedIn. Sure, social marketers might complain about Instagram (a lot), but it’s clear the platform plays a big role in the overall brand social ecosystem.

Post Performance

In this section we’ll take a look at the post formats and strategies that are driving results.

Carousels work

Short-form video (3:00 or less) continues to be the dominant format for brand social right now, with 66.9% of respondents marking the format as a top performer. However, it looks like 2025 might be the year of the Carousel post, with 70.3% of respondents saying they are a best performer, eking out short-form video. You can see examples of high performing carousels here, here, and here.

Beyond format, respondents pointed towards memes, relatable posts, editorialized content, serialized video formats, and human-led informational content as what’s working on their brand accounts right now. “Educational” was mentioned 31 times, “humor” was mentioned 28 times, “collab posts” were mentioned 15 times, and “rage bait” was mentioned twice.

Most social professionals look at other accounts for inspiration

While keeping up with trends is part of the job, our survey shows that we’re also keeping tabs on other brand accounts too. From gut checks on what memes are relevant to ensuring we’re differentiating our messaging, most social media professionals are keeping an eye on other brands’ channels as much as their own.

We asked what brand you think exemplifies “great social”, these were the top 15 responses…

1. Duolingo

2. Dunkin’

3. MERIT

4. National Park Service

5. LOEWE

6. BÉIS

7. SSENSE

8. Morning Brew

9. Glossier

10. Chipotle

11. Topicals

12. rhode

13. Nuuly

14. Fishwife

15. Away

Somewhat unsurprisingly, the brands social professionals think are doing it the best are ones you’ve likely heard of before. Duolingo continues to dominate marketing headlines and the National Park Service has a great sense of humor. It’s interesting to note that none of the top 15 brands are B2B—although honorary shoutout to Semrush, a SaaS platform that ranked 17th. Finally, it’s great to see Morning Brew mentioned here. There are plenty more established news and media companies with way more resources that could have taken their slot, but it’s a testament to how much that team prioritizes social-first storytelling.

If you want to learn more about the people behind these brands, Link in Bio has interviewed a handful. You can find interviews with Duolingo, MERIT, National Park Service, Morning Brew, Away, and Topicals.

Trends aren’t everything

All of that being said, most respondents skewed away from creating content solely focused on memes or trending moments. Social media management is a business, after all, and not all trends or memes are going to help achieve business goals or other metrics you may be held up against.

Vibe Check

In this section we’ll cover how social media marketers are feeling right now.

51% of respondents feel they are worse off professionally when compared to last year

With an average rating of 4.4 out of 10, most respondents (51%) feel that they are worse off professionally compared to last year. Only 7.7% of respondents answered this question with an 8 or higher, while 16.6% answered with a 2 or lower. Basically, everyone is pretty “meh” about how they’re feeling in their job right now.

The word “overwhelmed” was mentioned over 80 times

Overwhelmed, exhausted, tired, and burnout were the most common sentiments shared when we asked to describe how your teams are feeling.

When discussing challenges, responses ranged from issues with creative blocks to dealing with red tape approval processes, getting client approvals for more envelope-pushing ideas, and managing one’s time most effectively. We heard from a lot of you that you’re seeing increased and larger asks from you and your teams without an increase in resources to match.

“Brands are drowning in a sea of sameness”

We gave respondents an option to leave us a voicemail with how they are feeling about the state of the industry. Here’s one social marketer’s take.

Social media teams are losing resources and budget

We hear all of the time how important social media is becoming within the wider world of marketing—yet budgets and resources haven’t quite caught up. While 61% of respondents reported changes to their budgets and resources, 58% of those said it was a decrease rather than an increase. Between tariffs and economic uncertainty, it might just be a general downward trend across all industries—but it’s something to keep an eye on.

We all need to touch grass

A few weeks ago, we shared that the average screen time reported was 7.4 hours a day. We got some more responses since then and the average has inched down to 7.33 hours a day of screen time. Look, we’ll take it. We got some submissions from people who average even more than that, to which we recommend touching some grass and/or throwing your phone into the sea, and we also saw responses of an hour or less per day, of which we are very jealous.

Final Thoughts

We closed the survey asking social media professionals what they think is holding them back from making the type of content they feel in their gut would do really well. The most common response we got was a lack of time. Whether it's a feeling of constant crunch, or pressure to get posts out the door, or simply being spread too thin managing multiple channels and accounts—social media managers simply don’t have enough time in the working day to do the things they think could make their work a lot better.

Another theme was a lack of resources, both in budget or in headcount, especially in regards to making video content. Not having dedicated creative staff to help write, produce, and edit videos when the expectations are high for quality and timeliness is very relatable. The word “budget” was mentioned over 80 times in this section.

The other common refrain: leadership still just doesn’t “get it” when it comes to social media. Brand marketing leaders can be very risk averse, and many responses mentioned getting conflicting messages when it comes to how the brand should be showing up on social versus how the brand wants to be perceived overall.

We also gave some space for venting, given the state of the world the last few months—on top of the constant churn of the industry. Themes included the challenges of being “too online,” concerns about mental health having to face some of the less savory sides of the web for work, and whether or not AI is coming for all of our jobs. You know, water cooler talk. We hope that sharing the results of this survey helps reinforce that you aren’t alone in these feelings. [A note from Mitch: having seen first-hand the community and support network that has arisen around this newsletter in the Discord is proof of concept enough that your peers are able and willing to lend a hand, share advice, or be a sounding board. Even if they don’t work directly alongside you, there is a very caring community of smart social media professionals out there!]

We’ll have more to share from the survey soon, including a breakdown of all the gear that fellow social industry folks are using, the software making jobs easier, how your peers are (or aren’t) using AI in their work, and how much brands are spending on influencer marketing. Until then, if you have any questions about the results we’ve shared so far, please don’t hesitate to reach out and ask!

I want to quickly thank Mitch Goldstein, who designed, ran, and analyzed this survey. We’ve now worked on a handful of projects together for Link in Bio, and I’m so grateful for his knowledge. His understanding of this industry and ability to translate data into useful insights made today’s newsletter what it is.

Finally, you can support free resources like this one with a paid Link in Bio subscription!

It’s likely an educational expense at your company—here’s a template for you to use when asking your manager.