Three Key Takeaways from Social Media Marketing World 2025

by Gabriel Muñoz

Recently, Double Forte team members attended Social Media Examiner’s annual Social Media Marketing World 2025 conference in San Diego. The three-day event is one of the industry’s largest conferences, featuring more than 50 sessions with top creators and marketing leaders discussing the hottest social media trends, tips and tricks.

Here are a few key takeaways from this year’s event:

Your communication style with an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot will impact your results.

How to Build the Foundational AI Skills Every Marketer Needs by Nicole Leffer

AI chatbots have increased in popularity ever since their mainstream adoption in 2022, specifically ChatGPT, a trained model created by OpenAI that revolutionized the industry and the world. According to a 2024 Pew Research Center survey, nearly one-fourth of US adults reported using the chatbot at least once. While many users prioritize “prompt generation”, Nicole Leffer, an AI advisor, believes many are not also considering how to be respectful and polite when inputting prompts and how these considerations make a noticeable difference in their outputs. Leffer not only recommends including “please” and “thank you” in prompts but also telling the chatbot to “take its time.” She also shared that adding emotional motivation, like “this is vital to my career,” to a prompt will improve the quality of the chatbot’s responses.

In today’s digital marketing world, there are three groups you must win over to be successful: customers, search engines and AI.

Marketing’s Most Wanted: Building an Outlaw Brand in a Play-It-Safe World by Marcus Sheridan

For the last twenty years, marketers have needed to focus their attention on two different groups: customers and search engines. Now, with AI going mainstream, marketers must figure out how to get on the “good side” of these chatbots, too. According to Marcus Sheridan, a communications expert and author of They Ask, You Answer, there are a few ways today’s marketers can be a trusted and reliable brand that customers, search engines and even AI chatbots can look to. One key way is to humanize your business in ways others will not. Consumers value human connection, so if you can insert a face or human interaction into a post (especially if competitors are not), do that. A great example is our client Torani, a global flavor company, which often showcases its team members on Instagram in fun behind-the-scenes or Q&A Reels, outside their usual product-focused content slate. Also, Sheridan recommends showing what other businesses are unwilling to show in your space. For example, many businesses shy away from listing the price of a service on a website, fearing consumers might get sticker shock. However, Sheridan argues that this creates a frustrating experience for potential customers, leading them to search elsewhere. Sheridan recommends being as upfront and transparent as possible with pricing (even if it’s just a pricing estimator), which leads to a better customer experience and increases lead generation (300% increase according to Sheridan’s findings).

You don’t have to be big to win. Great content is king!

Your Next Million Views: Instagram Reels Techniques That Will Make You Go Viral by Michelle Gifford

Content is king, and this continues to be a key factor in finding success with Instagram Reels, especially as the algorithm consistently changes and more content than ever is being watched on the platform (almost 140 million Reels are played across Facebook and Instagram in a single minute). According to Michelle Gifford, a brand strategist, today’s creators should understand that Instagram’s algorithm has shifted from follower-driven to content-driven. This means the algorithm searches for information about each post, including engagement, the speed at which engagement occurs, and if the content is new compared to what the creator usually posts. This data is what the algorithm uses to determine whether the Reel gets pushed out to more audiences. Gifford also recommends that creators pay attention to watch time. A longer watch time is a proof point indicating that you’re delivering engaging content that users are engaged enough to sit all the way through. If it’s not, the content isn’t engaging enough, and you might need to pivot.

AI was the dominant discussion during this year’s Social Media Marketing World, but video content (with a human touch) is as important as ever. We’re interested to hear and see what exciting new developments next year’s conference brings (this time in Anaheim), and we’ll be back here reporting our findings!