5 Social Media Strategies for Brand Marketers in 2026

Write this down: edutainment. Education meets entertainment.

People don't want to be sold to. They want to be engaged. When someone opens a social app, they're not hunting for ads — they're trying to disconnect, learn something, or be inspired or entertained.

If you can combine inspiration + education + entertainment in a single post, you've won half the battle. If you're just selling, you've lost them — that's exactly why your reach is so low.

For B2B brands: teach your audience how to use your tools and services to make more money and reach more people. Not vague "thought leadership" — concrete how-tos.

For consumer brands: teach. When I led social media for Winn-Dixie supermarkets years ago, we used the platforms to publish recipes, shopping lists, and budget-meal guides. We weren't selling. We were teaching. The buying followed naturally.

The shift for 2026 brand marketers: stop posting sales-based content. Start mixing in genuine education. Make it entertaining. The reach, the shares, and the buys all follow.

Somewhere along the line, marketers got twisted by the phrase "content is king." It's exhausting to hear it at every conference. Yes, content matters. Content is oxygen for a brand online.

But without community, you have nothing.

If people aren't paying attention to your content, you're wasting time. That's why every DM that comes in deserves a response. Every person engaging with your posts deserves acknowledgement. Every super fan deserves to be identified and rewarded.

Most brand marketers report vanity metrics — likes, shares, comments — to their executives. The metrics that actually matter: Who are our most engaged fans? What are they talking about? What are we doing for them?

Reward them. Send them something. Give them a free month, 90 days, an exclusive event invite. Create incentives that deepen the relationship.

And critically — pay attention to what your community is talking about. Brands treat social as a one-way broadcast channel. Follow the people who follow you. Drop into their conversations. When Marriott follows a customer and starts engaging when they ask for travel tips, that customer remembers it for life.

People buy from people. People trust people. People follow people. Brands that join the conversation — not just broadcast at it — become real communities.

In 2026, your brand needs to cast a wider net.

Stop thinking of yourself as a brand on Facebook. Start thinking of yourself as a media company that happens to sell a product.

Have a podcast. Have a newsletter. Have a YouTube series. If you don't have internal resources, hire content creators who can embody your brand and live the values you want to project.

In The End of Marketing, I predicted that at some point Whole Foods would essentially become a roster of health-and-wellness content creators, and Nike would transition from "a check on sneakers" to a content brand teaching lifestyle and fitness. We're getting closer.

Apply the model to your business: your company should have a podcast — figure out the voice and the angle. Your company should have an email newsletter — daily, weekly, or monthly, built around value, not promotions. Your company should have a YouTube series or a recurring video format. Owned video beats rented social.

When you operate like a media company, you stop being just a brand. You become a presence. People listen to you at the gym, in the car, on flights. That's the halo effect that drives follows, views, and purchases over 12 months.

Here's what those "repeatable systems" look like in practice. In this short Adobe Express tutorial, I walk through the 3-feature workflow that lets brand teams ship on-brand content at scale — without dragging your design team into every post.

Brand Kit once. Template forever. Schedule across every channel. That's how a brand stops thinking like a brand and starts operating like a media company — without burning out the team or sacrificing visual consistency.