This frustrates me every time I see it.
Execs get sold a bag of goods on social. They approve the budget, hand it off, and go back to their actual job. Meanwhile, their social team is filming the latest dance in the hallway.
You're sitting in a room talking headcount, sales targets and process improvements. Meanwhile it feels like your social team is doing a group art project.
This is your problem. Not theirs.
You bought into "social first." You passed the reins to a team because you assumed they had the business context to run with it. They don't. Not because they're bad at their jobs. Because nobody told them what winning looks like.
Two reasons it's broken:
You never set clear expectations
Your team has gone off the advertising deep end and forgotten the brand
Expectations first.
Your job as the exec is to set the initiatives each quarter and get everyone rowing in the same direction. Social has to know how it supports sales, product launches, and pipeline. When a social team feels siloed, they do what they think is best. That almost always means chasing vanity metrics and calling it a strategy.
I see this play out the same way every time. The social team posts what performed last month. Leadership asks what happened this quarter. The team pulls impressions and engagement. The exec nods and moves on because nobody wants to admit they don't actually know if any of it worked.
That's not a team problem. That's a leadership vacuum. I've sat across from CMOs at $50M companies who couldn't answer basic questions about what their social program was actually driving.
If you haven't told your social team what business outcome their content is tied to, they will fill that vacuum with whatever makes the dashboard look good. Every time.
Now the bigger issue.
Your social team doesn't know the difference between advertising and branding. So they optimize for what they can measure. What they can measure is attention.
Advertising gets eyeballs. Branding gets people to buy.
Those are not the same job. Confusing them is why your social feels busy and your pipeline feels empty.
Branding is the association a customer forms between a desire they already have and your product as the answer. McDonald's doesn't own burgers. They own the feeling you get when you're hungry and don't want to think about it. So when that craving hits, your brain skips Burger King entirely. That's not luck. That's a brand that knows which desire it owns.
Advertising put McDonald's in front of you. Branding is why you pulled into the drive-through.
If you sell B2B supply chain software, you don't own "logistics tracking." You own the feeling of a VP of operations who can finally sleep through the night because shipments aren't going to blow up. Your content should trigger that specific relief. Not a trending audio clip.
Most social teams have never been given that answer about their own company. What desire do we own? What's the feeling a customer should have when they think of us? Nobody told them. So they post. They react. They chase the algorithm. The numbers look fine. The pipeline doesn't move.
That's the Commodity Content Trap. Getting seen without building association. Impressions that don't move anyone closer to buying.
Here's the test I'd run on your team this week.
Pull up your last 30 days of content. For each post, ask one question: does this connect what we sell to something a customer actually wants?
If you can't answer yes, you're running ads disguised as brand content. That's expensive, and most teams don't realize they're doing it.
The fix isn't more content. It isn't a new agency. It isn't hiring a head of social. The fix is answering two questions at the executive level and then handing those answers to your team.
What business outcomes is social responsible for driving this quarter?
What is the specific customer desire our brand owns?
If you can answer both in one sentence each, your team has something to build against. If you can't, no amount of posting will save the program. You'll just keep paying for impressions and wondering why the pipeline looks the same.
Fix the expectations. Then teach the team the difference between advertising and branding.
In that order.
Thanks for reading today!
Jordan
P.S. If you want to connect on social media, where I share tips throughout the week, follow me on Linkedin.