Surviving the content-shredding online tornado

It used to be easier to think about organic social media.

You had your content on one side, your audience on the other, and a channel connecting the two.

I used to picture it like a bowling ball rolling down a lane towards a set of pins. You took aim, bowled, and chances are you’d hit something. Simplistic, sure, but not far off how social used to work.

Today, between your content and your audience sits something far more volatile: a dense, fast-moving information environment shaped by algorithms, competing content, platform incentives, and audience behaviour.

A better metaphor is now this: you’re still bowling the ball, but between you and the pins is a swirling, heaving, menacing tornado.

And every piece of content has no choice but to enter that environment. Some of it disappears instantly, shredded by the tornado on impact. Some of it, though - the stuff robust enough to survive contact - can get picked up, accelerated, and carried much further than expected.

Because while largely hostile, the environment is also full of amplifiers. A post gets shared into a private group, quoted in a newsletter, dropped into a Teams chat, picked up by a journalist, or screenshotted and reposted somewhere else entirely.

Which means your best content may well reach people through those pathways rather than directly from your own channels. You may not be the one delivering it, so what matters is that it holds together as it moves: that it makes sense out of context, sparks interest quickly, and carries enough weight to be passed on.

So what does that mean in practice?

First, more big, broad-interest, emotion-based stuff that does more than just tell people something.

Peter Field describes “fame” ads as emotional work that successfully inspires people to share or talk about it. Substitute content for ads and you have a useful definition of what tornado-ready social looks like.

Almost anything can fit that definition, so you’ll have to work out what version makes sense for you. But it’s worth being honest about how often our content really ticks those boxes.

And within that, worry less about who delivers it - as long as it survives and thrives in the updraft. Sometimes that might mean setting up something other people want to film, share, and talk about.

Second, fewer throwaway posts. If we know in our heart of hearts that something doesn’t stand a chance of thriving, then don’t publish it. The environment is too brutally competitive, and low-quality content trains our audience to ignore us.

Finally, use our data with intent - ruthlessly. Most organisations collect performance data, but the value comes from how it’s used. For me, three things matter - we need:

• the discipline to review our data regularly

• the honesty to accept what it shows

• the bravery to act on it

Patterns are usually clear. Some formats and topics consistently resonate, while others fall flat. Anything regularly falling into the bottom quartile of whatever our key metric is will likely be dragging overall performance down.

Ultimately, content moves through networks, not channels. But it still has to pass through that same messy environment first.

And in that environment, advantage sits with the brands and organisations creating content that can hold together under pressure - content with enough clarity, interest, and weight to be picked up, carried for a bit, and passed on.