The Social Playbook Has Changed. Here's What's Actually Working in 2026.

If your social strategy is still built around chasing reach and racking up likes, you might be playing by rules that no longer apply. That was the central message from Kitty, Director of Creative Strategy, and Tanya, Director of Communications at The Influence Agency, during a recent SocialNext Marketing Alliance webinar. The trends they unpacked are ones every Canadian marketer should be paying attention to heading into Q2.

Here's what they covered.

The Scoreboard Has Changed

Not that long ago, the social media playbook was pretty straightforward: get as many eyes as possible, go broad, keep everything polished, and chase the algorithm. Views and likes were the metrics that mattered.

That's no longer the case. According to The Influence Agency, audiences have grown smarter, more skeptical, and more deliberate with both their money and their attention. They're not passively scrolling anymore. They're actively curating what they consume.

The new metrics to watch? Saves, shares, and return visits. The question brands need to be asking isn't "did they see it?" It's "did they actually do something with it?"

Every trend covered in the webinar traces back to this shift.

Carousels Are Having a Moment, and It's Not Random

When The Influence Agency asked attendees what content format is performing best right now, the answer was carousels. The reason comes down to control.

Unlike a video that autoplays at its own pace, a carousel lets the viewer swipe on their own terms, stop when something grabs them, go back, and zoom in. That sense of control is powerful. When someone swipes through multiple slides, they're sending a strong signal to the algorithm that the content is worth their time.

But there's a catch. Stringing images together isn't enough. The best carousels tell a story: slide one hooks you in, the middle delivers value, and the final frame gives you something to do or think about. As Kitty put it, "A video can grab attention, but a carousel holds it."

Newsletters and Long-Form Audio Are Back in a Big Way

It might surprise some marketers to hear that newsletters, Substacks, and long-form audio are among the fastest-growing content formats right now. But the reason makes sense: people are exhausted by the noise.

While brands compete for the same real estate on Reels and trend-chase with the same audio clips, formats like newsletters offer something increasingly rare: depth. Audiences aren't stumbling across this content. They're actively subscribing to it. That opt-in relationship builds a level of trust that's hard to replicate on a social feed.

The takeaway from The Influence Agency: long-form content creates space for nuance, and nuance builds trust. You don't need to abandon Instagram or TikTok, but there's real appetite right now for brands that have something substantive to say.

The Shift from Hype to Help

Consumer behaviour has meaningfully shifted. We've largely moved out of the "little treat" era where impulse buying was driven by a 15-second TikTok. People are being deliberate, and they want to understand why they should trust a brand, not just why they should buy from it.

The Influence Agency is consistently seeing value-led content outperform hype-driven content. In-depth reviews, honest product comparisons, practical how-to content: these are landing far better than promotional messaging built on urgency. As Tanya put it, "Brands that are building genuine trust right now are the ones that are going to outlast the viral moments."

@blivxx Some @Staples ♬ original sound - 🦷✨oblivion✨🦷

Your Employees Are Your Best Kept Secret

One of the most underutilized opportunities in marketing right now is employee-generated content. The Influence Agency pointed to two recent examples: the A&W CEO who jumped on the McDonald's CEO moment from a distinctly Canadian angle, and the “Staples Baddie," an employee who went viral simply by talking about the brand with genuine enthusiasm.

What made both work wasn't a big production budget. It was permission. Audiences are craving the real humans behind the logo, people who actually work there and believe in what they're selling. As The Influence Agency put it: give your team a brief, give them a platform, and give them permission. The content and the metrics will follow.

Performance UGC: The Sweet Spot Between Organic and Paid

The Influence Agency sees this pattern constantly: a brand spends significant money on a beautifully produced ad, and then an iPhone video edited in CapCut by a UGC creator completely outperforms it in both organic and paid placements.

The reason is what they call "ad radar." The second something looks too polished or too branded, audiences scroll away. Content made by a real person makes them stop.

Performance UGC sits in the sweet spot: it looks organic but is built with intention. There's a clear hook, a reason to care, and a call to action. It's also highly flexible. Brands can test different hooks against the same video body without commissioning new content from scratch. For teams working with lean creative budgets, it's one of the highest-leverage formats available right now.

Your Community Is Already Writing Your Brief

Some of the best campaigns The Influence Agency has seen recently didn't start in a boardroom. They started in comment sections and Reddit threads. One example they shared: a brand that pulled real Reddit reviews of their product, including the mixed and negative ones, and made them the centrepiece of a digital-out-of-home campaign in New York. The transparency landed. In an era where audiences are craving authenticity, honesty outperforms hype.

The new campaign process The Influence Agency recommends: listen to your community first, identify the tension or unmet need, brief your team around that insight, and amplify through social and creators. Your audience is often already telling you exactly what they need. The bigger question is whether you're paying attention.

AI as an Amplifier, Not a Replacement

The Influence Agency was clear on their take: AI isn't replacing your creative team. It's removing the parts of the job that slow it down.

Repurposing a long-form webinar into short clips. Testing different hooks on the same piece of content. Drafting captions. Tools like Opus Clip are helping teams reclaim time that used to get eaten up in execution, so the humans on the team can focus on what AI still can't do well: genuine cultural insight, brand nuance, and real community relationships. "AI speeds up the execution," said Tanya. "Your team can focus on the stronger ideas and better storytelling."

Three Things to Take Into Q2

And their three takeaways worth holding onto heading into the rest of the year?

Create for the save, not the scroll. Stop optimizing for how many people see your content. Start asking whether it's worth saving or sharing in a private group chat. That's the new metric.

Authenticity isn't a trend. It's the strategy. Employee-generated content, performance UGC, social listening: they all point to the same truth. Real voices beat polished content, especially in an era of AI-generated noise.

Automate the work. Humanize the brand. Let AI handle execution. Save your team's energy for the cultural nuance, the tone, and the community relationships that make a brand worth following in the first place.

Kitty and Tanya presented as part of the SocialNext Marketing Alliance's weekly Wednesday webinar series. Connect with The Influence Agency on LinkedIn or check out their annual trends report at theinfluenceagency.com.