Influence to Authenticity, Why Social is changing.

Influencer marketing isn’t dead—but its impact is. 

In this episode of Marketing Unzipped, Rob explores why today's audiences are rejecting polished, high-budget influencer campaigns in favour of something far more powerful: authenticity.

You’ll discover how the shift toward user-generated content, micro-communities, and personal brands is reshaping how we connect online. From emotional storytelling to trust-driven signals, this episode breaks down exactly what it takes to stay relevant in a noisy digital world.

👥 Learn how to:

• Build real community beyond vanity metrics
• Make your customers the hero with UGC
• Turn your personal brand into your biggest marketing asset
• Apply behavioural science to create magnetic marketing moments

Whether you're a founder, marketer or content creator, this episode gives you the strategies to thrive in a more human, less polished marketing era.

🎧 Listen now and rethink your approach to social.

Chapters

00:00 – The Decline of Influencer Marketing
02:10 – The Shift Towards Authenticity
07:03 – Building Communities and User-Generated Content
14:15 – The Power of Personal Branding
20:20 – Strategies for Modern Marketing
28:04 – The Future of Social Media Marketing

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Transcript

Rob Curtis (00:14.198)
Influencer marketing is dying. Not in terms of budgets or visibility, but in trust. Those glossy overproduced campaigns that once ruled our feeds are falling absolutely flat. Audiences just aren't buying that lifestyle anymore. They're looking for something real, something relatable, something that just doesn't scream This was built with a million pound budget. And in today's episode, we're talking about the marketing shift that you can't ignore.

Rob Curtis (00:52.108)
Welcome to Marketing Unzipped, the show where we unravel those modern marketing trends and stitch them all back together with insights you can actually use. I'm Rob Curtis and today we're diving into this evolutionary area and...

Rob Curtis (01:21.58)
Welcome to Marketing Unzipped, the show where we unravel these marketing mo-

Rob Curtis (01:29.366)
Welcome to Marketing Unzipped, the show where we unravel modern marketing trends and stitch them back together with insights that you can actually use. I'm Rob Curtis and today we're diving into the evolution of social media marketing. Where authenticity is currency, community is your new media channel and the personal brand might just outshine the corporate.

So we'll break down why traditional influencer marketing is losing its edge, how micro communities and user generated content are reshaping engagement, and why now is the time to invest in personal branding, whether you're running a company or you're building one.

You'll hear some insights backed by recent studies, practical steps every brand can take, and a deep dive into what's driving the shift beneath the surface.

Rob Curtis (02:22.104)
Social media just, it hasn't stood still. It's evolved and it moves so fast. Once upon a time, if you wanted to get your brand in front of people, you could just go and pay an influencer. Someone with a perfectly curated feed, half a million followers and a steady stream of sponsored content. They held the keys to visibility and for a while it worked.

But over time, something started to shift. Audiences got far smarter, and they began spotting the patterns, the affiliate links, the generic captions, the barely veiled product placements. Trust started to completely erode, and suddenly, the high follower count didn't mean high impact.

We saw a growing appetite for content that just felt less like advertising and more like conversation, less polished, more personal, less aspirational, just more attainable. And this wasn't a generational thing. It was a behavioral one. And the platforms, we've all seen how they've evolved, TikTok, Instagram, Reels, and even LinkedIn.

They began favoriting content that looked native, not branded. They felt spontaneous, not scripted. And creators, especially smaller ones, have began to build powerful communities and relationships. Engagement rates have begun to soar, not because the content was perfect, but because it was honest. And in that space, something important happened. Authenticity became a marketing strategy.

Brands that are used to shout from a distance are now trying to get closer, building relationships, not just reach. Listening instead of just broadcasting. Showing up as people, not just the logo. This shift isn't subtle, it's foundational and it's reshaping how successful brands and successful people do show up online.

Rob Curtis (04:21.806)
So let's anchor this shift in reality because it's easy to say authenticity matters. But what does the data actually show?

Rob Curtis (04:32.344)
So let's anchor this shift in reality because it's easy to say authenticity matters, but what does the data actually show?

According to a 2024 influencer marketing report, it surveyed over 2000 customers or

Let's anchor this shift in reality because it's easy to say authenticity matters, but what does the data actually show? In a 2024 influencer marketing report, which surveyed over 2000 consumers and 300 influencers across the US and the UK, staggering 86 % of people say authenticity directly influences their buying decisions.

But here's the part that caught my attention. When asked to define authentic, consumers use words like relatable, transparent, and unpolished. In other words, they're not asking for this production value, they're asking for honesty. And this isn't just about how content looks, it's about how it feels.

SEMrush did a huge social media trends report last year and it found that Gen Zs are actively rejecting overly curated content favoring this user-generated media, UGC, that looks raw, it looks spontaneous and emotionally relevant. These audiences are turning out

Rob Curtis (05:55.208)
anything that smells like a strategy and leaning into a content that speaks like a friend. That doesn't mean brands can't have strategy, it means the strategy just can't look like one.

Rob Curtis (06:34.894)
So what do we take from this? Here's the truth. Influence is no longer about reach. It's about resonance. It's about whether your content, your brand voice, your message actually lands with your audience. Does it feel real, relevant? Does it create conversation or just fill the feed? Because here's the reality. Trust is your new acquisition channel and trust doesn't come from how many people you speak to. It comes from how well you're understood.

So let's talk about the two forces quietly making all the noise in this space. It's the community and user generated content. These aren't buzzwords. They're how modern brands are winning.

Rob Curtis (07:19.158)
In traditional marketing, we talk about audiences and a passive group you broadcast to. But community flips that dynamic completely. Communities talk back, they create, contribute, and they stick around. And here's the key. People in communities don't just buy from brands. They advocate for them. They defend them and they co-create with them. Think about that for a second,

When you build a real community, you're not renting attention, you're owning loyalty. And that is the most powerful marketing asset that you can build. So let's look at how some smart brands are doing this.

Rob Curtis (08:12.238)
Gymshark doesn't just sell fitness gear. They built the Gymshark Nation, a global online community of athletes and enthusiasts who share progress, setbacks, workout tips. Their Facebook groups and Discord channels are teeming with real conversations. Their marketing? Often screenshots of those conversations. No brand can fake that.

Duolingo, a favorite of mine because I must learn how to speak Greek one day. But it uses TikTok to build its language learning community through hilarious self-aware content. Most of which is inspired by or directly features its audience. The result of all of this? Over 10 million TikTok followers and the kind of engagement that big budget campaigns can only dream of. Lego, I love Lego. I still do as a 36 year old man.

But their ideas invites fans to submit their own Lego set designs. The best ones get made and sold, co-created by a community. This isn't just a content play. It's even product development powered by UGC. And this all worked because people want to feel part of something. We are hardwired for connection. When a brand creates a space where people can belong, that brand becomes more than a product.

It becomes a shared identity. And community-led content is the fuel that powers that sense of belonging. UGC is trusted two and a half times more than most brand-created content, according to the Nielsen Report. And that's because it's social proof in its purest form. No one paid to say it. It wasn't scripted. It was shared because it meant something.

Rob Curtis (10:12.462)
So let's get specific. Here's how any brand, big or small, can lean into this movement right now. Number one, create a space, not a campaign. Forget the vanity metrics, build a community space where your audience can connect around a shared interest, not just your product. Use Facebook groups.

Create a space, not a campaign. Forget the vanity metrics. Build a community space where your audience can connect around a shared interest, not just your product. Facebook groups, Slack, Discord for BTC, for B2B, a private LinkedIn group, a Slack community, or a gated content hub with a chat functionality. Make it valuable. Make it useful. Make it feel like they belong there. Number two.

Designed participation. Most brands wait for customers to submit content. Smart brand engineer. Moments that invite it.

Rob Curtis (11:53.164)
Number two, most brands wait for customers to submit content. Smart brands engineer moments that invite it. You can do this by simply running a share your story thread, feature customer shout outs, create a creator of the week program, build simple repeatable formats for people to plug into, a branded challenge, a photo prompt, a before and after transformation. Make your customers the hero, not the background.

If you haven't read Story Brand by Donald Miller, the whole concept is around making sure your customer is the hero of this journey. Make sure you're following that mindset. Number three, repurpose with integrity. When someone tags your product or service, respond, ask permission, share it on your feed with context. Using...

Rob Curtis (12:47.212)
When someone tags your product or service, respond, ask permission, share it on your feed with context. Use UGC to narrate your brand story, not just fill a quota. Use UGC and ads. It often performs better than the usual assets. Turn screenshots into social proof slides.

Use real quotes in email marketing or product pages and always give credit. People will share it again just because you acknowledged them. four, measure what matters. Forget those likes. Start tracking things like engagement depth, comments, shares, time in the community, UGC volume over time. So how much of this content is UGC compared to the rest of our content?

Contribution rate, what percentage of your audience creates, not just consumes. Brand mentions with positive sentiment. This is how you move from audience to ecosystem.

Rob Curtis (13:49.624)
For me, this marketing game has changed. We're no longer in an era of just create, post, sell. That's boring. We're in an age of invite, co-create, and grow. If you're only broadcasting, you're missing the conversation. If you're only publishing, you're missing participation. And if you're not inviting your audience to contribute, someone else will. So this brings me on to something else. Let's talk about the most...

underutilized growth asset in modern marketing, your personal brand. Now before you imagine the LinkedIn bio full of the buzzwords or someone dancing on TikTok, just pause for a second. A personal brand isn't a vanity project.

It's not about being loud and famous. It's about becoming trusted, visible voice in your space. One that people will remember. They refer and they buy from. And in the age of authenticity, personal brands, outperformed corporate ones, in almost every metric that matters, is certainly what we see. Trust, engagement, relatability and influence. LinkedIn did a recent study around their global talent trends reports.

And that revealed that content shared by employees, especially those with an established personal brand, gets eight times more engagement in the same post shared by the company's official page. Why? Number one, most of these platforms want to use your company profiles for paid advertising. But more importantly, because people trust people, not logos, not polished copy people.

Rob Curtis (15:31.8)
Forbes documented that audiences now respond more strongly to founder-led and expert-led communication than traditional ad formats. In fact, the article noted that a growing segment of buyers will research the people behind the brand.

for making high ticket decisions. Your personal brand is your trust engine. And it doesn't matter whether you're a solo consultant, the CMO of a growing tech firm, or the owner of a local service business. People want to know who's behind the work. They want faces, they want voices, they want the context. So let's get specific. There are five key areas that make or break a personal brand. Clarity of positioning.

Most personal brands fail because they're trying to say too much to too many people. Clarity is everything. So just ask yourself, what do I want to be known for? What kind of problems do I help people solve? Who benefits most from hearing what I have to say? So if you're a digital consultant for B2B SaaS companies, own that niche.

Don't try to be a marketing thought leader. That's vague. Be the go-to person for simplifying SaaS funnels. Be known for one thing, then expand. Consistent presence is the second one. You don't need to post daily, but you do need to show up regularly and reliably. Pick one channel, one content format, one tone of voice and commit.

You could use a simple cadence like one long form blog post on LinkedIn articles as a carousel or a video, something like that. One to two short form pieces of content, quick insights, opinions, questions. And then one what we call interaction blog. having that time to comment, reply, repost with thoughts. The compounder in interest.

Rob Curtis (17:36.386)
The compound interest from 90 days of this is enormous. Number three, content that converts trust into attention. The best personal brands, they teach generously, but they also know how to teach. Here's a structure that works every time. The problem, calling out what your audience is feeling or struggling with. Perspective, share a personal insight or a shift in thinking.

Practicality. Give them a next step, a framework, suggestion, and avoid the trap of trying to sound smart. Speak like you're explaining it to a colleague, a friend out for a coffee. You're not pitching to a big boardroom. The next one is proof.

Not platitudes. Want people to trust you? Stop telling them you're an expert. Show them. Share behind the scenes of your process. Reflect on mistakes you've made and lessons learned. Highlight results, but contextualize them. What made them possible? What challenges were overcome? And just remember, in this whole piece, storytelling outperforms statistics every time, unless you're using stats within a story.

The fifth piece is personality and perspective. This is the one that most people resist. The truth is the personal impersonal branding is what makes it magnetic. It doesn't mean oversharing. It means expressing opinions, showing values and using a tone that feels like you. What do you stand for in your industry? What trends do you disagree with? What do you think others are getting wrong? Leaning into that makes your voice memorable, not just visible.

Rob Curtis (19:16.556)
Let's just say you're building a business brand too. Do these two efforts compete? Not at all. In fact, they multiply each other when done right. And for me, this is how the two align. Let your personal brand be the human access point to your business. Share stories that show how your work happens, not just what you sell. Drive interest to your brand by being visible as the expert behind it.

People buy from people remember, even in B2B, especially in B2B. You don't need to go viral though.

You don't need to be famous. You don't need a personal logo tagline press kit. You just need to show up with clarity, consistency and complete courage week after week, speaking directly to the people you serve best. And that's how trust is built. That's how influence is truly earned and how modern marketing really wins. So now that we've explored the shift, the research and the rise of personal brands and community.

Let's ask the real question, what should brands actually do to stay relevant in this lovely new, more human, less polished landscape? I could give you the usual advice, more UGC, talk to your audience, be transparent, but you've heard all of that before.

Rob Curtis (20:41.088)
I could give you the usual advice, post more UGC content, talk to your audience, be transparent, but you've heard all of that before.

Rob Curtis (20:52.278)
I could give you the usual advice, post more UGC, talk to your audience, be transparent, but you have heard all of these things before. Instead, let's take a different path. One inspired by behavioral science, creativity, and beautiful, irrational thinking. Championed by people like Rory Sutherland of the world. Because in modern marketing, the difference between mediocrity and magic isn't budget, it's perspective. So firstly,

Don't be trusted, be believed. Trust is built over time, but belief is instant, emotional, story driven. Instead of saying, we've served 5,000 clients, say, 5,000 people trusted us with the moment they've been saving for all year.

Rob Curtis (22:49.506)
Don't be trusted, be believed. Trust is built over time, but belief is instant, emotional, story driven. Instead of saying, we serve 5,000 clients, say, 5,000 people trusted us with the moment they've been saving for all year. Instead of saying, our product is award winning, say, this changed how James saw herself in the mirror after 10 years. Belief is built through framing.

Belief is built through framing, so frame your message like a moment, not a metric. Stop posting, start signalling. People don't just buy things, they buy signals, identity, values, membership. Every piece of content is a signal. So ask yourself, what does engaging with this say about the viewer? Sharing your post should make them look in the know.

Commenting should make them feel aligned with the movement. Watching should make them feel seen. If your marketing doesn't carry signal value, it will be forgotten, even if it's well-made. Number three, create tiny, inconvenient rituals. This one's weird, but powerful.

Behavioral science shows that effort increases attachment. Think about loyalty cards, handwritten notes, IKEA furniture. So when we work through it, we value it more. So what's the IKEA effect for your brand? A welcome kit users assemble themselves, a quirky onboarding challenge inside your community, a quiz before accessing content.

even a branded ritual as simple as tag us in your Monday reset. It's friction, but it's meaningful friction. Number four, make content feel discovered, not delivered. And the best marketing doesn't feel like marketing. It feels like something you stumbled on, not something that targeted you. So create content that feels hidden in plain sight. Surprise tips in the comment sections, for example.

Rob Curtis (24:59.864)
conversational, not designed. Like you're writing your friend a post-it note back in the school days. Non-promotional, but fascinating. Think of your content as a treasure map, not a sales page. When people discover value, they feel ownership over it, and they're more likely to share.

And then we want to engine-ish social proof that's just unexpected.

Rob Curtis (25:27.958)
Number five is engineer social proof that's unexpected.

Everyone uses testimonials.

Rob Curtis (25:44.022)
Number five, engineer social proof that's unexpected. Everyone's using testimonials. Everyone's saying, join 10,000 others. So flip the script. Show screenshots of someone not understanding your product, but coming back later and loving it. Share stories from users who failed, tried again, and succeeded. Highlight what people say when they leave, especially if they come back.

This creates a perception of depth, not perfection. It shows your product exists in the real world with nuance and complexity, not just in your perfect pitch deck. Number six, you can use mystery as a marketing tool. The opposite of a good idea can also be a good idea. So here's one. Stop explaining everything. Create curiosity gaps.

Name things in ways that make people ask questions. Post content with no CTA, just context. Mystery invites exploration and exploration creates deeper meaning.

Rob Curtis (26:49.592)
So an example of this could be a headline like, you've already missed the moment, here's why. A LinkedIn post with just a quote, no caption. A landing page with a one line story and a button that says what happens next. Mystery equals engagement. Explanation equals indifference.

Rob Curtis (27:16.312)
For me, context is everything. People don't always act rationally, but they do act predictably irrationally. So instead of trying to continually optimize for logic, try optimizing for conversation. What gets screen-shotted into a WhatsApp group? What gets mentioned over drinks or dinner? What makes people lean in, not just scroll past?

The brands that win are the ones that play this psychological game just as much as the media one. So be bold, be memorable, get talked about. Because in the world of sameness, perception is your greatest differentiator.

Rob Curtis (28:04.664)
So here's where we land. Social media marketing isn't broken. It's excitingly moving so quick.

The old rules, the reach, the gloss, the frequency, are giving way to something far more potent. Authenticity, intimacy and identity. Because today, trust isn't earned with likes, it's earned with relevance, with resonance, with people, real people, telling real stories in real time.

Rob Curtis (28:58.776)
So here's what we covered. How I feel the collapse of performative influencer marketing and why mass reach no longer means mass impact. The rise of micro communities and user generated content where belonging drives conversion. The personal brand as a business asset where voice beats visual and trust beats traffic. And how brands with a bit of behavioral imagination can stop shouting and start signaling. Because in this new era...

Rob Curtis (29:30.06)
Because in this new world, the winners aren't just the loudest. They're the ones who feel closest. And a massive thank you for tuning into Marketing Unzipped. If today's episode challenged your thinking, sparked a new idea, or gave you something worth testing.

Rob Curtis (29:51.83)
A huge thank you for listening to today's marketing unzipped episode. If today's episode challenged your thinking, sparked a new idea, or gave you something worth testing, I can't say that.

Rob Curtis (30:21.698)
Thanks for tuning in to another episode of Marketing Unzipped. Can I ask a favour? Because if today's episode challenged your thinking, sparked a new idea, or gave you something worth testing, please share it with someone that's not listened before. They could be a marketeer, a founder, a creator, someone who's ready to rethink their social playbook. And just remember, marketing isn't about being everywhere. It's about...

being believable somewhere. Until next time, stay bold, stay human and keep marketing unzipped.