Social media platforms can serve as both vibrant marketplaces and spaces for genuine social interaction, where consumers feel valued, while businesses boost engagement and sales.

This picture may not look anything like the reality of social media that you see, but our guest will remind you that things haven't always been this way.

A short glance back of the Internet shows that in the year 2000 the Internet's governing body actually had looked at using a citizen model to allow individuals who use the internet to kind of come together as a social contract and to decide how they would be able to vote on changes to the internet - and at their peak 158,000 people were on the voting rolls. This was a radical global experiment in direct democracy.

That model didn't take off, partly because to be a voting member, Internet users everywhere would have to (at least temporarily) upload some Identification - and most weren't willing to share that kind of data.

What happened instead was the rise of social networks owned by a handful of companies, who conditioned us sellers to post promoted content with attention-grabbing messages because that could be used by the algorithms to keep buyers on the platforms. And I've got to call out how , as buyers, we're also complicit because we now give those platforms way more data than the Internet governing body ever asked for. How ironic.

But our guest maintains that it's in our ability to regain our equilibrium. While we're all collectively responsible for how we communicate, marketers can be an ideal catalyst of change. We can make content that prioritizes authentic interaction over consumerism, be it on the current platforms or ones yet to exist. We should remember the saying of the American philosopher Thomas Paine: "We have it in our power to begin the world over again."

My guest has been leveraging social media to grow audiences and income since MySpace was around. In that 20 year timespan, she has leveraged her social media knowledge both by working for sports organizations and corporations like AT&T, iHeart Radio and DirecTV to running the agency Next Step Social that does this for health and wellness brands. She's also a speaker and a podcaster.

She lives in Colorado with her husband and daughters. Let's go now to speak with Katie Brinkley

Chapters/Timestamps 00:00 Introduction 03:01 Meet Katie Brinkley 04:01 What Community Means 06:03 Attention Economy Shift 08:58 Audio Beats AI 10:40 Discovery On Rented Land 11:48 Four Post Strategy 16:10 Platform Culture Matters 17:35 Metrics True Fans 19:47 Beyond Consumption Mindset 23:35 Katie Origin Story 28:03 Burnout And Conversation 32:16 Audit Your Feed 33:29 Where To Find Katie 34:00 Closing Thoughts

Links to everything mentioned in the show are on the Funnel Reboot site's page for this episode.