The term social media once felt useful – a shorthand for the platforms where work was shared and audiences gathered. But as the digital landscape fragments and each platform evolves its own culture, the phrase has started to blur more than it clarifies.
Designers increasingly benefit from treating each channel not as a piece of a single category, but as its own ecosystem with distinct behaviors, expectations, and opportunities. The catch-all language no longer matches the strategic reality.
One Phrase, Too Many Meanings
When studios say they “need to do more on social media,” they’re often talking about entirely different goals in the same breath – visibility, client education, cultural positioning, or community building. These goals don’t live naturally on every platform, and audiences don’t behave consistently across them. A single term cannot hold the complexity.
Industry conversations reflect the tension. Teams struggle not with content creation, but with the confusion that comes from treating fundamentally different platforms as interchangeable. What performs well on one feels off on another. What builds trust on one feels promotional on the next. The problem isn’t execution – it’s categorization.
The Rise of Platform Identity
Each platform has developed its own language. Instagram is a visual narrative tool with cultural signaling and community building baked into its pace. Pinterest functions a search engine and dream board, not primarily a social network. LinkedIn acts as a credibility builder and industry forum. TikTok drives discovery through personality and transparency. And all these platforms offer both organic and paid opportunities – both which work very differently.
So, these aren’t variations of social – they’re distinct channels with unique value, strategies, tactics, opportunities, and challenges.
Designers who treat them separately tend to make sharper decisions. They articulate what they want each platform to do for the brand. Visibility might belong to one, connection to another, and thought leadership to a third. The marketing effort becomes more focused, less performative, and far more effective.
Our clients at Aveny get platform-specific plans and here’s what happens: once their teams stop creating “social content” and instead created “Instagram content” or “Pinterest content,” engagement deepened and the workload lightened. The specificity clarified the purpose.
Why Language Shapes Strategy
Language determines where energy goes. Calling everything social media encourages the assumption that every platform should be active, every audience addressed, every algorithm monitored. It pushes studios toward volume rather than clarity.
When designers reframe the work according to the platform, not the category, they create space for selectivity. They can decide that one channel is for relationship-building, another for professional credibility, another for passive discovery. They can opt out of platforms that do not align with their brand without feeling like they’re abandoning an entire marketing discipline.
This shift is especially important in a time when digital presence is expected but attention is fractured. Precision matters more than presence. Also: when you know what you’re aiming for, you can much easier set the right expectations and implement the right playbook.
The Future of Digital Visibility
Design studios that move away from the umbrella term will gain a sharper marketing lens. They won’t be chasing trends across a generalized landscape; they’ll be cultivating strength inside ecosystems where their audience already behaves with intention.
This is not about abandoning social platforms. It’s about using language that keeps strategy honest. When the work becomes platform-specific, it becomes more thoughtful, more aligned with brand identity, and far easier to sustain.
This perspective reframes the thinking behind traditional social media guidance, urging designers to recognize each platform as its own marketing, visibility, and connection tool – not a single entity to be managed, but an array of spaces to be chosen with purpose.
