Is organic reach dead?

Once upon a sepia-toned time, posting great content on social media actually did something.

A clever caption, a well-timed carousel, a blog post you slaved over for hours actually made its way to its intended audience. It got clicks. It mattered in some way, shape, or form. Now you’d be lucky if your brilliant post hits 34 views (and one of them isn’t your mum).

Organic reach has been slowly dying for years. And I think we may have reached its bitter end. No longer does it “need improvement.” No longer “in decline.” Not “sleeping.” Dead. Buried six feet under in Meta’s backyard, with a gravestone that reads: “Here lies your unpaid content strategy, you cheap b*tch.” Ah, well, it was good while it lasted.

So, if you’re a brand still pushing content out the wazoo, hoping for virality with no budget, no plan, and no understanding of how ruthless the algorithmic overlords have become, it’s time to let go. So let’s hold a little funeral, pay our respects, and then get to work on a rebirth.

Because lucky for you, this marketing witch knows just the spell.

The platform bait-and-switch.

Social platforms used to love organic content. Why? Because they needed you to fill the feed. But once they got big, bloated, and ad-funded, they started playing hard to get (sound familiar? lol).

Now, TikTok throttles reach unless you boost. Instagram favours video unless it doesn’t. LinkedIn shows your post to five people to test it, then forgets you ever existed. The house always wins, and like any casino, the house wants you to spenddd.

Here’s where it gets existential.

The Dead Internet Theory suggests that a terrifying amount of online activity is no longer from real humans… but bots, recycled content, SEO-churn, and AI-generated sludge. Some think the internet “died” around 2016 and that what we’re now experiencing is a ghost town run by algorithms faking engagement to keep ad dollars flowing.

Sound like a conspiracy theory? Maybe. But look around: timelines full of déjà vu posts, comment sections that feel like AI soup, and “viral” content that mysteriously vanishes after a day.

Whether or not you buy the theory in full, its implications are real for marketers: the internet feels less alive, and so does your content. Organic reach doesn’t just feel dead because of bad strategy. It feels dead because the audience you’re trying to reach might not even be real, or they’ve stopped showing up.

Engagement metrics are liars.

A like isn’t a lead. A share isn’t a sale. And a comment that says “LOL” is definitely not the start of a conversion funnel. Vanity metrics give the illusion of performance while your ROI weeps in the corner. Because you can have high engagement and still have no real business impact.

So, if you’re still measuring success by hearts and haha reacts, sweetie, it’s time for a hard reset.

Content fatigue is real af, and so is audience burnout.

Everyone is creating content. You. Your competitors. Your intern’s cat. Your intern's cat’s adoptive grandmother. It’s overwhelming. The result is scroll fatigue. Brands start sounding the same and audiences start caring less. All the while, the attention economy starts to crumble under its own weight.

Okay so like, what does work now?

Not all is lost. Organic isn’t completely useless. It just needs a glow-up. So, here’s where to shift your energy:

• Own your platforms. Build your newsletter. Start that blog. Create content that lives somewhere you control.

• SEO > social virality. Writing for humans and algorithms will carry you longer than a trending sound ever will.

• Repurpose smarter. One strong article can become ten different assets: threads, shorts, carousels, even scripts for your founder.

• Build communities, not audiences. Focus on long-term engagement over short-term reach. Forums, Substacks, Discords. These are small spaces with big impact.

• Pay to play, but strategically. Boost only what’s working. Use ads to amplify, not rescue, content.

Oh, also, you need content that’s unignorable.

Which sound obvious – like, duh, aren’t we all trying to get noticed here? Yes. But if you want people to choose to engage with your brand today, you have to be more than visible. You have to be literally unignorable.

That means sharper hooks. Stronger opinions. Better storytelling. Not more content, but better content in smarter places.

The eulogy.

You can mourn the days of free distribution all you like. But clinging to a dead strategy is like putting a ring on your situationship…it’s not going anywhere, and it’s starting to feel, well, a little desperate.

Let your old content strategy rest. Then build one that respects the new rules: owned platforms, strategic distribution, and actually giving your audience something worth their time.

Because if attention is the new currency, then bland content is a bounced cheque. And the bots aren’t buying anything anyway.

-Sophie Randell, Writer