Building an audience on a post-social-media Internet

Social media is dead. What's next?

I shared the analytics from my recent Kickstarter campaign in a recent post. And the numbers don't lie: Social media is dead. In a campaign that topped $26k, social media posts netted me a grand total of... drum roll, please... $677. Theoretically, I could have avoided any mention of my campaign on social media, and I would have still beaten my goal by $2,300. That's sobering news for anyone planning a crowdfunding campaign. But what does it mean for audience building? For over ten years, social media has been the answer for webcartoonists who were trying to gain notoriety. So if we're not getting results there, where do we turn?

No easy answers

Here's the sad truth: If anybody tells you they know the answer to this question, they're probably selling you something. Instead, I'm going to give you the advice that I plan to use in the months ahead. These strategies will grow and evolve, and I'm going to watch very closely for trends and innovations. In short, we're currently in the midst of a massive upheaval of a decade of conventional wisdom. With the system in flux, we're all going to have to become very creative.

Luckily, we cartoonists live for opportunities to be creative.

What do we know?

The dominant social-media platforms are failing to do what webcartoonists need them to do: publish and promote. Twitter has been ruined by a man-child whose decision-making has been jaw-droppingly bad. Edison Research reported a 30% drop in users from 2023 to 2024, and folks like myself who have been using the platform for over a decade can confirm that the engagement simply isn't there anymore.

Many of the other platforms have been ruined intentionally through a process that Cory Doctorow calls enshittification: “First, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.” Instagram and Facebook are both well into their last stages of this process. Reddit's recent IPO is a clear indication that it's well on its way.

But the problem goes deeper. Threads had (almost) everything that users wanted in a Twitter replacement. And the missing features were being hurried along—some appearing fairly quickly. The community was there. The big-name accounts were there. It was a nearly perfect environment in which to rekindle the passion people once felt for Twitter. Threads enjoyed massive traffic in its opening week. The following week, usage plummeted—and never recovered.

That leads us to this potential explanation: Maybe we, as a community, are tired of social media. We were perfectly happy to keep using Twitter because we had always used It. But when we were knocked off that treadmill, we found ourselves reevaluating the experience, and we didn’t like it.

I’ve written before about the five ages of webcomics. Since the late nineties, we have seen four distinct models of online publishing. And we’re currently living in a fifth—one dominated by social media. But those previous four ages prove that each age has its own beginning, middle, and end.

The Social Media Age is nearing its end.

Where do we go?

Discontinuing social media is not an option — yet. This is especially true for a webcartoonist who is still trying to build an audience. However, my recommendation is to focus.