Ryan Goloversic
🟩 Published by Ryan Goloversic • June 10, 2025
How AI Impacts Social Media Starts With Attention
How does AI impact social media?
First and foremost, we have to dial back to what the purpose of social media actually is.
It’s based on attention. Fast hooks, dopamine, and content that condenses thought into simplifications. That’s if there is any thought at all beyond capturing attention.
And the thing with attention is that people tend to gravitate toward short games versus long games. The problem with short games is that, just like when you go to the casino, the house always wins.
What I mean by that is short games tend to come in waves and trends. There’s always a group of people who ride the wave. They get fast, big wins, and then everybody else adapts right as that ecosystem is collapsing.
That’s what we’re seeing right now with late-stage Instagram, where all of a sudden it’s nothing but advertising and noise.
From Truth and Authenticity to Noise
What happened is there were no real gatekeepers.
Instagram or Facebook, even shorts on YouTube went from a place where we were seeking truth and real opinions, to a phase where people started trusting social media to find business recommendations because it seemed like it was coming from a place of authenticity.
Then it became a place where digital marketers were consistently advertising and pushing.
That doesn’t mean it never works. It does have its place. But people respond to it the same way an immune system responds to a virus.
In the same way you reject cold calls, you reject cold emails, or even the way people are rejecting paid advertising on Google right now, it becomes noise.
So what’s happened is we are now in that noise phase. It’s on par with the National Enquirer and that leads to fatigue. People will naturally look for the next source of authenticity.
Why AI Accelerates the Collapse Phase
So what does that mean?
Truth, clarity, competence, and things of real value tend to stand out. We seek them whether conscious or not.
What’s happening with social media now is that we’re entering an era where there is so much AI-generated content that even creators who were making a living from it are losing ground.
The shift is accelerating away from people who relied on the platform itself.
Why Businesses Must Return to Fundamentals
Now, all that said, as a business owner, you need to think back to fundamentals.
Social media is downstream of your core fundamentals. It’s a tool you should use provided you use it consciously and understand where it fits in your greater plan. This is why you need to start with a base marketing strategy rooted in fundamentals.
So what are your core fundamentals?
Your general business practices.
Do you actually sell a product or service that is desired and helpful?
When we bring that back to the digital realm, the question becomes: do you have a website that accurately represents that?
Are you posting long-form content?
Because that’s actually the whole point I’m trying to make with this video.
Why Long Form Beats Short Form Over Time
Long form always beats short form in the long run.
The only time you should use short form is when it’s like paint on the house.
Long form like SEO and AIO is your foundation.
Well, actually, long form is more like your house, and the structure supports it.
Your actual business is the foundation.
Use whatever analogy you like.
The point is this: social media and all of those platforms are amplifiers. They should be built after you have all of your fundamentals in place.
Building Bottom-Up Instead of Top-Down
You start with a good business practice and a good model. It actually works. It’s desired. It’s effective. You can run it.
Then when you bridge that to digital, you’re telling Google who you are, what you do, and you’re making that as clear as possible.
You build your website like a database, and you do that consistently.
The best businesses publish regularly.
You should be making at least a page a month, ideally a page or blog per week, and pairing that with a long-form YouTube video.
Why Long Form Compounds (Even When few are Watching)
This doesn’t feel exciting until you see how it works.
Long-form doesn’t get as many views.
Sometimes long-form videos only get 10 views when you start.
But what happens is they compound?
As people and systems start to trust you, year one your video might get 300 views. By year five, you could be getting anywhere from 3,000 to 75,000 views per video.
Those assets stay there.
They compound.
They build trust.
Over time, they start to surface on the SERP.
With the right content strategy and site architecture, you create thousands of entry points into your website. Each one starts with a question your customers are already trying to find the answer to.
Instead of forcing attention, you meet demand where it already exists.
Those pages don’t rely on virality. They rely on clarity. They answer real questions, solve real problems, and make it easy for both people and systems to understand what you do.
As that library grows, so does trust. Not just with users, but with search engines and AI systems that are evaluating consistency, usefulness, and intent across your entire site.
That’s how individual pieces of content turn into an ecosystem.
And that’s how visibility compounds without chasing trends.
Imagine having this much real estate on the SERP. This is why you need long form videos embedded on your webpage. Every video and page can surface for a customers question. Now imagine if you’re the only answer.
Why Video Becomes a Force Multiplier on Your Website
This is where video becomes a force multiplier.
When you pair long-form video with a page or blog on your website, you’re not just publishing content. You’re taking up more real estate on the search engine results page.
A properly structured page with an embedded video can trigger a video result, rich snippets, and even an SGE panel. That means your ideas, your framing, and your face can show up directly in the search results.
You’re not just ranking with text. You’re present visually.
This is why video and page or blog creation should be treated as something that works in unison, not as separate efforts. One reinforces the other.
From a practical standpoint, you’re effectively tapping into two search engines at the same time. You’re showing up in traditional Google search results, and you’re feeding the systems that power AI-driven search and recommendations.
If you’re consistently dominating Google’s SERPs with high-quality pages and videos, you dramatically increase the likelihood of being recommended by tools like ChatGPT and other large language models that train on Google’s ecosystem and rely on search results to answer questions. Read this case study on eFoil Miami and how we used video and site structure to help them stand out on SGE.
The takeaway is simple:
Long-form video plus a strong website isn’t just content. It’s leverage.
I will share a video that explains the importance of SGE in the next section.
How Shorts and Instagram Fit
You start with the foundation.
You build a proper website. You publish regularly. You make long-form content.
Then you take that information and those videos and use social media to amplify and condense your ideas.
That’s the correct order.
Once the foundation is in place, you can leverage the attention economy. You can use smart social media strategy. You can even hack dopamine for views if you understand how those systems work.
For example, I make trick tips with three easy steps.
The text hooks people. The short, fun clips make them feel like they’re getting something useful, and they’re highly shareable. That’s allowed the account to grow fast.
But when it comes to actually closing leads, it usually takes follow-up through DMs and smart sales skills. Sometimes that means spending days having a conversation with a single person. That might work for some operators, but it’s not viable for many business owners at scale.
That said, this approach does fit into SEO, mainly as social proof.
Google now includes your social profiles directly on the SERP. That means social media is gaining more merit than it used to, especially when it comes to tracking consistency and how well people receive your message over time.
This is why consistency is paramount.
The system is likely tracking for discrepancies. If your messaging, tone, or intent shifts too much across platforms, that inconsistency becomes a signal.
Social media can help with reach, proof, and amplification. But it works best when it’s aligned with a solid foundation, clear fundamentals, and a message that holds up over time.
But the core intent should never be chasing attention for its own sake.
The intent should be reaching the right audience, with the right message, built on something real.
Social media is an amplifier.
It’s not the source.
That’s when you move to something like Instagram marketing.
That’s when you bridge out and use clips as shorts.
And you don’t have to do this in a perfectly linear way.
You can start building your foundation immediately. Get your core messaging. Make a long-form video. Then expand it into shorts.
The biggest mistake I see businesses make is that they jump straight to shorts.
They build top-down.
When you build top-down, there is no foundation.
Authority Marketing and the Role of Google in AI
The best use of your time is focusing on core fundamentals.
That’s why I’m a huge advocate for authority marketing.
This ties directly into AI and Google.
Google is the gatekeeper for all AI systems.
If you want to rank in ChatGPT or similar tools, you need to be showing up in Google, because these systems train off Google.
When customers ask those systems a question, they go to Google to see what the top results are.
Why SEO, Ads, and AI Are One System
So my point is simple: focus on fundamentals first, then expand.
If you need help understanding how all these marketing systems fit together as an ecosystem, rest assured, they do.
Paid advertising ties back into SEO.
If you have good SEO and a high-quality website, Google will actually allow you to rank higher than someone who might even outbid you in Google Ads, simply because they believe you offer more value to the customer.
It all works together cohesively.
Why Boring Fundamentals Outlast Trends
If you’re not building with intelligent strategy based on how these systems interact, and how things move across cycles and trends, you’re going to feel confused.
You won’t have clarity.
But the good news is this:
When you start with fundamentals and build intelligently, it’s not complicated. It’s not overwhelming.
It’s downright boring.
And that’s the point.
The best athletes, the best businesses, the best everything in life starts with consistent, boring fundamentals.
That’s how things compound.
That’s how you outlast trends.
Why Fundamentals Matter More Than Ever in an AI World
With the greater shift toward AI, fundamentals are more important than ever.
The way to “hack” the game with AI is to be so consistent, so true, so helpful, and so grounded in a solid base that these systems have no choice but to recommend you.
Not because you gamed them.
But because it’s in their best interest to do so.
Ryan Goloversic
Ryan “Rygo” Goloversic is a senior SEO strategist, brand consultant, and the founder & CEO of Rygo Labs—an agency trusted by law firms, watersports brands, partner agencies, and service-based businesses across the U.S. and Canada. With over a decade of hands-on experience, he builds content systems that scale trust, traffic, and long-term growth—and currently serves as the lead strategist for WiseBear Creative, a national branding and web agency.
He’s also a globally recognized kiteboarder and Airush team rider. His marketing career began in video, where he built the largest retail-based SEO and YouTube program in watersports with MACkite. When he’s not leading SEO campaigns or consulting teams, you can find him in the gym or competing on the KPLxGKA world tour.