{"id":14012,"date":"2026-09-14T06:14:16","date_gmt":"2026-09-14T06:14:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.exporis.ch\/social-media-trends-are-useful-copying-them-is-not\/"},"modified":"2026-09-14T06:14:16","modified_gmt":"2026-09-14T06:14:16","slug":"social-media-trends-are-useful-copying-them-is-not","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.exporis.ch\/de\/social-media-trends-are-useful-copying-them-is-not\/","title":{"rendered":"Why Social Media Is Making Brands Look Alike"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open Instagram for ten minutes and you will see brands repeating the same ideas. An employee walks into frame while five statements appear beside them. A founder speaks to camera over an audio track dozens of other accounts already use. Agencies publish another version of the \u201cthree mistakes\u201d carousel. The companies change. Much of the content does not.<\/span><\/p>\n

Around two-thirds of people in Switzerland use social media every day, according to the 2026 IGEM Digimonitor, and 90 percent use it at least occasionally. Instagram is used daily by 45 percent of the population and by 72 percent of 15- to 34-year-olds. Marketing teams need to know what people watch, skip and share there.<\/p>\n

By the time a popular format reaches a planning meeting, the team rarely starts from scratch. Someone has saved examples. The agency already knows how to shoot it. A manager has seen a competitor use it. The first few seconds, the pace and even the caption structure may already be decided before anyone discusses what the company actually wants to say.<\/p>\n

That saves time, but it also explains why so much branded content starts to look alike. A post may get strong numbers without giving people much reason to remember who made it. Viewers remember the joke, the sound or the format. They send it to a colleague. They may never remember the company name. Views tell the team how many people watched. Shares show that people passed it on. Neither shows whether viewers connected the post with the brand.<\/p>\n

When the format becomes more recognisable than the company<\/h2>\n

Recruiters use similar office videos. Marketing agencies rely on similar carousels. Banks and advisers film experts against similar corporate backgrounds. Product brands add the same popular sounds to close-up shots. One post may work perfectly well. Put ten competitors side by side and the differences shrink quickly.<\/p>\n

People understand familiar formats faster. \u201cThree things I would never do as\u2026\u201d tells the viewer what is coming before the first point appears. A before-and-after post gives people a reason to wait for the second image. A numbered carousel tells them how much they still have to read.<\/p>\n

Inside the business, those formats also remove work. The team spends less time arguing about structure. Managers know what the final post will look like. An agency can reuse parts of the shoot or editing process. Once one competitor gets attention with a format, everyone else has proof that the idea feels safe enough to try.<\/p>\n

After enough companies do that, the format stops identifying anyone. The logo changes. The colours change. One company uses a more formal tone than another. The basic idea still moves easily from one account to the next.<\/p>\n

Consider the common video in which an employee points towards several statements on screen. The pointing is easy to copy, but it is probably not why the video works. The viewer gets several pieces of information quickly without listening to a long explanation. A team that understands that has more options than a team that simply recreates the shot.<\/p>\n

Before-and-after posts rely on a different expectation. People want to see what changed. An interior company shows a renovated room. A software team shows how long a task took before and after automation. A consultancy compares an old process with the new one it has introduced for a client. None of them needs the same transition or soundtrack.<\/p>\n

\u201cThings I would never do as\u2026\u201d uses professional authority. The speaker knows something the viewer does not. A private bank could discuss decisions its advisers regularly challenge. An engineering company could show shortcuts its engineers reject. The company has something specific to say before anyone chooses a format.<\/p>\n

Remove the logo before the team signs off the post. Could a competitor publish almost the same thing after changing a few words? If the answer is yes, the team has copied too much and added too little.<\/p>\n

One strong post does not give you a content series<\/h2>\n

A post beats the account average and someone asks for another one. The brief already exists, so the second version takes less time. The third needs even less discussion. Soon the company is publishing a series because one post performed well.<\/p>\n

Sometimes that works. A retailer can compare products regularly if customers keep using those comparisons. A specialist company can answer the same type of technical question every week if the answers keep changing and the subject matters to its clients. An interview series can work if each guest brings something different.<\/p>\n

Other posts worked because people had not seen them before. Repeat the same idea too often and that advantage disappears. The dashboard does not tell the team why the first post worked. It only shows what happened after publication. A high engagement rate can come from the subject, timing, format, guest, humour or simple novelty. Teams still have to work out which part mattered.<\/p>\n

Internal processes often encourage repetition anyway. Managers have already approved the idea. Legal knows the format. The agency knows how to produce it. Costs stay predictable. Nobody has to defend a new concept in the next meeting. The team may keep making the series because it is easy to run, not because people still care about it.<\/p>\n

Before commissioning another version, ask what will actually be new. If the team has no new argument, example, result or piece of information, repeating the format will not fix the problem.<\/p>\n

Start with what the company knows<\/h2>\n

Take away the popular audio, the standard opening line and the editing trick. What remains should still be worth publishing.<\/p>\n

A team may have a new figure from its own data, a decision customers regularly get wrong, a mistake its engineers see repeatedly, a change in regulation, a comparison clients keep asking for or a result from a recent project. Those are reasons to make a post. The format comes afterwards.<\/p>\n

Brand identity also starts there. People do not remember companies because every post carries the same logo treatment. They remember what a business talks about, how specific it gets, whether its experts actually say something, and whether the account keeps returning to subjects that matter to the people following it.<\/p>\n

A magazine does not need to repeat the same article structure every month to remain recognisable. Editors choose different subjects, photographers and writers while keeping a clear standard for what belongs in the publication and how much detail a story needs. Social teams have less time, but they face the same editorial decision each time they publish.<\/p>\n

The dashboard does not show what people remembered<\/h2>\n

Views arrive first, so teams often discuss them first. Website traffic takes longer to interpret. Branded search may move only slightly. Someone may fill in an enquiry form days later without mentioning the Instagram post that first introduced the company.<\/p>\n

A video that reaches 200\u2019000 people may send almost nobody to the profile because viewers liked the joke more than the business behind it. Another post may reach 25\u2019000 and bring more people to the website because it answers a problem the company actually solves. Both may look successful inside the platform, but they have done very different jobs.<\/p>\n

Profile visits, branded searches, website traffic, repeat engagement and enquiries give the team more information about what happened after people watched. Larger campaigns can test recall directly. Those numbers do not need to replace views or watch time; they answer different questions.<\/p>\n

Marketing teams still need to watch trends<\/a> because they show which openings people tolerate, how quickly they want information and what they pass to someone else. The mistake comes when the team copies the surface and stops there.<\/p>\n

A better post starts with something the company knows, then uses the part of the trend that helps people understand it faster.<\/p>\n

Before You Copy the Trend<\/strong> <\/h2>\n

Before publishing a trend-led post, ask:<\/p>\n

Would the idea still work without the trend?<\/strong>

\nIf the answer is no, the format is doing too much of the work.<\/p>\n

Could a competitor publish almost the same post?<\/strong>

\nIf yes, the brand has not added enough of its own thinking.<\/p>\n

Does the post contain something only this company can say?<\/strong>

\nData, judgement, expertise, access or a point of view.<\/p>\n

What will the team measure after the view?<\/strong>

\nProfile visits, branded search, website traffic and enquiries tell you more than reach alone.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

How brands can follow trends without losing their identity.<\/p>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14012","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-social-media-marketing"],"yoast_head":"\nSocial Media Trends Are Useful. Copying Them Is Not.<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"How brands can follow trends without losing their identity.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.exporis.ch\/de\/social-media-trends-are-useful-copying-them-is-not\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"de_DE\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Social Media Trends Are Useful. 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