From broadcast to belonging

This is Part 2 of a three-part blog series on community and culture from the CMA Brand Council. Read Part 1 here.

How community and culture are evolving on social media in 2026 – and how brands can stay ahead

In today’s age, social platforms are where so much of modern life now plays out. The question isn’t, “How do we get more followers?” The question is, “How do we build the kind of culture online that makes people feel like they actually belong here?”

Today, that means moving away from high‑volume broadcasting and toward smaller, high‑trust spaces that feel less like a billboard and more like a campus quad, a cafeteria table, or a late‑night group chat.

The state of social: more time online, less tolerance for noise

Social media isn’t shrinking. It’s swelling.

• Over 5.3 billion people now use social platforms worldwide — roughly 64 per cent of the global population.
  
• People spend the equivalent of a full waking day each week on social — more than 14 billion hours daily across platforms.
  
• Average use sits around two to three hours per day.
  

At the same time, users are becoming more selective. WARC’s 2026 Marketer’s Toolkit notes a growing “escape economy,” where people turn to brands and media not for more content, but for emotionally immersive experiences that feel like a break from doomscrolling and “AI slop.”

The bottom line: people aren’t tired of brands; they’re tired of pressure, noise and interruption. They still want connection and discovery – they just want it on their terms.

That’s why social is shifting from:

• Public performance → private belonging
  
• Feeds built for everyone → spaces built for “people like me”
  
• Impressions → relationships
  

Why “belonging” is still the north star

A Statistics Canada study on youth found that a strong sense of belonging was associated with markedly better physical and mental health outcomes. That’s offline data – but it speaks to the universal stakes: belonging isn’t a “nice‑to‑have,” it’s a fundamental human need.

Social platforms are where:

• People look for identity (“who else is like me?”)
  
• People look for validation (“do my people get this?”)
  
• People look for shared meaning (“is this our thing?”)
  

When brands show up as part of that fabric – not just in front of it – they move from being something people occasionally buy to something they feel part of.

Sprout Social data backs this up: when customers feel connected to a brand, 57 per cent will increase their spending and 76 per cent will choose that brand over a competitor. Connection isn’t fluffy; it’s commercial.

Community means different things on different platforms

Community, when it comes to marketing, is not a one-size-fits-all and means different things to different marketers, and different things on different platforms. To create clarity, it helps to think less in terms of individual apps and more in terms of three archetypal social spaces:

1. Content hubs – where culture is discovered

Examples: TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, public stories and shorts.

These are the big stages of the attention economy. They’re optimized for:

• Algorithmic discovery
  
• Fast cultural diffusion (sounds, memes, aesthetics)
  
• Creator‑led storytelling at scale
  

These are where people first encounter your brand narrative, values, and cultural point of view. But they’re not where most of the real community lives.

2. Community hubs – where conversations deepen

Examples: Reddit, Discord, Facebook groups, fandom servers, specialized community platforms, Substack comments, “close friends” stories.

These spaces are:

• Topic‑ or identity‑centric (“women who run, but only at night,” “K‑pop theory,” “small business owners in Calgary”)
  
• Moderated, with emerging norms and in‑jokes
  
• Built around threaded discussion, shared rituals and co‑creation
  

WARC’s work on festivals, fandom and employee communities all points to the same pattern: when people gather around shared rituals, stories and values, loyalty and advocacy outlast the moment itself.

3. Communication hubs – where intimacy and influence live

Examples: Snapchat, WhatsApp, iMessage, SMS, private DMs and group chats across platforms.

Here, social isn’t about audiences; it’s about inner circles:

• Snapchatters send billions of messages and Snaps per day, with approximately 70 per cent of messages happening within the top five friends – a map of high‑trust, high‑impact relationships.
  
• On platforms like Snap, 92 per cent of daily users say they include friends in their shopping journey, and 67 per cent say they’d recommend a brand after seeing it there.
  

These are the spaces where:

• Screenshots of products get dropped into the group chat.
  
• Friends ask, “should I buy this?”
  
• Real purchase decisions and recommendations are made – often before someone ever searches your brand.
  

If content hubs are the billboards and community hubs are the clubhouses, communication hubs are the whisper networks, or “dark social.” These are the features of apps where marketers typically don’t have access. While you won’t be able to dominate them, you can design for them.

From social media to social ecosystems

In this new landscape, trying to build a community on a platform in isolation misses the point. Community and culture form across an entire ecosystem:

• Content hubs spark awareness and emotion.
  
• Community hubs provide continuity, norms and shared language.
  
• Communication hubs translate all of that into decisions, advocacy and repeat behaviour.
  

Your job isn’t to force one app to do everything. It’s to decide:

• Where do we want to be discovered?
  
• Where do we want to be discussed?
  
• Where do we want to be part of people’s everyday conversations with the people they trust most?
  

How brands can stay ahead

Bringing all of this together, here’s a practical way to operationalize a community‑ and culture‑first approach on social.

1. Define what “belonging” means for your brand

Before you pick platforms, answer:

• Belonging to what? What is the shared identity, belief or outcome that unites your best customers (beyond your product category)?
  
• Belonging with whom? Are you facilitating connections between fans and fans, fans and creators, fans and your team – or all three?
  
• Belonging where? Which parts of that ecosystem will live in public feeds vs. semi‑private communities vs. intimate chats?
  

2. Design a channel ecosystem, not a channel plan

Map your social presence across the three hub types:

• Content hubs (discovery): Short‑form video, creator collaborations, big brand narratives, cultural POV.
  
• Community hubs (depth): The places where your most engaged people can talk to each other: Discords, Groups, fandom channels, membership communities.
  
• Communication hubs (intimacy): The formats and surfaces where your content naturally travels into group chats and DMs (screenshottable assets, “send to a friend” CTAs, sponsored Snaps or message‑native ad units, etc.).
  

Your media and measurement should follow this map: reach at the top, relationship and retention as people move deeper.

3. Shift success metrics from exposure to connection

Alongside impressions and CPMs, track:

• Comment reply rate and average response time,
  
• Saves, shares, and DMs per post (especially “send to friend” behaviours),
  
• UGC volume and quality (how are people remixing or referencing you?),
  
• Participation in recurring rituals (live attendance, challenge entries, event RSVPs), and
  
• Community health metrics (churn in groups, active member percentage, NPS or satisfaction among core members).
  

This aligns with what WARC and others see: in a world of shrinking attention and “enshittified” feeds, experiences and relationships become the true brand differentiators.

4. Treat creators as cultural partners, not just media inventory

• The creator economy in 2026 is maturing fast:
  
• Influencers now deliver ROI on par with channels like TV when used strategically.
  
• The best creators are media brands in their own right, with serialized content and deeply engaged fan communities.
  

Winning brands:

• Choose creators for community, credibility and craft, not just follower counts.
  
• Co‑design ideas that feel native to the creator’s world – in‑jokes, formats, storylines their fans already love.
  
• Share data and insight so creators understand what’s working; in return, listen to their read on what their audience will actually embrace.
  

In other words: don’t rent reach; borrow culture – but do so respectfully.

5. Build bridges between online and offline

Festivals, pop‑ups, live shows, watch parties, and local meet‑ups all serve the same function as school fairs and alumni reunions: they turn abstract affinity into embodied community.

Use social to:

• Warm up the moment (behind‑the‑scenes, teasers, “who’s coming?”),
  
• Capture and circulate the culture (live content, recaps, UGC prompts), and
  
• Keep the energy going afterwards (highlight reels, “remember when” throwbacks, surveys feeding into the next iteration).
  

WARC’s festival marketing and employee engagement work both show that when brands become part of real rituals – not just seasonal sales spikes – they see sustained lifts in equity and performance.

6. Make community an internal capability, not a side project

Whether running a school, a sneaker brand, a bank or a beauty startup, the pattern is the same:

• Community is the network of real people around you.
  
• Culture is what those people create together over time.
  
• Belonging is the outcome when you get both right.
  

Social media in 2026 simply makes this more visible – and more unforgiving. Brands that treat platforms as broadcast towers will keep chasing declining engagement curves. Brands that treat them as living ecosystems of culture and community will build something much harder to copy: places people are proud to call their own.

When you move people from passive consumers to active contributors, you don’t just earn their attention. You earn a role in their lives. And that’s the kind of community no algorithm change can take away.

Sources:

• DataReportal / Kepios, Digital 2025 April Global Statshot:DataReportal / Kepios, Digital 2025 April Global Statshot: GWI, as reported in DataReportal’s 2025 State of Social: DataReportal Global Social Media statistics
  
• WARC 2026 Marketers ToolKit
  
• Foran, Helen. (2025). Community and well-being: Exploring sense of belonging among youth. Insights on Canadian Society, October. Statistics Canada Catalogue no. 75-006-X.
  
• Sprout Social, #BrandsGetReal: What consumers want from brands in a divided society
  
• “How We Snap” (Alter Agents study commissioned by Snap Inc., Global, 2024)
  
• Amplified Intelligence attention study commissioned by Snap Inc. and OMD
  

Watch out for Part 3, which will dive into how community and culture can come to life.