Scott Steinberg · Consultant, Analyst and Business Strategist
Social media distributed content through people you chose to follow. Interest media distributes it through what an AI tool infers that you want, and the follower count you spent a decade building now predicts almost nothing about reach. A futurist keynote speaker and #1 bestselling strategic consultant to 3000+ brands who has tracked virtually every platform shift since the first one, Scott Steinberg helps organizations work out what that actually changes.
Consulting projects, research, keynote speaker talks, event hosting and thought leadership on recommendation-driven distribution, audience strategy after the follower graph, AI and content system design, measurement, and topics like what interest media means for brands, publishers and creators.
Most organizations are still running a playbook built for a graph-based feed. These are the places where that mismatch shows up first and costs the most.
Feeds now select content by inferred interest rather than by declared connection, which means the audience for any given piece is assembled fresh each time.
Advisory work covers what actually drives selection in your category, how much of your reach already comes from non-followers, and what that implies for how content gets made.
Follower counts were an asset you accumulated and could rely on. Interest media makes them a weak signal, and organizations that invested heavily in building them are the slowest to notice.
Work here covers what an audience asset looks like now, which owned channels still matter, and where relationship-building has moved.
Producing for a feed that judges every piece on its own merits requires different volume, different formats and a different tolerance for things not working.
Advisory covers content operating models, production cadence, format strategy and how to run a system where most output underperforms and a minority carries the result.
Interest media changed who can reach an audience and how reliably, which cuts both ways: newcomers break through faster and established names lose guaranteed distribution.
Work covers what this does to creator careers, publisher traffic models and the partnerships between brands and both.
Metrics built for a follower model measure the wrong things, and the numbers organizations report internally often no longer describe what is happening.
Advisory covers which measures still mean something, how to read performance where variance is enormous, and what to stop reporting.
When distribution is decided by systems you do not control and cannot see, concentration in one platform becomes a business risk rather than an efficiency.
Work covers dependency assessment, portfolio balance across channels, and what a realistic hedge looks like given where your audience actually is.
The obstacle is usually structural rather than strategic: teams organized around channels, approval processes built for scheduled campaigns, and incentives tied to metrics that stopped mattering.
Advisory covers what has to change in structure, process and incentives for a content system to work in this environment.
The shift lands differently by sector: consumer brands, publishers, B2B organizations and retailers each face a distinct version of it.
Work covers what interest media specifically means for your category, drawn from where the change has already played out elsewhere.
Engagements range from a short diagnostic on where a current strategy is misaligned to sustained consulting through a rebuild. Scope follows the decision in front of you.
A focused assessment of where your current audience strategy assumes a graph-based feed that no longer drives your reach.
Ongoing counsel through a transition, joining planning cycles and leadership sessions as an outside read.
Original analysis on how AI and distribution is shifting in your category, published or held internally.
Talks and working sessions where the team applies the shift to their own plan and leaves with decisions rather than notes.
Scott Steinberg is an business strategist, futurist consulting expert and strategic advisor with over 25 years of experience advising more than 3,000 businesses and brands, from startups to government agencies and Fortune 500 firms. He has helped design many of today's bestselling products, as seen in over 1 billion homes worldwide.
He is the author of over 30 books and has published more than five thousand articles covering technology, marketing, leadership, innovation, advertising and digital transformation. He appears regularly on ABC, CBS, CNN and NBC.
He has led seminars, keynote speaker talks and training programs for organizations including Wells Fargo, the PGA Tour, Century 21, Ford, Dell and Procter & Gamble, and has been recognized by the International Association for Scholastic Excellence, Fortune and the 21st Century Icon Awards.
The term for what has followed social media: feeds that distribute content based on inferred interest rather than on the accounts a person chose to follow. The practical consequence is that the social graph, which was the organizing principle of the previous decade, now explains very little about who sees what.
No, and treating it that way in an age of AI and automation is the mistake that most organizations are currently making. Social media strategy assumed you built an audience and then reached it. Interest media means every piece competes for distribution on its own merits, which changes what to produce, how much, how to measure it and how teams should be structured.
Brands whose social reach has quietly detached from their follower base, publishers whose traffic model depended on graph-based distribution, agencies advising clients through the shift, and platform or media businesses positioning against it. Any company that can beneift from increased audience interest and engagement is a potential candidate.
Often a short diagnostic first, establishing how much of your reach still depends on followers versus recommendation, which usually surprises people. From there it becomes either a focused strategy piece, a leadership workshop, or ongoing advisory through a rebuild.
Yes, you can book both keynote speaker talks for conferences or look at custom session formats for different audiences. We also provide consultants, research and advisory engagements.
Describe your organization, where your audience currently comes from and what is changing. Initial conversations about fit are without charge.
What share of your reach still depends on people who chose to follow you, and what share now comes from AI or automated systems deciding to show you to strangers. Most organizations have not measured that split, and it is where this work usually starts.