From social graph to interest graph: targeting after the feed
Platforms stopped showing people what their friends posted and started showing them what they might watch. That change rewrites targeting.
Quick brief
- Audience-building strategies still assume distribution follows the follower graph.
- Major platforms now rank primarily on demonstrated interest rather than social connection.
- Follower counts have weakened as a predictor of reach, and content quality has strengthened as one.
- Target the interest, not the demographic, and treat every post as if it will meet a stranger.
What changed
The social graph distributed content along relationships: you saw things because you knew someone. The interest graph distributes along demonstrated behaviour: you see things because the system has inferred what holds your attention. The practical effect is that a brand with no audience can reach one, and a brand with a large audience can reach nobody.
What each platform actually offers
- Meta platforms segment heavily on behaviours, interests and lookalike modelling.
- LinkedIn segments on professional attributes — role, seniority, company, industry, skills.
- TikTok segments on interest categories, creator affinity, and device and connection attributes.
These are different questions dressed as the same control panel. A LinkedIn audience is defined by who a person is at work. A TikTok audience is defined by what a person watched last week. Treating them as one media plan with three sizes of the same asset wastes both.
Personas built from demographics survived this shift almost unchanged, which tells you they were never doing much work in the first place.
Rebuilding the persona
A useful persona in an interest-graph world describes what a person is trying to do, what they already watch and read, and what would make them stop scrolling — not their age bracket and job title. It is a description of attention, not of identity.
The bottom line
Reach is now earned per post rather than accumulated per follower. That is harsher for incumbents and considerably fairer to everyone else.
Rewrite one core persona using only observable behaviour — what they watch, search and follow. Plan the next campaign against that version and compare performance.
Sources
- Kris Granger — Storytelling for Brands — Session 4, Arthur Lok Jack Global School of Business (1 Jan 2026)
- Kris Granger — Digital Strategy Certificate programme notes (1 Jan 2026)