What we learned at Social Media Conference Cymru 2026

Three of our social team, Lissa, Abbie and Olivia, headed to Social Media Conference Cymru 2026 to find out what’s working on social right now.

After a day of talks, insights and frantic note-taking one message came through loud and clear:

Social needs to feel social again.

There was plenty of love for authentic, human content and considerably less enthusiasm for agentic AI-made content. While algorithms, watch time and optimisation naturally got their moment in the spotlight, the biggest takeaways were actually pretty simple.

Make content that people want to watch and send to their mates. And stop making content more complicated than it needs to be.

Here’s what stuck with us.

1. The algorithm isn't your enemy

The algorithm gets blamed for a lot.

Post underperformed? Algorithm. Reach dropped? Algorithm. Mercury in retrograde? Probs algorithm.

But one of Abbie’s biggest takeaways was simple: if you serve the algorithm, it serves you.

Understanding what platforms are rewarding gives your content a better chance of reaching the people you actually want to see it. That doesn't mean chasing every update or trend, but instead understanding how people are consuming content on each platform and creating accordingly.

2. You have approximately no time to get someone's attention

The scroll is relentless. One (frankly, terrifying) stat shared at the conference suggested the average person scrolls the equivalent of the height of Big Ben every day.

Which means your content has a lot to compete with and absolutely everything needs a hook.

But that doesn't necessarily mean spending three hours trying to manufacture something really clever. Something simple can also grab audiences.

For example, a video we created took off after opening with the brilliantly mundane moment of someone declining a free coffee. Just something unexpected enough to make people wonder what’s going on can be enough.

3. Don't be late

Reactive content was another big theme.

But being reactive doesn’t mean keeping half an eye on TikTok, instead you need to build it into your strategy.

That might mean having templates ready to go, dedicated people keeping an eye on relevant conversations or a streamlined approval process.

As one of Olivia's takeaways neatly put it: “If you're late, you're invisible.”

4. Good content can be reused

You don't always need to reinvent the wheel. If a piece of content has performed brilliantly you absolutely could (read: definitely should) reuse it.

Give it a twist and find that new angle that gives it a new lease of life and the chance to grab a new audience.

5. Make content for the group chat

Increasingly, the real measure of good social content isn't just whether someone watches it or taps like, but instead whether they send it on to someone.

Lissa's notes highlighted saves and shares as key behaviours to aim for, with Meta saying many chats are kicked off by someone sharing a piece of content.

Think about the posts you actually send to your own group chats and use them as a reference. They’re often funny, weirdly specific and relatable enough that you immediately think of that person.

6. Your social strategy should fit in a sentence

Strategy decks have an unfortunate habit of getting overly complicated.

But one of Lissa's biggest takeaways was a brilliantly simple framework:

Get _____ to _____ by _____.

For example:

Get people who live nearby

to visit the centre

by creating FOMO.

Who are you trying to reach? What do you want them to do? And how is your content going to make that happen?

If you can't explain your social strategy simply, adding another 46 slides probably isn't going to save it.

What are we taking back to TCE?

For all the platform updates, algorithm conversations and new tools flying around social right now, our biggest takeaway from Social Media Conference Cymru was reassuringly human.

Make content for people, rather than for their feeds.

Ultimately, the content that travels is still the stuff that makes someone stop, watch, laugh, and then either save it or send it to someone else.

Turns out the future of social media might actually be being more social. Who'd have thunk it, eh?