Natalie Calderwood is a public relations educator and publicist who specialises in small-business PR. In this piece, she breaks down what the Meta moderation changes could mean for small businesses’ reputations and why having a PR strategy is more important than ever as we slide deeper into a “post truth” age.
With Meta recently ending their eight-year-old independent fact-checking program, along with the rapid increase of artificial intelligence (AI) use, knowing who and what to believe on social media is becoming increasingly difficult.
For small businesses, which often have a strong reliance on social media for building brand awareness and loyalty, this change in policy could have a flow-on effect in consumer trust.
While there’s no need to panic about these changes, these shifts make more traditional marketing methods, such as proactive public relations (PR) for media coverage, more critical than ever.
Does moderation really matter?
As a society, moderation is part of most content we consume. Television networks have ratings systems and content standards. Media outlets have editors and fact-checkers. Whether you agree or disagree with it, we live in a world where people intentionally harm others and moderation seeks to minimise the damage through the content we consume.
Meta is replacing its fact-checking program with Community Notes, which allows users to collaboratively add context to potentially misleading posts. The model has been used by X for a while, and is, in effect, a method of crowdsourcing the truth.
But what does it mean for small businesses when there’s no longer a third-party fact-checking program? The biggest issue for small businesses is the lack of trust in content on the platform as a whole, along with the risk of misinformation.
PR and the new social media landscape
With a traditionally heavy reliance on social media in small-business marketing, it is now more important than ever for businesses to turn to safe content environments that share quality information.
This is where proactive public relations can help. Small-business owners can use media coverage to boost their credibility, making sure they have a solid basis outside social media to build their reputation.
Building a suite of proactive media stories that showcase your expertise in your area will help your audience understand who you are and what you stand for, independent of your social media content.
Media coverage works so well as a strategy because gives your customers another avenue to get to know and trust you outside of social media; another ‘source of truth’.
Social media is still a valuable marketing tool in 2025
While the social media space may seem in a state of flux, it still remains a very valuable marketing tool. I will be continuing to use Instagram as a main communication tool for my business, and I’m advising other small businesses to do the same with a few key points:
Diversify your marketing strategy
A diverse marketing strategy is more successful than relying on one tool alone. Make sure you’re not relying solely on social media as your marketing strategy. Instead, include other tools such as proactive public relations for media coverage, advertising and email marketing.
Remain transparent
As social media policies change, focus on building trust with your audience. Share content that fosters a relationship built on trust, like founder-generated content, and be transparent with your communication. Make sure that even if your audience doesn’t trust the platform, they trust you.
Monitor sentiment
Take note of sentiment around trust in the Meta platforms and act accordingly. There is no reason to jump ship with this shift, but make sure you are staying on top of the changes and how audiences react. If there comes a time in the future where your business or audience is no longer compatible with the platforms, that is the time to make change.
Social media has always been a powerful marketing tool for small businesses, and that hasn’t changed. But the need to diversify your marketing to focus on relationship and trust building with your audience is now more important than ever before.
