Brands are creating more content than ever before, yet much of it feels emotionally interchangeable.
The problem is not volume.
It’s that many companies have optimized their content for safety, consistency, and approval while unintentionally stripping away the humanity that builds trust.
And customers can feel the difference.
Every platform is now flooded with polished content, AI-generated copy, executive thought leadership posts, carefully approved messaging, and algorithm-optimized campaigns. Everyone is posting constantly. Everyone is trying to build visibility.
Yet so much of it disappears the second people scroll past it.
Because content alone is no longer the differentiator.
Humanity is.
That’s why the brands people remember are often the ones willing to sound human online. Not perfect. Not performative. Human.
What Social Penetration Theory Teaches Us About Brand Trust
Over the past month on the Social Media CX Podcast, Brooke Sellas has been exploring Social Penetration Theory, sometimes called “The Onion Theory,” a communication framework developed by psychologists Irwin Altman and Dalmas Taylor that explains how relationships deepen over time.
The theory moves through four layers:
- Clichés
- Facts
- Opinions
- Feelings
Most brand content never makes it past the first two layers.
Earlier in this series, Brooke explored why so much brand content struggles to build loyalty in the first place. The problem is not always the quality of the content itself. Often, it’s that the relationship never deepens enough to create emotional investment.
Most companies stay stuck at the surface level because sounding emotionally honest online still feels risky for many organizations. Especially large enterprise brands.
But the deepest relationships, whether personal or professional, are never built at the surface level.
They are built through trust.
That final layer in Social Penetration Theory is called “stable exchange,” and Brooke argues that the word stable matters more than ever right now.
“Stable relationships are not performative. They’re built through consistency, honesty, empathy, and repeated moments of trust over time.”
That applies to customer relationships too.
Why So Much Brand Content Feels Forgettable
One of the biggest mistakes brands make on social media is treating it like a broadcasting channel instead of a relationship tool.
Companies say they want community, loyalty, trust, and advocacy while still communicating almost entirely through polished corporate messaging and promotional content.
But people do not build emotional connections with messaging that feels manufactured.
That realization became the foundation of B Squared Media after Brooke Sellas was laid off during the recession in 2009.
At the time, she had left a lucrative real estate career to work in nonprofit because the mission genuinely mattered to her. Her sister has cystic fibrosis, and working for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation felt deeply personal.
When she lost that job, it forced her to rethink not only her career, but how relationships and communication actually work.
At the same time, social media was exploding. Brands were rushing onto platforms, but most were using social media like a megaphone instead of a conversation tool.
They were posting constantly and wondering why nobody responded.
That disconnect became a major theme throughout this series, especially in the discussion around why valuable content still gets ignored online. Informative content alone is no longer enough to build emotional connection.
Brooke kept coming back to one central idea:
“Nobody builds trust through one-way communication.”
That realization eventually became the philosophy behind B Squared Media:
“Think conversation, not campaign.”
Why Human Content Performs Better in the Age of AI
One of the biggest misconceptions about authentic content is that people assume it means oversharing.
It does not.
Authentic storytelling simply means communicating in a way that feels emotionally honest and recognizable to another human being.
That is why emotionally resonant content performs differently online.
People do not just passively consume it. They respond to it emotionally. They save it, share it, send it to colleagues, and comment with their own experiences because something about the content made them feel understood.
That kind of engagement is fundamentally different from performative engagement.
And right now, it matters more than ever because AI can already generate polished content at scale. It can summarize articles, create captions, mimic tone, and produce endless variations of “good” content.
What it still struggles to replicate is lived experience.
“The story only you can tell still matters.”
That may become one of the biggest competitive advantages brands have moving forward.
Especially as audiences become increasingly overwhelmed by what Brooke describes as the “sea of sameness” online.
Why Perfection Often Weakens Customer Trust
One reason emotionally honest content stands out so much right now is because genuine vulnerability is still surprisingly rare online.
Most organizations want every campaign to feel successful. Every story to feel polished. Every message to sound approved.
But perfection often creates distance instead of trust.
People relate to honesty far more than perfection.
Some of the strongest brand content online comes from leaders willing to talk openly about:
- failures
- difficult decisions
- lessons learned
- uncertainty
- mistakes
- moments that shaped their perspective
Not because vulnerability is trendy, but because honesty signals something important:
This brand is real.
That same principle applies to customer care.
One of the biggest differences between transactional customer service and relationship-driven customer care is empathy. Customers can immediately tell the difference between scripted responses and genuine human acknowledgement.
There is a huge difference between:
“Here are the steps to resolve your issue.”
And:
“I understand why that would be frustrating. Let’s figure this out together.”
One feels corporate.
The other feels human.
And increasingly, that distinction matters.
Why Brands Cannot Skip Straight to Emotional Connection
One of the most important ideas in Social Penetration Theory is that relationships deepen progressively over time.
Trust is earned layer by layer.
That applies to content strategy too.
Many brands try to jump directly into emotional storytelling before building enough trust with their audience. But emotional content without relational foundation often feels performative instead of authentic.
Real connection requires consistency.
It requires companies to move beyond clichés and surface-level messaging long enough to develop recognizable opinions, emotional honesty, and a genuine point of view.
That progression is exactly what Brooke teaches inside the free Talk Worthy Content Course, which applies Social Penetration Theory directly to content strategy and customer experience.
Instead of chasing engagement hacks or one-off viral moments, the framework helps brands create conversations that gradually deepen trust over time.
Because audiences do not trust brands simply because they publish content.
They trust brands that consistently sound human.
The Brands That Stand Out Will Feel Human
As technology becomes more advanced, the brands that stand out most may not be the ones producing the most content.
They may be the ones willing to create the most human connection.
That is the paradox many leaders are facing right now.
The systems designed to protect the brand, approval layers, scripted messaging, polished positioning, AI-generated efficiency, can also unintentionally strip away the emotional signals that make people trust a company in the first place.
And in a world flooded with content, trust may become the real differentiator.
Not visibility.
Not reach.
Not volume.
Humanity.
If this resonates with you, Brooke Sellas expands on this framework inside the free Talk Worthy Content Course, which breaks down how brands can move audiences from surface-level attention toward deeper emotional connection online.
You can also explore the earlier articles in this series:
- The Real Reason Brand Content Isn’t Building Loyalty
- Why Valuable Content Gets Ignored on Social Media
- When Brand Safety Makes Your Brand Invisible
Read the Transcript
[00:00:00] Why this episode feels personal
If you think about the deepest relationships that you have, the ones that last, they aren’t built on grand gestures.
They’re built on consistent, authentic, mutual investment over time. They’re built on showing up again, and again, and again at every one of those layers until the other person trusts you with the real stuff. That’s what layer four looks like in a relationship, and spoiler alert, it’s also what it looks like on social media.
Hello, hello, and welcome back to the Social Media CX Podcast. I’m Brooke Sellas, CEO of B Squared Media, authors of Conversations That Connect, and today, I want to get a little emotional with you. Fair warning, ’cause I told you last week you’re gonna have to bring the tissues, and I wasn’t entirely joking.
This is week four of our May series on the social penetration theory, what we are calling the Onion Theory, or the SPT for short. And if you’ve been with me all month so far, thank you, genuinely. I feel very blessed to have you with me on this whole journey. If you haven’t, I encourage you to go back and listen to the other three episodes because they build into this one.
This series has been one of the most personal things I’ve done on this podcast, and this episode might just be the most personal of, of all. Because today we’re talking about layer four in the SPT, or the Onion Theory, which is feelings. Nothing but feelings. Anyways. And by the way, if you haven’t been listening, it’s also B Squared Media’s 14th birthday month.
14 years. I still can’t quite believe it. And yeah, I’m a little emotional about it because it’s a big deal.
[00:02:04] The deepest layer of connection online
So today is part communication theory, part agency origin story, part love letter to the work of social media, and of course, all the feelings. Let’s go.
In the social penetration theory, layer four is what Altman and Taylor called stable exchange.
It’s the deepest layer, the innermost part of that onion, and the place where real lasting relationships live. This isn’t the layer where you share facts or opinions. It’s the layer where you share yourself. Your real self. Your fears, your wins, your failures, your convictions, your story. Marketers love to talk about storytelling, but so few of them talk about the vulnerability that’s needed to get to a place of feelings and storytelling.
The key word that Altman and Taylor used, the one that has stayed with me since I first read this in college, is stable. Stable. Not volatile, not performative, not manufactured for engagement. Which is what a lot of that content out there is doing, if we’re being honest, right? Stable. Because if you think about the deepest relationships that you have, the ones that last, they aren’t built on grand gestures.
They’re built on consistent, authentic, mutual investment over time. They’re built on showing up again, and again, and again at every one of those layers until the other person trusts you with the real stuff. That’s what layer four looks like in a relationship, and spoiler alert, it’s also what it looks like on social media.
[00:04:04] Getting laid off and rethinking social media
So I wanna take you back to 2009 for a second. I was working in the nonprofit sector. I loved the mission. I believed in the work, and then the recession hit, and I got laid off. And I remember being, like, crushed, like really, really devastated. I left a lucrative real estate job to work in nonprofit at the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation because my sister has cystic fibrosis, so it meant a lot to me to give back to that particular mission.
I got laid off, I was trying to figure out what it all meant. I thought that was my calling. I really, really believed that was what I was gonna do for the rest of my life. What was I gonna do next? Who was I without this career that I had kind of started to build my identity around? Which, by the way, if you’ve ever been laid off, you know what I’m talking about.
It’s disorienting in a way that’s really hard to describe. But to say I was in the depths of despair would not be an overstatement. But during that stillness, something became really clear to me, and I kept coming back to this communication and communication theory to connecting, really connecting with people, and to the question of how relationships actually form, deepen, and last.
And I kept thinking about the pub crawl that I had created back at the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation to grab young people’s attention for CF, and how we used Facebook before it was even ever, you know, a page, a business page, to recruit almost 8,000 people to this event and to make $60,000 in less than three months.
Like, there was a real there there. Social media was obviously exploding at the time, and most brands were using it like a megaphone. They were broadcasting. They were announcing. They were posting into the void and wondering why nobody was responding. And let’s be honest, that happens a lot today too, sadly, all these years later.
But I kept thinking to myself, "That’s not how relationships work. Like, this isn’t how trust is built." Everybody says they want trust and revenue and loyalty, but like you’re all posting cliche content, which is layer one, and you’re not doing anything to move the relationship forward. What would happen if a brand, if your brand, actually went deeper?
[00:06:39] The origin of “think conversation, not campaign”
So in 2012, three years after that layoff, I founded B Squared Media with the core belief that has not changed in 14 years, which is our tagline, "Think conversation, not campaign." Because the SPT applied to social media is that. Think conversation, not campaign, not cliche, not facts, opinions, and feelings.
That’s layer four as a business model, or feelings as a business model. It’s the belief that the deepest, most lasting brand relationships aren’t built through broadcasting. They’re built through genuine, progressive human connection. One conversation at a time, which I still really believe in. Yes, even with AI, probably more so with AI because of AEO and GEO and how AI answers happen, but that’s a whole other conversation for another day.
So getting back to the feelings layer, what does it look like in practice? After 14 years of doing this, what have we learned? And I can tell you we’ve learned quite a bit, but I’m gonna focus on just a few things.
[00:07:55] Why feelings-based content stands out
Number one, feelings-based content is the rarest and most powerful thing on social media back then and today, right now.
In a world full of AI-generated content, AI slop, the ‘sea of sameness’ as we’re calling it, the algorithm-chasing posts, the manufactured engagement, authenticity stands out like nothing else. Because when a brand is genuinely vulnerable, whether it’s a brand or your personal brand, when that brand shares a real failure and what they learned from it, or when they show the human behind the logo, or when they say something that makes you stop scrolling because you’ve never heard a brand say that before or make you feel something before, that’s the feelings layer. And it’s almost impossible to scroll past that, right?
I mean, it is for me. The feelings layer in social care also, I want to point out, looks like this. It’s a care agent or a social media frontline manager, CMGR, community manager, who doesn’t just solve your problem, but acknowledges how frustrating it’s been. " Wow, Brooke, that’s really frustrating. Let’s work on this together. I want to get this fixed for you." Right? It’s way different than, "I can help with step-by-step instructions." Right? It’s the brand that says, "We got this wrong, and here’s exactly what we’re doing to fix it."
[00:09:36] Why trust keeps people around
Fessing up when you mess up. Accountability is a big part of vulnerability, and a lot of brands, if we’re being honest, just aren’t accountable. It’s also the responses that customers screenshot and share, not because something was cute or something was bad, which we see a lot of, but because somebody was genuinely helpful and human in a moment when they were not expecting humanity.
It also might look like a DM where a customer sends something back after you resolve their issue and says, "I just wanted to say thanks. You’re the only brand that actually responded to me."
We get these way more often than you’d think, and every single one of them still makes me feel something because it’s a big deal.
We’re so robotic. We’re so lacking in accountability and vulnerability and empathy. That this is such a huge differentiator for you just by being empathetic, vulnerable, helpful. Also, I’d like to add, since we’re celebrating B Squared’s 14th birthday, is that the feelings layer in client relationships looks like zero churn.
Because for eight years and running, since we have started delivering social media customer care services to the masses, we’ve had zero client churn for that service. This isn’t a marketing claim, it’s me telling you this is the feelings layer exactly as the social penetration theory said it would work, working.
When you consistently show up at that layer with feelings, vulnerability, accountability, all those things, when you do the work, when you tell the truth, when you go deep, when you stay stable, when you are reliable, consistently you are stable, people don’t leave. They stay.
They refer you more business. They become advocates for your brand. That’s what happens when relationships reach layer four or feelings. It becomes something worth protecting.
Now let’s talk about what this means for your content, because the feelings layer isn’t just good relationship science, it’s also good algorithm science as well.
We’ve talked all month about how every major platform is rewarding conversation over broadcasting, and how comments are getting more reach than posts. This was my LinkedIn example, last episode if you want to go back.
We’ve also talked about how engagement is up on many of the platforms, even though organic reach is down, or, or collapsing, quite frankly, on many of the channels. The feelings layer is where this phenomenon is most dramatic, by the way. Because feelings-based content, authentic, vulnerable, genuinely human, not written by your bot content, generates a specific kind of engagement that no other layer can produce.
It generates I said at the beginning, stories, right? We talk so much about storytelling as marketers, but storytelling comes with feelings and vulnerability because people don’t just comment on your feelings-based content. I mean, they do, but what they’re doing when they comment is they’re sharing their own experiences.
They’re tagging someone, "Oh my gosh, you have to read this," or, "This reminded me of you," right? They’re saving it to come back to. They’re sending it in a DM with a message that says something like, "This is exactly what I’ve been trying to say," or, "Oh my gosh, this is us," right? Storytelling. That’s not passive consumption.
It’s active, it’s emotional, and the algorithms love it.
[00:13:29] What AI still can’t replicate
Here’s the beautiful irony in all of this. The feelings layer is the hardest to fake. AI can absolutely generate cliche content for you. It can synthesize facts. It can even approximate opinions. But genuine human feeling, that real vulnerability, that real conviction, the real story and the storytelling, that’s still ours.
It’s ours. We should plant that flag and keep it and revere it and use it. That’s the one thing that cannot be automated right now, our unique experience and story. Which means in a world that is increasingly flooded with AI-generated content, the brands that show up with genuine feeling are gonna stand out more and more. Not less, more.
All right, so how do you actually do this? How do you access the feelings layer in your content and your care program without feeling forced or performative? Here are a few things that I know work. Tell your origin story, the real one, not the sanitized version, not the, "We founded our business with a passion for customer service."
Please don’t. Please don’t do it. The real one. The layoff that led to the leap. Hello, like what I’m telling you here. The client who almost broke you and what you learned. The moment you almost quit, but what made you stay? Origin stories are feelings layer content by nature because they’re specific, they’re human, and they’re impossible to replicate because they actually happened to you.
AI’s not making this up. Yeah, sure, someone can steal it, but it’s your story. That would be weird. I also want you to think about sharing your failures, right? We love to talk about our perfect curated lives on social. Everything looks so beautiful and tied with a bow. No.
Because when you share about a campaign that flopped or a client relationship that didn’t work out, or the strategy that you were convinced was gonna beat all the strategies ever of all time and then didn’t, and you share what you learned, that’s powerful feelings because you know what?
I’m relating to you because I am not perfect. I fail all the time. Relationships don’t work out all the time. Campaigns flop all the time. Now, instead of you being some perfect thing on a pedestal that I could never be equal to, I relate to you.
I feel more related to you. Failure content is some of the most powerful feelings layer content that exists because it’s rare, it’s very rare that we admit our mistakes, it’s relatable, and it signals something really important to your audience, which is this brand is honest.
[00:16:30] Why you can’t skip straight to trust
If I’m perfect, I’m definitely not being honest. This brand is human, right? Machines may not make mistakes, they do, but humans really make mistakes. I’m a brand that’s not pretending when I share my failures, and trust is built on honesty more than anything else. So stop pretending that you’re perfect because we all know that you’re not, and that’s beautiful.
I also want you to let your care team feel too. So the feelings layer is not just for your content strategy, it’s also for your social care program or social media customer care. When your care agents or your social media CMGRs, community managers, are empowered to respond with genuine empathy, not scripted. Not scripted sympathy, right?
There’s a difference between empathy and sympathy, but real human acknowledgement, the interactions literally will change before your eyes. Customers can feel it, and the conversation goes deeper. The outcomes are better, and the reviews and the referrals and the screenshots that get shared, those come from feelings layer care interactions every time.
Unless we’re talking about the one where you did something dumb or posted something as a script 26 times to 26 different people, and people are looking at you in a negative light. We see that too. Don’t do that. Now, here’s the thing about layer four feelings. You cannot just show up to feelings cold, right?
You hear the cliche all the time like, "We can’t be on our first date and I ask you to marry me." You have to kind of like date the person. You have to earn feelings. You have to earn that trust, and that’s what when we talked about in the last episode on opinions, the pull progressions. When we talked about those pull progressions last week, that’s what the opinion layer is all about.
You’re building that trust gradually, layer by layer, until your audience is ready to go deep with you. So we’re sharing cliches, facts, opinions and feelings, but the majority of what we’re sharing are opinions and feelings. We try to stay away from cliches. We use facts as a launchpad for opinions, and then opinions lead to feelings.
This is the same thing with your care program. You can’t ask for emotional depth with a customer who’ve only ever experienced your cliche layer responses. You’re citing the script. You’re just posting a script over and over and over again. You have to do the work at every layer to get to the next layer.
All right. Woo, it’s a lot. This is what this whole month has been building towards. Cliches to facts, facts to opinions, opinions to feelings. That is literally the Talk Worthy content framework. It’s the SPT applied to your social media strategy, and that is a free course that we built to help you actually implement this layer by layer, piece by piece, in a way that works for your brand and your audience.
So if you’ve been listening to this episode or listening all month and thinking, "Okay, I get it, but how do I actually do this?" This course is the answer. It’s free, it’s practical, it’s waiting for you at bsquared.media. Go to resources, courses, and then under courses, find Talk Worthy content. Go get it, go do the work, and then come back and tell me what layer you’re on.
I’d love to converse with you about this whole thing. I genuinely want to know, and I genuinely have feelings, obviously, about what we’re talking about.
[00:20:20] A reflection on 14 years of B Squared Media
Before I let you go, I want to stay in this moment for one second, because this is the end of our May series, which means it’s the end of our birthday month at B Squared Media and the end of all of the celebrations.
And I just want to say how proud I am of the team, and the clients, and our partners, and all the people who’ve carried that think conversation, not campaign flag with us over the past 14-plus years.
I think that it’s taken us 14 years to figure out how to move past the cliches and facts, and even the opinions, all the way down to the, that trust and feeling layer. But I also think it’s been 14 years of believing that even when it’s hard, even when the algorithms change, even when you feel like you’re on the content hamster wheel, even when the industry’s not ready to hear it, social media is really a relationship tool.
It is a customer experience channel way more than it’s a content distribution channel. It’s a place where real human connections happen. I know because so many of my great friends now I’ve met on or through social media. I didn’t know that when I got laid off in 2009, I was about to build something that would last for 14 years.
I didn’t know that a communication theory I wrote about in college would become the foundation of an entire agency methodology, but here we are. And I just want to thank all of you, to our clients who trusted us with their most public-facing customer relationships, to our team who shows up every single day with the kind of care and conviction that layer four and feelings requires, that it’s built on, and to you listening to this podcast, engaging with my content, being a part of our community, you are the reason we keep going deeper.
So happy birthday, B Squared, and thank you so much. That is my true feeling. Thank you so much for being here, not today, but all month. This series has meant so much to me, obviously. I’m a little obsessed with the SPT. And listen, if this series or the SPT changed how you think about your content or your care program, I want to hear about it, so find me on LinkedIn, drop me a comment, send me a DM.
I want to go deeper with you. Grab that free Talk Worthy content course, and of course you know I’m going to say it, leave me a review. It takes 30 seconds, but it means everything. I will feel like a million bucks. Until next time, think conversation, not campaign.