Should social media posts look polished or plain?

Once AI came out, I made all these unique graphics and really cool ways to display things. I think they look awesome. They don't convert.

"No regular person makes those things. Simple text, simple everything. The fancier you make it, the more it stands out as not the content I'm here for."

What does the evidence say?

• A plain post of mine, white background, dark text, no branding, no nothing, did about 2,200.
• Travis, a local Instagram operator who was a guest on my podcast, said his plain carousels, using only Instagram's own text and no branding, grew his account from 30,000 to 54,000 followers, about 8,000 a month. One weekly events carousel with eight events got 140,000 views, about 2,500 new followers and 3,500 shares. His numbers, not mine. His carousels are super basic: about three images, and the last one is always a pitch for the brand. He told me competitors copied the format but put their branding all over it, and they're not getting traction.
• In my Meta ads, creative I thought looked good lost to plain video with text on top.

The logic is the same everywhere: plain feels like user-generated content. It looks like it belongs in the feed. Question-style posts that everyone likes to answer work for the same reason, and they don't need any design at all.

Why does more effort make it worse?

In my words from a call: the more effort you put in, the more quality you think you're making, the more you're kind of making it worse. It's better, but it's worse at the goal you're trying to solve.

Your goal isn't a beautiful post. It's a post people stop on, read and share. People don't click on things they know are ads. They click on things that look like regular content somebody could have just made. What you think people want is usually wrong.

AI makes this stronger. Someone said something I think is true: if they see more than two really well-done sentences in a row online, they assume AI wrote it and stop reading. We're at a point where professional is actually bad, because professional means fake.

Where should the logo go?

Not on the front. Leave it off the first image and put it at the end of the carousel or at the bottom of later slides. On the front end it should feel like anyone could have made it. On the back end: yes, we made this, follow us for more like it.

The Meta ads that work for my newsletters have no logo at all. Just text with a video behind it.

Does this apply to video too?

Yes. For YouTube and shorts, don't spend energy on professionalism or your background. Rough production can actually help, because it makes you more human. Handheld iPhone video beats a studio setup for this kind of content.

I think content everywhere is moving more lo-fi, more human, less produced. A creator sitting at his desk with himself in the bottom corner, just talking about what's happening, is enough. It can be you chatting for 30 seconds about something that happened in town. Production value still has a place sometimes, but it doesn't have to be your whole channel.

When two hosts of a new local brand needed an Instagram intro, I asked them for 30 to 60 seconds, unedited. Even if you stumble over your words, who cares. Say the wrong word, laugh about it. Be real.

What about AI-generated people?

Avoid them in public-facing content if you can. People are getting too mad about AI people. You can use AI in a lot of ways, but the people one really gets a reaction. Oddly, in ad tests they performed better than I expected.

Am I fully convinced?

Mostly, and it goes against my nature. I love branding. I created designs I really like, and I don't even like how those black-on-white squares look. They look crappy to me. But they're clear, and they're what works. If that's what people want, give them what they want. On high-polish design, I was just wrong.

Legacy media brands find this foreign, and I get it. I get annoyed when I see my own ads because I don't think they look very good. They work.

Plain doesn't mean careless, either:

• Execution still matters. When a competitor copied my text-over-background-video ad with a boring background and weak copy, it still worked a little. If a B-minus version works, an A-minus version should work better. Clear text and a good background still matter.
• Set up branding once, then stop. Logo placement, captions and colors are worth a few minutes if the setup improves every future clip. Fussing over one video isn't. Right now, simplicity is so important.
• Pair it with video. Plain carousels plus videos is where I think the gold is.

For the paid side of this, see whether ugly Meta ads beat polished ones.