YATM ✊ | The Next Era Isn’t Louder. It’s More Shared

Hi YATMers, I'm April Boulton, a freelance marketing consultant from Bristol.

I specialise in strategy, content, email and LinkedIn. I work with B2B businesses that have brilliant stories to tell but struggle to get their marketing done consistently.

I'm the thinker and the doer – I write the strategy and roll my sleeves up to make it happen.

I started freelancing when my daughter started school, so I could be around more for her and not stuck in a 9-5.

Here is my recommendation for you. A Complicated Woman by Rebecca Lucy Taylor. It's raw, funny, and a bit messy – she writes about growing up, wanting to be chosen, and the slow realisation that you don't need to earn your place.

📸 This is us in France last summer.

Let's make sure we connect today.

Here I am on LinkedIn

Where I work here

Visibility helped us stand out, togetherness is what will help us stay.

For years, our behaviour is to put the person at the front.

When the internet becomes a never-ending conveyor belt of content, the default response is individualism. The constant question becomes: “What’s in it for me?” and “How do I get picked?”

This has been the play. It’s why we spend so much time trying to understand what it takes to be seen on social media. Yes, I know it still matters.

I still believe in personal visibility and the importance of showing up. I still believe in sharing what you know.

A shift is happening that effectively serves as a survival plan for modern work.

Individualism to Collectivism.

Individualism Gets You Seen. Collectivism Helps You Stay.

The attention economy rewards “me”. It acknowledges the polished story and the constant output.

It also encourages us to look at other people as competition as we fight for the crumbs of attention that platforms hand out. When everyone’s doing that, the cost of being noticed keeps rising. Mark Schaefer called this “Content Shock” back in 2014. Content supply grows, attention doesn’t, and cut-through becomes harder over time.

You can do everything “right” on paper and still feel like you’re pushing a boulder uphill.

Collectivism is the counter-move and it’s what I’ve been paying attention to over the last few years.

Collectivism isn’t “less ambitious,” it’s a different route to relevance because it changes the question from “How do I stand out?” to “How do we move forward (that I’m a part of)?”

Momentum looks like:

✊ People helping promote your work with zero ad spend

✊ Support and friendships strengthening over time

✊ More collaboration and doing more together

✊ Shared identity strengthening continuity

✊ The community becoming the marketplace (the power of the group)

The YATM Christmas Party Proved The Point

Last Friday we had the YATM Christmas Afternoon Party.

It wasn’t “forced fun,” it was part of how we deliver events, where the emphasis is to step into the room and be yourself.

I felt guilty a few days before when I started to put an 'agenda,’ it still needed a format to tie everything together.

YATM events have always been a response to exclusion, not having to fit in (being a proud misfit) and hierarchy. The point is to create a space where people can be themselves, without the performance.

Everyone had a part to play. Ashley Crocker kicked things off with an opener on gratitude and Matt King made the quiz. Even an After Eight World Cup turned the rituals we have of ‘challenges,’ to turn the whole occasion to feel like ours.

That’s collectivism in practice. When people contribute, the thing becomes ours and people stop feeling like guests and start feeling like part of it.

Collectivism is when people don’t just receive what you made, they can shape the original intention into something far more powerful and carry forward.

I’d love our Christmas party to become the moment each year where we close the year the same way, together.

Third Spaces Are Becoming Essential For People

There’s another layer to why this matters now, people need a space where they feel like they belong.

The idea of “third places” (spaces beyond home and work where you belong) keeps resurfacing because it explains what’s missing in modern life. It’s the places you head to where you feel a part of the wider effort or it has an attachment to you. It means it stops being “marketing” and starts being infrastructure.

The alternative is people feeling isolated, competing, clambering to be seen and quietly burning out. I want to build social capital, not watch it decline. It feels good to have shared ties, to participate and encourage friendship. It’s not sentimental, it’s stability.

To delve more into this, listen to Floating Space. A podcast that asks, where do you feel like you belong (Katie Stokes, the presenter is going to be at Creator Day '26)?

Introducing Floating Space

Mar 10 · Floating Space

1:18

So, What Do We Do With This?

If individualism is the ‘broadcast’ era, collectivism is the ‘build-with’ era.

Here are a few tangible moves.

1) Design roles, not just attendance

If everyone is only a spectator or an attendee, you’re running a show. If people have roles where people can step up, you’re building ownership.

2) Build rituals that are slightly ridiculous

The After Eight challenge at the Christmas Party worked because it’s playful, low stakes, and shared. Rituals create “we” faster than any icebreaker ever will (we prove that with the sea every Friday).

3) Rotate the spotlight

Don’t build fan clubs, have an identity people associate with. You can create a network of peers, where people have the opportunity to step up and be seen.

4) Optimise for contribution, not consumption

Figure out, what’s the smallest way someone can add to this? It could be asking for their opinion, it could be an intro, it could be be asking one thing they’ve learned the hard way.

5) Treat community as a people product

The shift isn’t “more content.” It’s building a space where people help each other make progress and your work becomes the way to galvanise people together.

Let’s Round Up

I’m not anti-individualism. You still need your own voice and your own perspective. You still need to make work you’re proud of.

The longer I do this, the clearer it becomes, attention is fragile. Momentum is what happens when people don’t just follow you on LinkedIn, they feel part of the thing you’re building. When they contribute, share it, shape it, and bring others into it.

The next era isn’t louder, it’s more shared.

Share this with someone else 💌

youarethemedia.co.uk/individualism-to-collectivism/

Time Wasting

You type in a phrase and shows you clips from movies where characters say that phrase.

Film Clips, Your Words

This Week Around The Web

GROWTH, CREATION & YOUR INDEPENDENCE

Create something the algorithm can’t predict - from RJ Abbott

👉 The more data you feed into a creative process, the more average it becomes.

Your personal brand isn’t a project, it’s a lifestyle - from Mark Schaefer

👉 You alone can decide what you want to be to stand out.

THE COMMUNITY YOU CAN BUILD

Holiday traditions become acts of community - from Carrie Jones

👉 Pics that just felt good when you look at them and Christmas is coming

The friendship recession - from The People's Paper

👉 We have everything we need, except each other

GROWING YOUR NEWSLETTER

Email segmentation: more sales, less traffic - from Social Media Examiner

👉 How to stop sending generic emails that get ignored.

10 reasons to start a newsletter In 2026 - from Matt McGarry

👉 It's never too late to make it happen (and work) for you

Creating work people buy into...

The message you create and the values you have are at the heart of the space you own.

You build your business from what you care about and stand for, and how that connects with the people you’re looking to reach.

When I concentrated more on this, it meant I wasted less time.

Making that emotional connection with them, showing them the end result of how their relationship with you can play out. Finally, back it up with the small steps it will take to get there. A bit like sticking with this newwsletter!

I'll see you back here Thursday 8th January 👋...

Thank you for being a part of You Are The Media in 2025.

If you are happy to just receive the Thursday newsletter, or you join in with the events in real life, or in YATM Club, it means a lot to have you here.

This is the part I cannot ignore and I haven't done in over a decade. Friendship doesn’t thrive on 'catch-ups,' it's built on repetition. Time, proximity and consistency all matter. The 'see you next week' stuff, is what keeps us here.

I'll still be here in 2026 and I hope you will too. Have a great Christmas.