For more than a decade, I have lived and breathed the "click." In the early days of my agency, my success was measured by a single metric: how many people did I successfully move from a search engine to a client’s landing page? If that number went up, I was a hero. If it went down, we had a problem. But as I sit in my office in 2026, looking at the shifting sands of the digital landscape, I have to be honest with you: the click is no longer the king of the mountain .
I’ll never forget the moment a friend messaged me saying, “I bought that cleanser because I saw you post about it.” I wasn’t sponsored. I wasn’t even trying to promote anything. I was just being me—sharing something I genuinely liked. That’s when it hit me: we all have influence. You don’t need a blue checkmark or thousands of followers to impact someone’s buying decision.