Fred Wilson says “the social media phase of the Internet ended” in 2014. In a post looking back at what happened in 2014, he says social media is pretty much dead. Messaging apps have replaced social media apps, says Wilson. “Messaging is the new social media … Families use WhatsApp groups instead of Facebook. Kids use Snapchat instead of Instagram. Facebook’s acquisition of WhatsApp in February of this year was the transaction that defined this trend.”
As marketers are pouring more money into social media it seems that consumers may have moved on. There are some troubling signs to that effect, including the fact that a small minority of users is responsible for 80% of the posts and users have also grown tired of advertisers interrupting them while they are catching up with friends and family.
This author believes that social media is a requirement for brands both to listen to what people are saying and as a feedback channel for products and brands. What I fail to really understand is that while marketers are spending more on digital marketing too many are still ignoring their branded websites and don’t even do the basics like conduct usability testing or website optimization.
There is also a downside to consistently using messaging apps. It’s easy to be passive aggressive using a messaging apps and it may cause some people to loose key, in person, communication skills.
Marketers have to walk a fine line between traditional marketing and social media marketing. Consumers don’t like to be sold they want relationships with brands on their terms.
I have always felt social media was overhyped adding to the wallets of social media consultants so they could sell you more books. Again, it comes down to thinking and getting close to your customers on their terms.
I don’t believe the author of this article is right in his however bright analysis. Instead of ‘celebrating’ the ‘Death of $ocial Media’ you should rather celebrate the death of WEB 2.0. Bye, Bye Windows and the ‘Old Version’ of Google which will be spread over Youtube (Video search), Google local and themed search engines with an enormous ‘$ocial Media Bias’. Google will no longer rank websites only, but also ‘conversations’ and overall $ocial Media Traffic. The challenge is Huuuuge and will swallow most of Google effort in working out what to do with Hashtags (‘#’) and how on earth do you rank ‘conversation’? Unless… Facebook and the other $ocial Media Networks (Team Up?) work out a Brand new $ocial Media search Engine, independant from Google.. > It should be Facebook or Youtube’s job, thus sinking WEB 2.0 For Ever!
As for Windows, the writting was on the wall, and its forray into the Mobile phone Game and Gaming itself should preserve it from totally collapsing… The Game is changing at a fast pace…which is the pace at which you tend to live your life when you are aged 15-to-25, and ‘GifteD’ with the attention span of a GoldFish. Nevertheless, the 15 to 25 years old has never had so much ‘influence’ on “Our” Tastes!
I see SEO as the must today, but it is basically the “sit and wait to be found” approach, trying to be easily found, and do look good when you’re found. All good, but if every marketing agent can (as he/she claims) bring you to the top of SEO, then EVERYBOD can pay to be on top SEO, and then there’s no top SEO again.
And when you think about the local independent businesses/stores, too many of them were told and did get on the social media wagon, but very few are able to tell the co-relation between their social media exposure and their bottom line revenue increase. Marketing agents may swear that there’s a positive co-relation, but none can produce a formula, since none of the social media stuff is easily quantifiable, and as such, is an easy and lovely topic for marketing agents 🙂
My heart goes to the local independent businesses/stores. I do browse LinkedIn, Alignable, and see the places filled with advice and 5-Things-SME-Must-Know sort of content, generated by marketing agents, competing for self-attention in the big digital red sea. Where are the real business/store owners? I see them in approximately 5% of the discussions only, the marketing people vying for the business/store owners’ business took up 95% of the verbose.
Local business/store owners must join the fuzzy foggy social media, since everybody is doing it, and every marketing agent coming to the doorstep says so. But, the business/store owners must rise beyond the layer of social media fog and deploy certain method which is direct and pro-active in terms of reaching individual customer prospects with reasonable high-quality selection.
How about co-marketing with local businesses (you may not even have to go out to meet them) especially by anonymously sharing opt-in customers emailing with profile filtering. (Disclosure: I work with such co-marketing platform provider) This comes with platform/tool to kick-start actual actions with pro-active prospecting approach which brings right-on call-to-action content directly to individual prospect users much quicker – with opt-in prerequisite of course.
Patron pool is something only the local business/store owners can jointly develop and benefit from, uniquely, without the “advice” of the digital marketing gurus out there. Just think about this, how come the marketing agents never come to you with a high-quality email list for your next coupon dispatch? Why? Because none of the marketing gurus can produce such email list for you, or for any business/store for that matter. That’s why they stay emphasizing the fuzzy social media.
Store/Business owners always have their very own customer base, and good portion of them will be willing to opt-in to be in the patron pool in support of local business community with good management and control of the opt-in and preference filtering. Each local patron pool carries its own local signature which is immediately recognizable by the customers, thus provides a “comfort zone” for the promotion flow from the local businesses/stores to the local patrons.
– YJ, PatronPool