Social media is still influential for conversational marketing
Godfrey Parkin from Britefire talks about the fragmentation of social media into niche social platforms.
Parkin started off his presentation by reminding the audience that a lot of us in marketing came from the days of advertising and media and then eventually we moved into social media to look at ways we can get closer to our customers – trying to understand our customers a little better.
Then along came Facebook. Facebook had some golden years but then the urge to make money became the driving force behind the social media giant. Parkin said that, since then, it actually deteriorated in terms of its management philosophy.
Over time, we’ve seen an increasing fragmentation of social media. There’s been a huge concentration around Facebook and Parkin said over time we all became Facebook junkies and those of us who are in the social media marketing space saw this as our future.
He stated that social media is the biggest social revolution that the world has seen over the last five to eight years.
Over 40% of Gen Z favour direct-to-consumer products. At least 52% of their brand discovery comes from social channels according to an eMarketer study. But, increasingly, that discovery takes place in niche networks and in dark conversations – where people feel safe. The phenomenon of TikTok is a classic example of this.
Also WeChat. The reason WeChat is so big in Asia is because it’s got a lot of micro-apps, and it’s constantly doing really interesting things and focused on making people feel good rather than trying to make people addicted to the platform.
As brands, we need to invest more in sponsoring or contributing to authentic niche environments where our target market is going to hang out.
The role of social agencies and content creators must evolve into being more expert in trusted conversational marketing.
We also need to be cognizant of the tools that we’re using to listen to this data. Dark conversational social has become difficult to listen to, encrypted messaging makes it hard to see what’s actually going on, subcultures and tribalism are all growing and making monitoring harder.
Social media intelligence looks for the “why?” rather than anything else. We’re not tracking the stats of what happened. We’re really interested in why it happened. Because if you understand why it happened, you can then start to modify the user experience.
AI-driven social intelligence tools: Metigy optimises owned channels to get better engagement; Leadza optimises ad campaigns; Iris in Brandwatch can do in two seconds what a human analyst takes four hours to do.
Parkin warned that the fact that advertisers/marketers are advertising on some of these platforms, even in doing so benevolently, it doesn’t mitigate the enabling offence of privacy invasion. If you are funding surveillance, you are complicit. And advised reviewing your policy.
Can social become a power for good?
With two billion monthly users, Facebook can impact the future of the internet, society and capitalism.Pay users for their data and participation (Stablecoin); Pay online content creators (like Youtube, Medium);Improve matching of people ;Search: Sharing people’s expertise and experience ;Create a social credit system rewarding people for doing social good ;Provide serious enterprise interoperability solutions
In conclusion, Parkin said big platform social media marketing was a mirage. Social media connects brands with potential customers in their least desirable mental state. If relationships are the goal, don’t be hitting people up as they pass on the escalator taking selfies. Algorithms, sockpuppet accounts, fake news, faux authenticity, surveillance and privacy legislation are killing marketing effectiveness on social. Quality time matters and makes the engagement experience positive. Social media marketing should engage in a niche, not a public forum.
He ended off his presentation by saying that we are at the end of the industrial-age for social media. People are moving to subculture networks and we should follow them.
Source: Bizcommunity
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