Tomorrow evening I’m speaking to a class on social media marketing at Northeastern University in Boston. My news for them: sorry, but you’re late. The party’s over.
Brands can still use social media for connecting with influencers, social selling, and certainly for highly targeted paid ads (each platform has a different way to do that). But the idea of using social media for publishing and amplifying content is decreasingly relevant.
The average Facebook or Twitter post is only seen by 2 or 3 percent of a brand’s followers unless it gains considerable engagement. This week Snapchat announced that it’s dividing its Stories tab between friends-only and brands, sort of like Gmail’s Primary and Promotions tabs.
People on social media are simply more interested in posts from people, not from brands.
And then I ran across this on Twitter, that well-known cesspool of bots and harassers (and bots who harass). A verified journalist with 50,000+ followers (97% real, according to Twitter Audit, which is the highest rate that I’ve ever seen) discovers that she can avoid harassment by changing her location to virtual Germany…
Countless people have reported being harassed on Twitter. It’s clearly one of the biggest problems with the platform. Why doesn’t Twitter treat everyone like it treats Germans?
