RIP Social Media Marketing
Many Social Media death claims
By just searching on the Internet you will be able to find a string of articles claiming Social Media is dead containing a series of statements and facts why social media is in decline.
Many reasons are given – many indications of decline.
- Less interest
- Me-too: early interesting adopter leave
- SOCIAL Media has become Social MEDIA
- Other forms of entertainment
- SEO of Social media kills it
- Spam
- Brands aren’t social
- Followers and friends are fake
- …
The Social Media hype cycle
As with all trends there is the hype cycle of:
- Technology Trigger with early adapters
- The Peak of Inflated Expectations: analysts, bloggers write about it
- The valley of disillusionment: after the first real uses with to high expectations
- The slope of enlightenment: the new hope or way to use it
- The plateau of productivity: generic use guided by consultants and specialists
Is Social Media in:
- The Valley of disillusionment right after the peak of inflated expectations ?
- Or has the plateau of productivity been reached a while ago and now it is going to decay for good ?
Probably the latter as the adoption rate and penetration within the world population has been massive already. MySpace, Youtube, Facebook, Twitter have (or have had) all hundreds of millions of users, thus the point of mass adoption has been passed.
Multinational corporations use Social Media: not so social
Social media has been tried, experimented and used by major corporations for their marketing with very different levels of success. Not just for one event or campaign but multiple campaigns.
Several well known brand names have swapped their budgets for conventional and even Internet marketing in favor of their Social Media Marketing.
Multinational companies have used all the platforms in the hope to have a viral campaign – only a few succeeded (Dove)
Moreover new functions in Social media Marketing in companies were created in order to lead the new marketing.
These are all clear signs that The Plateau of Productivity for Social Media Marketing has been reached some time ago.
Of course multinational corporations are not so social.
- MySpace is ever declining is popularity
- Facebook still has many users but the use per person is declining
- Twitter has been overrun by bots and people spamming and at the same time Twitter having trouble to make money
- LinkedIn has their users have a demand: getting a job or better job
- Google+ might have gotten lots of sing-ups but how few are migrating from Facebook ?
Noise instead of original content on Social Media
Currently original content on Social Media is hard to find. There is too much noise in the content on these social media by people who are marketing or selling stuff.
Additionally the content is getting buried by clever re-targeting advertising on these platforms. The real original content without marketing or sales intentions has become suppressed and almost extincted.
If Social media is no longer the place to be or to spend time for people (this happened to MySpace and will happen to the other platforms too), then Social Media Marketing will decline rapidly too. Moreover as the Return On Investment (Social Media Marketing ROI is hard/impossible to calculate) will decrease too.
Social Media marketing has just become another channel besides printed advertising, online advertising, TV ads, paid editorials, product placement, … and it could decline rapidly and significantly if people aren’t interested anymore to follow someone or to be a virtual friend.
The hype of Social Media Marketing is over.
RIP of Social Media Marketing is near.
Do you still follow people and companies on social media ?
What about your friends on Social Media are they any real ?
More from LEADS Explorer
- Why the dream of social media marketing is over
- The Social Media Marketing ROI
- Social Marketing Media Crapola Vocabulary
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It may seem from the outside that SMM is not in favor. Certainly the buzz on TV and in the main internet outlets (mags, portals) is quieted down. But in real sense I see lots more jobs, work and results in SMM than ever before. Marketing is not always seen while it’s going on. Yet people need the exposure for their products no matter what. Social media will go in the way of the blog and the mini sites and the e-mail newsletters. Some who tried it for a short while are gone. But in business this is what happens all the time. Remember mobile advertising? It’s not dead at all. Remember “push” content? It’s not dead at all. Newsletters are still very useful in B2B. Crying over being over the “hump” is silly. (I also think a little unprofessional) To see an example of “dead” blogging: