Let me tell you a little bit about myself. I was born with Twitter in one hand and Facebook in the other. My brain has been hardwired to respond in statements that are 140 characters or less and I get an adrenaline rush whenever I live tweet. To sum it all up, social media is a big part of my life.
Why do I love social media so much? Social media is so great, because it is constantly evolving and changing. It requires individuals to be continual learners in order to stay ahead of the competition.
Here are three recent social media trends that I have noticed:
Social Media is More Than Just Likes
For a long time, social media goals and objectives have been geared towards vanity statistics –number of likes on each page, or the amount of likes, shares and comments each post obtains. I wish I could say this mentality is long gone, but that would be a lie. My colleagues understand social media, my direct supervisors understand social media, but my supervisors’ supervisors do not. They are still caught up in thinking that more likes equals more success. Companies need to extend their social media goals beyond just “likes” and shares and align them better with our organization’s goals and objectives.
Social Media is now a Pay to Play Field
This recent trend is particularly true with Facebook. With all of the constant changes to the Timeline, many companies are having a hard time keeping up. If you don’t have the money, no one is going to see your ads. As a result, Facebook behaves differently than other platforms in the sense that brands and organizations must entice their target publics to come to them for interaction and ultimate leads. In my current job, we realize that the youth demographic that we are trying to reach just isn’t going to Facebook as much as they did, so we need to entice them. We use platforms such as Instagram and Vine to encourage them to visit our Facebook page for the full video or article.
The “Social” of Social Media is Disappearing
I feel that social media is becoming less conversation and more one sided. I see more individuals posting content, for the pure sake of posting content. In my opinion, individuals are becoming too lax and general in their use of general media. Instead of commenting on a tweet, you can simply favorite it or retweet it. When connecting with someone LinkedIn, why send a personal message when you can simply send a generic one? To learn about how to put the social back into social media, you can read my suggestions here.
Whether we like it or not, social media is evolving. My advice: Be aware of current social media trends, embrace its evolving nature and learn something new every day.
