Social media statistics are a very demanding study. If you’re in marketing, you are pretty much stuck with these stats. So much depends on them for core marketing decisions.
Exactly how useful these stats are in terms of SEO and real business is highly debatable. If you look at these stats from Statista.com for October, it’s an odd picture. X has sunk below many other social media platforms in user numbers, for example.
The different types and species of social media are also market-defining metrics. Instagram is a sort of endless packet of Doritos, little snacks, any subject. Facebook is more for routine users with niche interests. Pinterest is all over the shop in terms of subject matter. Try finding a market in that.
SEO doesn’t have to depend on social media but can’t ignore it. It’s too big a potential market. Your targeting has to be geared to Google, but your advertising can find customers.
The pervasive negativity from users is pretty constant. X has its well-known critiques. Facebook is more or less target practice for criticism justified or otherwise.
This is a hands-on market for users, and they are directly connected. Any significant movement of users directly impacts marketing.
This is where the spin comes in, and a lot of it. This has been happening since day one, and it’s more or less the same spin, recycled with different dates. Social media platforms typically don’t react, or something burbles out in a press release months later.
The markets and media react, positively or negatively, and the mess just rambles on at its own pace. …But the users don’t. They react rapidly in comparison to other markets and the metrics don’t just hang around either. That’s the big difference in this market.
X may be unique in destroying its own market leader position so quickly and so completely. That stat from October is damning with absolutely no praise. The company’s market position is under very high scrutiny.
X revenue has fallen from $4.5 billion at the time of the takeover to about $2.5 billion last year, and that’s based on a mix of user exits and advertising exits. Advertisers are users, too, and the message couldn’t be clearer.
That doesn’t help marketers. X isn’t looking good in the spotlight. How do you sell a manic social media platform to anyone? How good can your market credibility be?
To explain to non-marketers:
The drop in rankings means X is less visible in the market.
Less visibility means less value in advertising.
It also means less market reach, in this case a huge drop.
That means market penetration is actually reducing.
Any advertiser or marketer would have to look very seriously at refocusing on more productive platforms. It’s like Coca-Cola suddenly becoming Brand X in the supermarket.
Reputation is also an issue. If the little blue bird wasn’t all that well-housetrained, X needs to stay outside. The sheer number of insensitive clangers dropped by X in the last two years is incredible.
Twitter had managed its problems to the point users weren’t “content”, but not actively hostile. Musk may be a great entrepreneur, etc, but this definitely isn’t his area of expertise. Too many wrong calls have led to this situation.
Bear in mind a lot of this was done at the expense of advertisers. They put in money and essentially wasted it. They inevitably pulled out. That’s a natural core sensitivity for social media advertisers. Facebook plays a lot safer but still gets flak daily.
The difference is that there hasn’t been a mass exodus of advertisers from Facebook. However cynical you may be about some aspects of “community standards”, it stays with the basics and the revenue reflects that.
Marketing vs AI vs users and the future
The future looks far more demanding, and far more dangerous, for social media marketing. AI troll bots can be expected. (The old-style bots were a big issue back when, too.) Deepfakes can affect advertising simply by posting anything fraudulent. Social media can be in the crossfire. A class action per ad? Maybe not, eh?
This could be “phishing by social media platforms”, and the ramifications for platforms, users, and advertisers could be huge. Wanna advertise? Maybe, maybe not.
Countermeasures to deepfakes and similar frauds could also take a while. (You could try watermarking ads with an auto shutoff for fakes, for example.) There would also be a gap between chaos and normal business.
Meanwhile, who are you marketing to in this new environment? There are many sub-markets on social media. It’s a bit like Reddit and sub-Reddits. Typically, internet platforms and even blogs diversify and specialize over time. New tech means new markets, in theory.
This isn’t a “steep learning curve”. It’s a hairpin bend. Try precision targeting and stay away from the anything/anywhere type of ads.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
