It’s crazy out there in SocialMediaLand right now. The upheaval in the social platforms the last several months is making it very difficult to know which end is up. It isn’t just deciding where to post your content but what to actually post.
Threads, Facebook/Meta’s new text-based network reached 100 million users within 5 days of its launch, so it’s pretty clear change is afoot. Other new platforms such as Former Waze CEO Noam Bardin’s Post (now defunct), Jack Dorsey’s Bluesky, Former Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Krieger’s Artifact (also now defunct), among many others are filling the void where Twitter once dominated. Meta created Threads in July 2023 and it remains the strongest contender, beating out Twitter on the number of downloads ratings regularly.
Is social media still worth your time?
If you’re a social media user, I think we can all agree that social media has become very difficult to manage as just an entrepreneur or a salesperson. All the tenets around expressing yourself are still applicable and I’m here to tell you that it’s still a very viable place to build a community and network around yourself or your brand. But the platforms have given up on any semblance of thoughtful moderation, and as such, social media is getting dicier and dicier to spend time there.
Sadly, Twitter’s owner has made many very questionable decisions about the platform (some that will likely be studied in business schools for years to come). Due to these extremely odd decisions, advertising was down 59% through the first week of May 2023.
Axios reported recently that it has ditched on of its oldest ad formats: it will no longer allow advertisers to promote their accounts within the platform’s timeline to attract new followers. A product that brought in $100M annually.
On Sunday July 9th, Matthew Prince (CEO of Cloudflare) posted a graph showing Twitter use has been in decline since the start of 2023, not long after Elon Musk took over the platform. Twitter’s traffic has been steadily decreasing since January and reached a new low in July.
Several weeks ago, Reddit’s CEO Steve Huffman revealed the company would be demanding $20M a year for API access used by the popular third-party app Apollo (who responded that the app would have to close as a result). A planned protest by what was initially a few dozen of the biggest subreddits eventually turned into more than 8,000 subreddits going dark for at least 48 hours. It got worse because Apollo contains features that are vital to moderators with disabilities.
What these CEOs don’t seem to understand is their most prized company asset is the COMMUNITY. It takes years to build and days to dismantle. Once it’s gone, you don’t have a business anymore.
Which brings us to today, and the opportunity you have in front of you.
Even though things are not calm and the future of each social platform has yet to be revealed, there is something really positive happening. It’s causing people to rethink what social media means to them.
Whether you’re a CEO of a large company, an employee at a small local company or somewhere in between, you are representing yourself when you’re online. Everything you say and do speaks to your personal brand.
- How do you want to be perceived?
- What do you want to be known for?
- What is your unique selling proposition?
- What differentiates you from everyone else?
Maybe you’re one of those who are rethinking social media but don’t precisely know where to go next. When it comes to modern social media, the same principles I’ve promoted since the beginning still stand. I’ve worked with literally hundreds of clients and here are the top 5 common social media missteps I see, and what to do instead.
Top 5 most-common missteps during social media upheaval
1. Going after quantity instead of quality. I would take a small group of interested, engaged connections over a thousand disinterested users any day. If you’re starting out fresh on a new platform, here’s your chance to make that happen.
2. Requesting a LinkedIn connection from someone and then immediately sending your new connection a spammy message (the ones I get are 2-3 paragraphs long!). Don’t ask for a sale right up front. No one wants to be sold to the minute they connect with you. Instead, send them a message asking something that shows you’re genuinely interested in their lives or interests. In sales, we always talk about “getting to know your customer,” and social media affords you the opportunity to do that before you approach them for an appointment.
3. Not optimizing your Bio. I’ve noticed a trend in people writing silly or cryptic bios on their social profiles. Hey, if you’re a celebrity, you can get away with it but the rest of us want to know about people we connect with. Take advantage of the free real estate and craft a meaningful bio that gets the right attention.
4. Not building online reviews. If you’re a business and you’re not capturing your happy, loyal customers’ testimonials, you’re passing up a great opportunity to attract more customers. If you’re an employee of a business, online reviews with your name in them appear in search rankings, so it’s vital to develop a process of asking for reviews.
5. Venturing into controversial topics. Think before you post. Even though it’s commonly known that in social situations you should never visit incendiary topics, somehow that rule gets lost when it comes to social media. Outrage drives algorithms and we are nearly powerless against it. Resist the urge to give into the outrage machine.
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