As user uptake of social media flattens we must ask: ‘how will social marketing strategies evolve to suit the new reality?’

Passe social?

In an article entitled ‘Why Using Social Media is a Thing of the Past’, Zen Media CEO Shama Hyder asserts that Millennials and Gen Z are deleting social media accounts because they’re annoyed by brands targeting their feeds.

Hyder says ‘marketers must cease to view social media platforms as simply a marketing channel and leverage it instead as one prong of a larger strategy and source of customer insight.’

As evidence, Hyder mentions an unreferenced statistic: ‘77 percent of marketers rely on at least one dedicated social media platform,’ she says, ‘but less than half generate ROI from this strategy’.

The numbers would seem more reliable if Hyder clearly referenced her sources.

Experiences on streams

Meanwhile, Jason Costa cites an Edison Report from March to conclude that streaming audio and video content will  become the dominant reach method of the near future.

So, Costa reckons that companies’ online strategies must start building social experiences around that sort of content.

Despite the sometimes-inflammatory language, it seems they agree: social will stick around, but the way we think of it must evolve as consumer behaviour towards it changes.

Conversational comms and social experiences both sound familiar: are Hyder and Costa truly signalling new directions, or merely putting spin on existing best practice?

Copy Transmission is a Melbourne-based agency :: Better Brands. Loud & Clear.