Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,
Today’s social media platforms are certainly not mutually exclusive. In fact,
most of us engage across several social channels at once. But with competing
platform functionalities announced daily related to data, messaging, search,
and social commerce, are the networks trying too hard to be the same? Are
social media platforms becoming homogeneous imitations of each other? There are
certainly some trends developing—at least across the major social networks in
terms of mimicking one another’s functionality and use. How will these impact
marketers? More importantly, with competition fierce to keep social marketing
fresh, how can brands remain inventive as platforms move toward uniformity?
Here’s a high-level look at how social media platforms are maturing and some
thoughts on how forward-thinking marketers can respond.
Major Trends Are Repeating across Social Media Platforms With the big social
networks in particular — Facebook,
Twitter, LinkedIn, and to some degree, Instagram — we’re starting to see major
trends repeat in terms of messaging, access to data, social commerce, and
search functionality.
Messaging. Social messaging is hotter than ever and the networks are responding
with new and improved options for users to share video and have casual
conversations seamlessly. On the heels of Facebook reporting 600 million users
on its messaging app, Twitter increased its character limit to 10,000 in direct
messages and LinkedIn rolled out its own messaging experience. Instagram
and Twitter (until now) may have dominated the emoji experience, but Facebook
now offers an emoji alterative to the “like” button. With Facebook at Work
mimicking LinkedIn space and other comparable enhancements being made across
channels, we’re seeing messaging as a differentiator sort of collapse across
social networks.
Data. Facebook and Twitter
are in many ways fighting over which platform can package and present the best
opportunities for brands in terms of rich data. In March of this year, Facebook
introduced Topic Data, designed to make content more relevant and
effective for marketers. Twitter responded by transitioning data access to its
own platform and in October announced Gnip Insights APIs. By design, Facebook is more private than Twitter and
has had to toe the line between user privacy and surfacing meaningful data
around popular trends. Twitter users have no expectation of privacy, and the
network has more flexibility. However, user profiles are limited, and that can
be a data disadvantage.
Social commerce. Again, Facebook and Twitter are sparring as it relates to social
commerce, even as Pinterest is a more natural fit. Recently, Facebook announced
a new mobile shopping section with a new native product browsing experience
called “Canvas,” where users can click through ads to check out products. Of
course, this came on the heels of Twitter’s “buy now” button and
Pinterest’s Buyable
Pins.
Keeping Social Media Marketing Fresh As
the platforms begin to mimic one another, marketers will likely face challenges
in understanding how best to maximize each one. However, there’s a flip side to
this scenario: practitioners may also find it easier in the short term to
measure across platforms that are more closely aligned. And in the long run,
homogeneous platforms may result in better social commerce options and more
insightful data. Either way, enduring platforms will need to carve out an area
of differentiation to survive, and those that can’t, won’t last. But are there
other implications as social networks begin to imitate one another? Will
marketing strategies become homogenized too? How will practitioners keep social
marketing fresh? Tailor content to your audience. As social media
platforms mature, the one-size-fits-all approach won’t work, and even as
networks homogenize, messaging must be tailored. Data, both on
audience and content performance, is key.
Social Media is a big part in Digital Marketing Course. Although there are sure to be
overlaps between the different networks’ strategies, audiences will still vary.
As platforms share information with you, that’s what should inform strategy.
After all, each platform still serves unique user needs—for example, LinkedIn
is the go-to for B2B and recruitment, whereas Twitter excels in second screen marketing,
especially for media and sports. Understand data limitations, and don’t
neglect content performance. Facebook is the most powerful network
because the company knows the most about its audience. However, users have an
expectation of privacy and Facebook has to walk the line between accumulating
data and violating privacy. Traditionally, Twitter is a more open network, but
the platform doesn’t have access to robust user profiles. LinkedIn has
incredibly rich data and can provide valuable audience insights. On Instagram,
user profiles don’t exist, as they are essentially a string of emojis. Keep in
mind that there will always be limitations on audience data across networks
that will impact insight, but you can and should figure out how your content is
performing.
Play to each platform’s strengths. Ultimately,
inventive social marketing comes down to learning how to maximize each
platform’s strengths. More than any other social media network, Twitter has
mastered capturing the “real-time pulse” of the world. Whether it’s
disseminating breaking news or gauging feedback on an event, when people want
to know what others have to say in the here and now they turn to Twitter.
Pinterest is set up naturally to take on the role of a visual search network
and may be the right option for prioritizing social commerce. Playing to the
strengths of each platform as it makes sense for your brand is the solution to
a fresh, inventive strategy. In Sum Social media marketing isn’t going anywhere
soon, and as the different networks compete for user attention span (the new
currency), there is some homogeneity taking place. For marketers, this isn’t a
bad thing, and driving business results by building an actionable audience
across platforms is still the best plan.
Network homogeneity through
enhancements in data, commerce, search, messaging and more may ultimately
result in exceptional advantages for marketers—better social commerce options,
improved aggregated insightful data, etc. Savvy marketers will continue to seek
ways to use rich data to both learn about an audience and assess how content is
performing—the key to managing your social media presence effectively. For the
social platforms, those that survive the test of time will undoubtedly be the
ones that have managed to differentiate themselves the most. In the meantime,
as they hash it out, it can only mean better features and more options for
marketers. The never-ending fight for marketing dollars seems to be prompting
the social media platforms to do more—think Instagram’s move from a square
image format, support for direct messaging in LinkedIn and Tumblr, and the use
of stickers everywhere—and that’s never a bad thing.
