Adapt or die. Evolve with your audience

The social media apps war. In my opinion, one of the greatest challenges marketing has nowadays, is that the industry, like many others, has evolved incredibly fast. The problem comes when our mind doesn't. Many people are still holding tight to old patterns, traditional protocols that are not efficient anymore.?

Perhaps, some kinds of jobs or services are not set in the need to update themselves constantly, but we as marketers have to. It's crucial. Let me give you some examples:

The audience modifies their channels of content consumption. That's actually why the apps go nuts trying to improve the algorithms and adding new features to their platforms that make it, for their users, worth staying. I'm aware you have observed the war Instagram, Tiktok and Youtube Shorts have. They all want to do the same because the new trend is short, quick videos that keep people entertained for hours and hold them on their platforms.?

What's the problem? It's difficult for apps to follow the pace of the audience. Life speed is more and more hectic, and people are often unpredictable. We have seen, for instance, Instagram add and remove features in a matter of months several times, being sure they were going to love it. But they just didn't understand what was going on.

Also, I think, personally, that the problem they have is to try and imitate each other just because THAT specific thing is successful for them. Platforms are useful for different things and to advertise or create awareness about different kinds of content. Instagram is great to convert into sales, for many reasons. The app has been there since 2010. Impressive, right? Man, I feel so old.?

Anyways, Instagram has a fond spot on the audience, even the young ones. We were so disappointed when they wanted to fight for the first line in the battle with Tiktok and they started leaving in the shadows the posts with images and awarding the videos. A lot of people weren't comfortable sharing videos. Me, myself, Mar, I didn't like the idea. Photography is extremely beautiful and interesting, and they were taking that away from us. That was a mistake, Mr Instagram.

So much so, that they retreated a few years later and now you can have as much visibility with an image as with a video. Because there's a huge portion of the audience that STILL LOVES PHOTOS!?

That was a bad move about not adapting to their audience, but to the neighbour's audience.?

Why is that? TikTok is pure entertainment, it has replaced TV shows. Now we watch snippets of the shows we like, which are intense and selected by the creator to be interesting and short. That's awesome, right? No more commercials, no more going through the tedious part of an episode to hear what you want to hear. Does that sell??

Is that a bad thing? Yes and no. We're evolving. And denying actual facts of statistics and user behaviour just because you're holding to the past, it's not very smart. Because there are a lot of intelligent marketers looking to be the first in the vanguard.?

This said, Tiktok is great to showcase your content. Shows, podcasts, video games, filmmakers... bands! Why? Because people don't want to buy, want to watch. If they like it, they will take care of finding it. TikTok has the main reason to be on "sending a message". Do you have something to say? Make a video on TikTok. If it's controversial or highly interesting, within hours can have an audience of millions. But no sales. Well, maybe that's not your goal. Sales have a process.

The ads don't look for a sale, they look for a click. I'll dive into this another time. Too wide of a field!?

TikTok - exposure.

Facebook - conversation

Instagram - sales

Youtube - education (even if it's educating your customers or clients about your services or persona)

Let me conclude. Sometimes, the tree doesn't allow us to see the forest. When you are using these platforms, relax. Observe the behaviour of the users, and decide how to optimize your strategy.?

#SocialMedia #SocialMediaMarketing #DigitalMarketing #TBMmarketing