The State of Social Media in 2018 - should we be worried?

Social media seems to be drying up. Less reach, fewer likes and hardly anyone seems to care enough to comment anymore.

I felt compelled to write what everyone is thinking, but perhaps not saying. For social media marketers, it's a very worrying time. When you look at overall declining engagement rates and the near obliteration of organic reach on Facebook, it's not surprising the future of social media marketing is in question.

With latest stats showing declining social active monthly users and decreased time spent on the top social media platforms, it can be hard to remain positive and motivated when your marketing activity just isn't seeing the same results.

The social media landscape has changed. What used to work well on social will not work now.

The decline in Twitter

Many brands I speak to don't see much value on Twitter anymore, with little engagement and driving the least social referral traffic to websites. Average social shares per tweet have declined by 50 per cent in 2017, compared to 2015, as noted by Buzzsumo.

It's a sad day when I have to declare that social media isn't what it used to be, but the facts are the facts. Yet, this doesn't mean that social media is dead.

People still love social media

Despite organic reach dwindling to very low numbers, making it increasingly harder to see results, we can't ignore the fact that people are still using these social media platforms on a daily basis.

Statista's compilation of the most popular social networks worldwide gives a clear picture of the huge number of active users (in millions) with Facebook, unsurprisingly, still ruling supreme.

Remember when everyone in the digital industry panicked that 'SEO is dead' when Google began introducing algorithms? There were thousands of articles proclaiming the death of SEO, with worried digital marketers wondering how to survive when Google took away visibility of keywords in Google Analytics and replaced it with 'not provided'.

(Apologies if this brings up any bad memories!).

This was the first instance the industry ever truly realised that the power isn't in our hands...it's with the tech giants. And our first lesson in learning how to adapt and be agile.

It's time to change your strategy

Yet, as we all know, SEO didn't 'die'. As Marketing Land clearly points out, SEO simply evolved and evolved for the better.

Back then, those were also uncertain times but as digital marketers, we had to adapt and change our strategy and reporting methods. The algorithm change led to start-ups being born, allowing digital marketers to continue to effectively perform SEO, through the use of tools such as Alexa and Moz.

Search results become more relevant, less spammy and put a stop to the quick-win, 'black hat' techniques which no longer had a long-lasting impact on organic rankings. Over the years, since Google has introduced and created new algorithms to reflect the ever-changing search behaviour, it's been able to deliver more relevant, better search results. Better results = happy users.

Go back to basics. Create content your audience will love

You need to change your mindset to succeed at social media in 2018.

Organic reach is very hard to gain, especially when you compare it to just a year ago. When working for one particular large brand on Facebook, with a fanbase of over 300k, it was fairly simple for me to grow the organic reach of the posts from 1k to over 20k avg. over a three month period. I highly doubt I would be able to achieve the same results with Facebook's latest algorithm change, which focuses on 'meaningful interactions', putting friends posts first, dramatically decreasing organic reach for pages.

So, what's the solution?

Brands are too scared to go against the status quo. But that's what we need to start doing. We need to evolve in our strategies, methods and mindset in order to see real, actionable business results from our social activity.

The people are still there. The opportunities are still there. It's us, as social media marketers, who really need to make the change. It may sound scary and yes, you will receive a lot of push-back if you dare suggest to abandon Instagram (but if you're a IT solutions provider, is this really the best place to grow awareness and gain leads? Go where your audience is. Don't follow the crowd.)

Key Considerations for Social Media Success in 2018

I feel very passionate about this, as you can likely tell, and you may still be thinking ok, that makes sense but how do I do it? How should I approach social media in 2018?

I've outlined what I see as the critical fundamentals for seeing success this year and hopefully the next!

• Focus on the key channels that make sense for your brand - We all know what the top platforms are and for years, you've been told that your brand must be on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Pinterest, Instagram and more recently Snapchat. However, you need to look at the active users and demographics of those people using each site, and most importantly, how are those people using that site? Many people proclaim Twitter as a dead-end platform, but it's actually got a very niche engaged community. Pinterest, for example, is huge in America. In the UK - not so much. However, if you're a wedding company or furniture company, it makes complete sense to be on Pinterest because of how people use that platform - it has a highly engaged subset of higher-income female consumers, using it for purchasing decisions.
• Re-think your content strategy - This is essential to success on social media. Your content strategy needs to be really strong and your brand needs to have a personality that is instantly recognisable, just from the tone. Think quality, instead of quantity. If you spent a week planning and creating one great piece of content, this is a much better approach than posting 15 X a week of lower quality content just so you can hit your reach and impressions targets. Think about what problems your brand solves when customers purchase. Then dig deeper and ask, ok, why are they buying this? Instead of thinking, let's talk about floaty summer dresses, why not talk about the best places to go in London to wear floaty dresses? Add value, interest or entertainment. And stop writing lacklustre copy. Don't write like everyone else.
• Think big - It's time brands focused on larger campaigns, instead of always-on activity. In today's social landscape, a holistic, multi-channel approach is the best way to make maximum impact. Plan big campaigns that run offline, as well as across the website, email, social and your app (if you have one). If you don't have a store, why not create a branded pop-up experience and tie it in with social media? Get people talking about you offline, as well as online. We all know the influence of word of mouth marketing!
• Stop posting for content's sake - I think this one is pretty self-explanatory. We all know what boring, lame content is. Don't post it if it adds no actual value. You don't have to post twice a day on Facebook because that's what 'best practice' gurus tell you.
• Paid social is a must-have - Bad news for the majority of B2C start-ups and SME's. It's now very hard to grow your online following, reach your customers and engage them without any paid social. Set aside a budget for paid social. If you don't have much to play with, stick with Facebook/Instagram advertising as it's the most cost-effective with really in-depth, highly targeted options. You will see results from paid Facebook ads with as little as ￡200 a month if you're smart with the copy, creative and targeting.
• Be transparent with your influencer marketing - Consumers have clocked onto influencers pushing products they don't necessarily use themselves. This has caused a backlash on many influencers posts, with people writing negative comments about the obvious product placement. My advice here would be to stop paying influencers for one-off posts and see them as a long-term investment. Create brand ambassadors out of influencers who do use your product. Create real and transparent partnerships with them and co-create content to reach their highly engaged audience.

I'd love to hear from brands, entrepreneurs and fellow digital marketers on this topic and whether they're struggling to see any ROI from their own social media activity.

Do you agree that we need to stop following the crowd, throw away the 'handbook' and start thinking big?

if social media isn't delivering results, with the top three platforms experiencing