What Has Changed And Not Changed In Social Media.

The first edition of my book Social Media Strategy was published in 2015. When I went back to update the second edition I learned that many things have changed in social media, but some things have not changed. How should your approach to social media adjust based on new developments? What is the same that you may still be missing? This is a summary of what I discovered in analyzing social media updates over the last three years.

New tools, tactics and features have emerged.

One major development has been the rise of live video. Interestingly live streaming video has been around on the Internet since 2007 with services like Livestream and Ustream.

Live video came into real prominence with the launch of live streaming video mobile apps. In 2015 live video took the stage at SXSW with the launch of Meerkat. Periscope was only a couple of weeks behind. Then Blab and Facebook Live were launched. In less than two years Meerkat and Blab were gone. Periscope was bought by and integrated into Twitter. In 2016 Facebook launched Instagram Live. YouTube now has live streaming video and Twitch is the Amazon owned live streaming video app for gamers.

If you have not added live video to your social media activities start looking into it now. Brands today need to seriously consider live video for its reach, engagement and creative possibilities.

Influencer marketing has taken off.

Three years ago we talked about influencers in the context of brand evangelism. Loyal fans and employees where recruited and equipped to become brand ambassadors. Businesses developed relationships with customers and trained employees who voluntarily advocated for the brand. Marketers built their own communities of influencers with programs such as the Lego Ambassadors where super fans were rewarded with exclusives, perks, free products and trips.

Today this process has been formalized. Influencer marketing focuses more on finding people with a high level of influence and pays them for specific campaigns. Now influencer marketing agencies, networks and software like TapInfluence automates influencer discovery, payment and content creation. Micro-influencer marketing has also become a popular strategy where brands partner with people who have smaller followings but have a highly engaged audience in a relevant niche. Are you leveraging social media influencers? Influencer marketing is the fastest growing part of social media strategies.

Paid social media has gone from an experiment to a necessity.

Three years ago paid social media was called native advertising and it was a small way to support organic social media efforts and a way to reach new audiences. It was also available on only a couple social networks like Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.

Today paid social media is a required part of most social media strategies to reach new audiences, but also your own fans on the most crowded social networks. The need for paid social advertising has increased as organic reach, or the percentage of followers or fans that see brand posts, has decreased significantly. Most top social networks now offer paid social media options including Snapchat, Pinterest, Yelp and even Reddit.

No matter how much paid social media grows, it is important to note that paying for reach does not replace the need for creating valuable content. Paid social media may buy exposure but it does not buy engagement and action that still requires quality content. The kind of content you create for organic social media posts.

Some social platforms faded away. Others became more important.

In the update of the book I removed significant sections on social media channels such as Google+, Flickr, and Citisearch. Other social media platforms and categories have been added. Snapchat has grown up to become an important part of many social media strategies.

Other niche social channels have become important for businesses in certain categories such as TripAdvisor for travel related business and Amazon Reviews for brands with e-commerce products. The entire category of Messaging Apps have grown in use and brands are now adding a presence on WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, Kik, Viber and Line.

If you haven’t reviewed your brand social media accounts in a while it may be a good time to conduct a social media audit to ensure you are on the right platforms for your objectives and target market.

What has not changed is the need for a social media strategy.

You can’t succeed by chasing the latest platforms, tactics and features or simply increasing content on existing social accounts. Brands need a solid social media strategy that works for today and three years from now. This is a mistake brands make even after being in social media for years and why nearly half of marketers are unable to show the impact of their social media investments.

For marketers, advertisers and public relations professionals to succeed at social media, they must first start in a place rooted in their distinct situation and drive a strategy of choosing social platforms and creating content based on their business objectives and target audience. Integrating social with other business functions and adding the right tools and metrics will connect your social media actions to broader business goals from the beginning. Then social media will not be an end unto itself and real ROI can be found.

Because of this gap in business knowledge spending in social media has failed to meet previous expectations. The initial hype over social media is dying down and management will eventually stop paying for engagement that doesn’t lead to bottom line action.

Social media knowledge is becoming an expectation in most marketing communication professionals jobs and social media professionals will need to expand their business knowledge to see the big picture and talk the language of management. As social media will inevitably change more tomorrow the need for a solid social media strategy will not change. What are the biggest adjustments you have made in the last couple of years?