Why Are Celebrities and Artists Shifting from Social Media to Text Messaging?

Why Are Celebrities and Artists Shifting from Social Media to Text Messaging?

My friend Jefferson Graham of USA Today reached out to talk about Community, a new conversation platform that promises direct and instant communication at scale between a brand, celebrity, artist, personality and their 'community', via text messaging.

Cue the record scratch.

Text messaging?

But we live in a world of social media...you know, "social" media?

The great social experiment that is social is still evolving. Some might argue that in many ways, platforms have cultivated anti-social behaviors. Don't get me wrong, I enjoy my connections on the platforms I use. I've had to though, over the years, especially recently, curate my networks to continually shape creative, productive and fulfilling engagement.

The idea of Community is to bring 1:1 engagement using a platform that still after all these years, thrives as such, text messaging.

Did you know that 90% of text messages are opened within the first 3 minutes?

Maybe they're on to something...

I wanted to share the conversation I had with Jefferson with you here. I'd also love to hear your thoughts on the platform.

USA Today: Want to text Amy Schumer or Paul McCartney? Community can help

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Over the years, social media has, app by app, helped celebrities build closer and closer connections with their fans. Going back to the early days of Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Snap and now TikTok, etc., made it so that direct to fan relationships could flourish, without the traditional publicists or fan teams speaking on their behalf all the time. But even though this is supposed to be ‘social’ media, the platforms ultimately owned the data and the audiences. Plus ever-evolving algorithms pretty much guaranteed that fans didn’t always see every or most updates.

Since social media gave everyone a voice, it complicated the attention economy in a way that made it almost impossible for meaningful engagement to thrive at scale. Attention became a currency that was spent and overspent on every platform. Everyone, not just celebrities, was craving attention at all costs. The onslaught of updates coming from everyone and everywhere resulted in plummeting engagement.

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Then services like Cameo came along, and for a fee, celebrities could send personalized videos to fans. It was a reminder of what one-to-one engagement looks like and why it’s so special. 

Now, with tCommunity, celebrities are betting on text messaging to further that personalized engagement through the semblance of one-to-one connectivity. 

Is it always the celebrity reaching out? 

No. 

But text is a very direct and personal medium. It’s platform agnostic. It creates a closer sense of belonging and engagement and that’s what communities are all about. I bet celebrities will actually start to feel more compelled to engage everyone personally because of the very human nature of direct engagement.

It's important to note that Community will also need to figure out how to deal with trolls and haters. We live in a time when social media has emboldened everyone to say things publicly and directly. There's nothing preventing anyone from sending a text to a celebrity full of profanity or hate. Ensuring that those don't go through is something Community's algorithm will have to tackle.

You can read Jefferson's full story over at USA Today.

Brian Solis, Digital Analyst, Author, Keynote Speaker

Brian Solis is world-renowned digital analyst, futurist and business advisor. He is also a sought-after keynote speaker and an 8x best-selling author. Brian's research and work focuses on digital transformation, innovation and disruption, experience and service design, CX, and culture change. Invite him to speak at your next event or bring him in to your organization to challenge and motivate colleagues and executives. Partner with him on custom research, thought leadership development and advisory work.

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- Stephane Lamoureux -

Senior Executive | Organizational & Digital Transformation | Global Experience

5 å¹´

Challenge is most channels are overcrowded and the critical message gets lost in the sea of messages. Having the ability to use a channel that can bring 1to1 interaction (has to be interactive with wnd user), target the user with what THEY want and not simply mass messaging, will create a hook with the end user. Making all this work together is the challenge but rewarding when you can.

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Marc Romano

Managing Partner, Founder, First Principle Group(FPG), Porsche 911 Enthusiast

5 å¹´

Might help to address the issue defined in Attention Economics.?Attention Economics is an approach to the management of information that treats human attention as a scarce commodity, and applies economic theory to solve information management problems. Put simply by Matthew Crawford, "Attention is a scarce resource—a person has only so much of it. So as content has grown increasingly abundant and immediately available, attention becomes the limiting factor in the consumption of information. Our mental capability is limited and our receptiveness of information is hence limited as well. Attention is used to filter the most important information from a large pool of information surrounding us in the digital age. Social media is is the greatest provider of irrelevant information. So if text messaging can address this by promoting brevity and getting to the point, it would be a bonus.? Designers of information systems incorrectly represent their design problem as information scarcity rather than attention scarcity, and they build systems that excel at providing more and more information to people, when what's really needed are systems that excel at filtering out irrelevant information. Or am I over-thinking this, Brian Solis?

peter mcnally

Sustainable Applications & Integrated Solutions agricultural ,marine & tourism equipment Business Engineer International Digital Public Infrastructural Development ai???? ???? internal teams, mega explorer. ServiceNow

5 å¹´

Any one to one would do me......

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?? Peter Syme ??

Strategic Travel & Tourism Advisor | Speaker | Travel Tech Advisor | Podcast Host | Adventure Specialist | Community Building

5 å¹´

When we first started using FB messenger in the business years ago we were getting 99% open rates. So far this year we are at 88% but when you compare that to email at 20-25% then messenger wins every time. We now get as many enquiries via messenger apps as we do via email/phone?

Shaili Zaveri

Life is too Short for REGRETS! So take more risks and say YES to all the challenges

5 å¹´

I am not sure but I do believe that live conversations can add a special touch in the promotion

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