Social Media Continues to Evolve; Is It a Good or Bad Thing?
Social Media will continue to change as technology advances. Humans consume information through the means of the various social media platforms constantly. We are being fed advertising, media, content, and so on for most of our days. Does this mean social media managers are doing a good job? We can scroll for hours on our phone through social media being exposed to all sorts of content from stores to restaurants to maybe a quote of the day. It isn’t just used for personal purposes but marketing and branding continue to evolve as technology not only advances but gets better by finding new means of measuring analytics or trends that arise. There is not just one way of doing anything when it comes to social media as every day is different. Now, what is beneficial to Social Media Managers? The skills for this are learnable but the challenging part is how quickly it is changing. It is crazy to think that within the last 10 years we continue to learn social media and we will never know it all since it is evolving. For Social Media Managers one benefit to the growth of the platforms is that they can draw new customers to the clients to which they manage by creating content, posting stories, interacting with them, etc. The downhill to this is although this can be of benefit, “social media is changing- and it’s not necessarily for the better, at least from a marketing perspective [1].” It is becoming harder as there are changes on social media platforms such as Facebook when they minimized content from brands, businesses, and media to focus more on content from friends, family, and groups.
Personally, I believe that after the COVID-19 pandemic, social media has been able to grow throughout the challenging year of 2020 as the world was on lockdown. One aspect that is going to grow tremendously is e-commerce and it is no secret. Who would have thought that at some point we consumers of the media would be able to shop on Instagram? Within the last year, “the global social commerce market is estimated to increase at a 31.4% rate[2],” meaning it will only continue to grow as Instagram is the world’s biggest social media platform.
What works with some platforms doesn’t work for others. Personally I stopped using Snapchat when Instgaram added the features of adding stories. I had read about Twitter implementing stories, called “Fleets” yet i’m not sure if it will be succesful, Twitter is usually meant for quick thoughts, ideas, etc merged into 280 characters but it stays documented and I don’t really know how well it will do disappearing.
The positive side for Social Media Managers is that there is a range of social media platforms that have a different purpose, it is their job to remain flexible and to keep learning the systems as they go, having an understanding of the ongoing ways, tricks and systems as they come is beneficial for the time being. There are different platforms involving unique strategies but there will always be room to learn and grow.
At the my employer, which is an agency amongst the many things we do is we run campaigns and create content and one factor that always remains is staying up to date and on top of analytics which plays a big role in the success of a campaign to give to our clients. I admire the power of technology and social media. Thanks to the improvement of both of these tools we have the opportunity to work with some of the best platforms to execute projects and campaigns.
What I have enjoyed thus far as one of the hats I wear at work as a social media manager is how creative one can get with their content. An ad that is plain and boring or just a simple text will not draw too much attention. Content that is geared towards an audience and is of their interest will have more clicks, engagement, comments, likes, etc increasing traffic. As I mentioned earlier we scroll through content for hours on a daily basis but will only focus on what gets our attention, visuals play a big role for social media managers. “Visual information gets to the brain 60,000 times faster than text [3]. New ideas and creativity play a big role in strategy for social media.
Overall I truly believe that the continual growth of social media could be a positive aspect for social media managers. As easy as it if to grasp each new iPhone that comes out it is learnable to approach the improvements that social media and technology have as a whole. In an article written by Maryville University they state that uman beings are “social creatures,” and “commerce is driven by human interaction[4],” meaning we crave interactions and we drive social media to where it is now a days. It is because of us humans and the power of technology that have given social media the advantage and roll it plays in our lives today.
Sources:
[1] Sheridan, M., Halligan, B., Moorehead, L., Cancel, D., Caldwell, C., Handley, A., … Rhyal, M. L. (2020, December 24). The changing position of social media in 2020: What does it mean for marketers? IMPACT. https://www.impactplus.com/blog/changing-position-of-social-media-in-2018-marketers.
[2] Franklin Chu | Feb 10, 2021, Jul 9, 2020, Bloomberg News | Oct 16, 2020, April Berthene | Feb 9, 2021, Suzin Wold | Sep 16, 2020, Yuval Ben-Itzhak | Dec 16, 2020, & Yuval Ben-Itzhak | May 8, 2020. (2021, February 10). Social commerce is leading the future of ecommerce. Digital Commerce 360. https://www.digitalcommerce360.com/2021/02/10/social-commerce-is-leading-the-future-of-ecommerce/.
[3] Visual Content That Improves Social Media Traffic. Socialbakers.com. (n.d.). https://www.socialbakers.com/blog/visual-content-social-media.
[4] The Evolution of Social Media: How Did It Begin and Where Could It Go Next? Maryville Online. (2021, March 3). https://online.maryville.edu/blog/evolution-social-media/#whats-next.
