The Big Social Media Changes: What’s A Marketer To Do Now?
Social media is in a state of flux. With Twitter being bought by Elon Musk and Facebook laying off thousands of employees, it’s hard to know what’s going to happen next.
As a social media user and especially a marketer, you need to be prepared for anything as it is changing quickly.
And as a marketer, you need to be able to adapt to the ever-changing landscape. So remain calm and don’t make dramatic changes to your social media management.
Some users have fled one network for another, It happened several years ago as well when censorship began on some major social media networks like Twitter and Facebook.
But where will it all end? Let’s take a look at the current state of social media and try to predict what the future holds.
Twitter’s New CEO
Twitter’s new CEO, Elon Musk tweeted that Twitter was losing $4 million per day. Add that up, day after day. Elon had said that Twitter’s workforce was too large and placed too much emphasis on content moderation, platform safety, product development, and marketing.
So he trimmed the workforce though I heard he may call a few of the workers back.
Along with the personal changes Elon is making several changes over on Twitter:
- Twitter Blue Pricing — Going from $4.99/mo. to $7.99/mo.
- Adding Blue Check Marks for those who have the Twitter Blue subscription
- Possibly adding grey checkmarks to official accounts, no payment is needed
- Any Twitter handles engaging in impersonation without clearly specifying “parody” will be permanently suspended.
- Furthermore, any name change at all will cause temporary loss of the verified checkmark.
Meta Layoffs Looming
Over at Meta, Mark Zuckerberg is laying off over 11,000+ workers at Meta, as it faces increasing pressure to maximize profit amid worsening economic conditions, and a shifting data privacy landscape according to Social Media Today.
How will this work for small businesses that have Facebook pages disappearing for no reason? It’s been hard enough trying to reach anyone at customer service who can help.
Will they lower their ad prices going forward? Will the CEO stop spending money on the failing Meta universe? He apologized to his workers for miscalculating the number of hires during the pandemic.
Another factor is the site TikTok which has taken hold of the younger audience who left Facebook and didn’t want to be hanging out with their grandparents on social media. Rumors for years said it would be taken down due to Chinese tracking our youth.
Alternative Social Sites Sprouting Up
Now there are more alternative sites sprouting up — first it was the “right” side after 2020 and now in 2022 — it’s the “left” side like the site Mastodon.
Will mainstream social be able to remain somewhat mainstream? How will this factor into marketing on the social media networks going forward?
If one had to guess there are probably over 100 social media networks today. I used to join everyone one to test them along the way and then it became way too much for one person to do.
What’s The Future of Social Media?
Will it crash and burn like some predicted years ago or will it keep evolving with time?
It’s time to hang on and hold on to your hats if you still work in digital marketing. Time will only tell where social media will head into the future. It doesn’t sound like it will be in the Metaverse either.
