Social Media 💬
More addicted than tobacco
Interacting with friends and family across long distances has been a concern of humans for centuries, till now. As social animals, people have always relied on communication to strengthen their relationships. When face-to-face discussions are impossible or inconvenient (like for the Covid), humans have dreamed up plenty of creative solutions (yes, the iced challenge, the cute little TikTok video, youtube pranks🤣)
A little bit of boring history 🤓
The old age, written correspondence delivered by hand from one person to another (in other words, letters) 🙏🏻
The earliest form of postal service dates back to 550 B.C. 📩
In 1792, the telegraph was invented, messages delivered far faster than a horse and rider 🐎
In 1957, the internet was born, finally! 🙌
The first social media website (six degrees) that allowed users to create a profile and then friend other users.
Blogs and instant messaging was born with the old fashioned AOL mail.
Instant messaging tools were actually born that way, enhancing communication between people with BlackBerry Messaging (BBM for those who has no idea of what I just talked about 😅), MSN, Whats app, Snapchat, etc…
By the year 2000, around 100 million people had access to the internet with Myspace, allowing to create a personal blog system, setting every user to make friends through their common interests (Remember Eminem?)
Everybody knows the famous movie “the Social Network” where Marc Zuckerberg "created” Facebook in 2004. Now, Facebook and Instagram have joined forces to conquer their rival territories ⚔️.
Google is part of a multi-empire network where Youtube, Google+ (that disappeared overnight BTW), and many more tools let people interact and share contents.
In 2006, Twitter was born with the unique distinction of allowing users to send “tweets” of 140 characters or less. Limited or just?
Linkedin geared specifically towards professionals who want to network with each other 💼. Same look, same concept but smarter! (FYI, don’t even try to spend money for advertising, IT DOESN’T WORK!)
Social media is now THE marketing tool for the pay-to-play! The benefits of social media marketing for business began to become quite clear to business owners, between advertising a simple product online to actually creating creative contents and marketing strategies, to even sell the product directly online.
👿 The dark social ages started: the death of organic search! Think of it like a junk mail, the trash of all cloud contents coming from actually, no one. One of these mysteries the internet can offer. Fake accounts were born forcing complicated verification systems.
Influencers started to emerge. Influencers, for those who never met one, they are very famous people (virtually) that loves to take pictures of themselves (and their loved ones) using a specific product. The brand that sells this product pay them to do so. Try the brand new hotel in Fuji, get the first LV bag, attend the Chanel fashion show in Rio,… name it, you have it! (Yes, Les Marseillais are influencers, actors too but still very rich influencers)
Remember the huge customer service call centres where you used to talk to people? Nowadays, you talk to a chatbot that can speak in ten languages, and ten voices, for free. No salary, to tea breaks ☕️ or no sick pay. All day working!
1st conclusion, yes there will be 2! 🎉
Privacy is key! Users will start to pay for peace! ✌🏻In order to develop personal content and a driven experience, users will simply pay to escape constant advertising. TRENDS AHEAD! Users will focus on relationships (think of it like Facebook and MySpace joined) creating a personal brand maintenance and emphasising on personal posts, intimate connections.
Now, some trends YOU need to follow-up on! 😳
Mobile-native users are integrating a seamless integration between deep communication, intelligent marketing and mass shopping. Watch out for the big bear action! 🐻
Develop the customer journey: Retargeting techniques allow companies to display their messages at the right time and in the correct order. It will no longer be just a matter of capturing leads through email marketing but across perfectly segmented advertisements.
Videos are kings: live streaming content let viewers to see through other people’s lenses in real time
Tiktok, maybe dying.
Snapchat, be live all the time
Facebook live, exactly like Instagram but on Facebook
Youtube live.
Live streaming applications such as Netflix, Amazon prime videos and Hulu are focusing to introduce live interactive storytelling. How cool is that?
AR/VR is here to amaze marketers and immerse users. It will become a new normal on social media platforms. Brands will create an everyday shopping experience using users social media's everyday information gathered instantly.
Sharing is caring. Build us up, don’t tear us down ! At time of crisis or an earthquake, Facebook is starting to provide important information to close friends and family trying to build the personal well-being of their users. It will create an authentic communities, focusing on the content that their users see, instead of focusing on the ads.
THE CONCLUSION 🥁🥁🥁 admin or addicted?
Social media is addictive, well that’s the goal, sooner or later. It will be less about posting at the right time, and more about posting highly engaging content. SM (social media for the oldies 👵🏻) is an ongoing time capsule, a living record of users lives showcasing through multi-faceted interactive diary. Experimenting with this will mean to find different ways of managing contacts, befriending people, organising interface layouts and even shopping online in a single click.
A little bit of 💌 in the 🎈
A cool formation to get you started: Digital Garage 😎
Brilliant - match exercices (hint of the week)
Tools pour les malins 🤯
Coolors - a WTF color picker
ConvertKit - audience builder
Mixlab or Circle.so - animate your community with virtual events
The Noun Project - icons, simple and for FREE
Hootsuite or any other daring competitor - schedule your posts on all SM!