Social media marketing isn’t always under your control
If you’re considering ways to market your company online, social media marketing is certainly one thing that you’re going to think about. Social media has exploded over the last few decades, and it’s a very easy way to connect with a wide audience. Some networks can connect you with billions of potential viewers. This can be a very valuable way to market your products, connect with your audience, work on your branding and much more.
But it is important to remember that social media marketing is not always something that you can fully control. You are, to some degree, at the whims of that platform. This can impact how effective it’s going to be for you. Below, we will take a look at two ways that this can happen.
Your audience leaves the platform
For one thing, audiences are always shifting. Initially, Facebook was only available to those who were in college, so most users were between 18 and 22 years old. But that changed over the years, and now anyone can sign up for Facebook.
If you’re trying to market to teens and young people, you should know that they are, from a broad perspective, no longer using Facebook. Teenagers in particular only make up 3.9% of the user base, and it’s unlikely that’s going to increase. They are turning to other platforms, so marketing products to them on Facebook is ineffective. You’re much better off to market to an audience between 25 and 34 years old, which makes up the greatest share of Facebook users.
But this does call the longevity of social media platforms into question. If young people do not start using Facebook, it will only be a matter of time before that user base erodes and the issue spreads to older demographics. It’s important to consider where these users have gone, what platforms they’re using and how to connect with them as one social media platform gives way to another.
The platform’s owner makes changes
You also simply have to consider who owns the platform that you’re using and what changes they might make.
Recently, in an effort to limit how Twitter is used, Elon Musk introduced stipulations saying that people couldn’t view tweets unless they logged into Twitter. This meant that anyone who didn’t have a Twitter account simply couldn’t see the content. Musk also put limits in place regarding views and reads in an effort to limit AI data scraping.
When he made these changes, visibility plummeted by 32% in just 24 hours. Advertisers who were using Twitter suddenly found their audience shrinking immediately, and not because of anything that they had done. It has recovered to some degree, as Musk has relented and given up on these changes, but it made it very clear just how volatile a platform can be. How much money do you want to sink into advertising on a site that is so unpredictable? That’s the question advertisers had to ask themselves.
The right advertising plan
At Content Customs,, we can work with you to determine the correct advertising plan for your company that will get you the best results. This may include social media marketing, but we also have tools like pay-per-click marketing, search engine optimization and much more. Call us today to get started.
