The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Social Media Marketing

There is no shortage of disruptiveness to deal with for social media strategists.

As budgets are scrutinized and with marketers needing to show business value, how much credit should go to Social Media’s contribution to revenue?

A few months after GDPR regulations, with a never-ending number of social media platform formats and solutions and the explosion of “fake influencers”, there is no shortage of disruptiveness to deal with for social media strategists.

A few clues to help to see the light shining through the clouds are below:

1. The Good: Social Media keeps growing in users, sessions and time with no major change in the names of major players. About 40% of the Global population spends time in social; this is just a massive opportunity.
2. The Bad: Bots and artificial intelligence. Per se, these are not bad, the problem being that a lot of traffic now is just automated, very much like your local shopping mall being run by a ghost that cannot help much in the real world. Not only this, every feedback, like and comment is being recorded and gathered as intelligence in platforms looking for buying signals. The age of the innocence in social media is just behind.
3. The Ugly: This was definitely the year of fake news. The year of Cambridge Analytica. The year of fake influencers and fake metrics.

In many ways, social media has left behind its infancy and it is now well into adulthood. We all knew this would happen. Many of us wanted this to happen. However, transitions are never easy and this one has come all too sudden.

For more context, guidance, opinions and data on social media, download the updated Social Media Platforms Overview Best Practice Guide

For more ideas on Social Prospecting go to this section.