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- The End of Social Media Marketing
The End of Social Media Marketing
The platforms have changed, and so should the role
Elon Book
I know the Elon biography is out. I know there are some weird anecdotes in it. I know people think Walter Isaacson wasn’t asking the right questions about good ole Apartheid Clyde. I know a lot of people will read it, and I know the hot take industrial complex wants me to have some strong opinion on it, but I just don’t care. I have to think about that man enough as is, I don’t need to dig into his biography to form an opinion about it as a text. Choosing peace and not subjecting myself to that.
Platform Updates
Instagram & Threads
TikTok
YouTube
Apple
Pinterest (disclosure: I’m currently working as a contractor with Pinterest)
Snap
The Product
The Dumpster Fire
Twitter Alts
Culture Movers
Film & TV
Music
Gaming
AI
US Copyright Office denies protection for another AI-created image
ChatGPT traffic slips again for third month in a row (could be a decline in interest/utility of the service, could be summer vacation)
Amazon to require some authors to disclose the use of AI material
Adobe Firefly AI Is Out of Beta in Photoshop and Illustrator
Nvidia, Palantir and more companies join White House AI pledge
The End of Social Media Marketing
I came across an Ad Age article this week that digs into the latest report from Hootsuite about the state of social media management as a profession. Ad Age zoomed in on one key stat from the report that resonated with me: “24% said they intend to stop working in social media within the next year.”
They go through the usual list of frustrations you’d expect if you’ve ever talked to a social media manager about their job long enough. Social jobs require you to take on a wide range of skills and responsibilities as a small, often one-person, team. The always-on pace of social makes the job a 24/7 obligation. Leadership often has big expectations and little understanding of what you do, how to measure it, what resources you actually need, or how to compensate you fairly. As much fun as working in social can be at the high points, the low points are emotionally exhausting.
I’m not surprised we’re seeing more folks say they want to make a change. That’s exactly how I feel when I look at my career. There’s another factor, that isn’t being captured by the typical survey questions, driving folks to seek an end to the social media chapters of their careers. Social media as we know it is ending.
Twitter literally doesn’t exist anymore. Reddit’s seen huge drops in activity. Threads doesn’t seem to be taking off. The vibes at Facebook have been off for a while. Instagram and YouTube are trying to be TikTok. TikTok is trying to be a shopping mall. In the decade I spent building my career in social, social played a central role in culture, with trending topics and memes percolating up to prime-time news, SNL sketches, and late-night monologues. All that’s breaking out into federated Twitter-like apps, private group chats like Discord, and highly customized AI-curated feeds like TikTok. Trending topics are isolated to their niche. Memes have a harder time breaking their platform-specific containers. The landscape’s changed.
My guess is that other social marketers have seen this writing on the walls for a while now. Some still have the energy to chart a path through these changes for the brands and audiences they work with. Others are just tired. We don’t want to make videos forcing brand benefit talking points into Instagram Reels templates. We don’t want to constantly explain why organic reach is declining. We don’t want to fight with leadership about jumping on the latest trend they saw in their personalized feed that isn’t relevant to our target audience. The job’s always been hard, but the technical platform changes and cultural attitudes towards social right now make it even harder.
I hope this collapse of social media monoculture gets brands to rethink how they approach social media as a marketing tool. Focus on fewer channels where you can reach your core target audience. Build a community around brands and products vs inserting brand messaging into every trending topic and joke format. Get into these emerging niche platforms with your audience and actually spend time with them. Because social media marketing as we’ve been doing it over, and if anyone remaining in the field wants to be successful, they’ll need a new approach for this new platform landscape.
Baby Aliens
In an ever-expanding universe full of countless stars surrounded by their own planets, I’m sure there’s extraterrestrial life out there somewhere. But it probably wasn’t at Mexico’s Congress this week, where a ufologist shared two weird-looking ET meets Baby Yoda alien corpses.
I have nothing important to say here; I just wanted an excuse to share this image. Enjoy your weekend!