It’s a big question- “Should my business be using social media?” and the answer is mostly yes. However, with changing user habits and anti-social media news stories it can be hard to get clarity on the topic. The Fandango team discusses whether you need to be on social in 2023, and shines a light on recent industry changes.
Funding the Metaverse
Last November, Meta cut 11,000 of its staff as they try to shift funding to AI, advertising, and the Metaverse. This is interesting as ads have increased on Meta platforms. With ads now not only showing on the feed but also on profiles the focus seems to be on boosting ad spend across the board.
The question is, will users stay? Frustration at the number of ads shown on social platforms is already clear in online circles. The increase in ads makes it a lot harder to achieve organic social goals as engagement is now pay-to-win and so many are doing it. As organic social gets trickier, paid social is now essential for a robust social strategy. Our team can create expert organic and paid social strategies for your business.
It’s still important to have your company on Instagram as this is a visual platform with a combination of imagery and videos giving you the opportunity to show off your business. Recently, Instagram conceded they had focused too much on video last year, giving all the engagement to accounts who played the reels game. Going forward, they’d like to have an equal focus on photos and videos.
Twitter in Musk’s View
The Twitter platform has been a bit all over the place after Elon Musk accidentally acquired the platform. With ad spending down reported by Pathmatics for Reuters and active users also down by 9%, as reported by Buzzfeed it’s hard predict where the platform is headed.
Ad Spend on Twitter
Ad spend was slashed at the end of 2022. Between November and December, ad spend by the top thirty companies fell by 42%. That’s quite a drop! Twitter can be an expensive platform to run ads on, an organic approach is best for this platform.
Buying Verification
Twitter now allows users to buy verification badges. It makes perfect sense, a subscription model is one of the best models for profit and Elon Musk needs to start making money back from his procurement of the platform. The blue check used to mean you had been recognised as a reputable, authentic individual or company. Now, it could mean somebody is paying for the privilege of the badge. This is a big change for the platform where things have been the same for many years now.
Impersonations
Some users took the opportunity to purchase a verification badge and pretend to be political figures, companies, and more. This increased trolling on the platform tenfold. With Elon Musk being a prime target.
Users slightly altered their usernames but made their names notable figures’ names in order to confuse users. One user pretended to be a pharmaceutical company, Eli Lilly, saying insulin was now free in America, their stock fell by 4.37%.
Above is the fake tweet a user made from an account that impersonated Eil Lilly.
Playing with the algorithm
It was reported after the recent SuperBowl that, allegedly, Elon Musk forced the algorithm to show his tweets more in people’s feeds. The Guardian reports here. This was seemingly due to Joe Biden’s post-SuperBowl tweet receiving more impressions.
Twitter engineers scrambled to get Elon Musk’s tweets seen by a higher share of users. This included users who didn’t even follow his account. Musk has now announced Twitter making the algorithm open source which could be another interesting development.
Should your brand be on Twitter?
It’s a murky subject with there being lots of benefits like brand exposure by being on Twitter, it is still a political minefield of a platform. Being on the platform means playing by an eccentric billionaire rulebook. The CEO does, however, plan to step down in the future giving hope to the workers who survived staff cuts and are battling a tough working environment. Fandango Digital is happy to talk this through when discussing digital strategy.
LinkedIn is still the best platform to be on as a business especially if you’re B2B. With 875 million worldwide users now on the platform, from a myriad of industries and specialties, getting your services in front of the right people has never been easier.
Are Social Media platforms still growing?
According to Smart Insights, there were 4.62 Billion social media users in 2022. That number doesn’t show signs of slowing down anytime soon. Statista predicts that number will be over 6 billion by 2027. Typical use of social media might change, with people being less active but present. Your brand still needs to be shown off on all the platforms that suit your product.
If you’re looking to develop a social media strategy for your business, we can help! Fandango Digital can define clear goals for your social channels which will boost your brand and web traffic.
Get in touch today!
