The Consumer. The Platform. The Marketing.
Social media runs our lives. Every day we absorb ourselves in the stories that it tells us. Whether it be the new café that your friend is telling you “you must try”, the new outfit that a beautiful influencer is telling you “you need to have” or the news outlet telling you that this is the article you “need to read”. It’s all there for us and we love watching the story unfold. The thing is most of the time social media isn’t the one telling us these stories… We are telling them to ourselves. That friend didn’t tell you to try the café, she just posted about it and now you feel like you need to go. That influencer didn’t tell you that you need her outfit, you just love the way it looked on her and want to look that way too. That news outlet didn’t tell you to read that story, you just saw 10,000+ comments on it and wanted to be involved. These are the little stories that we tell ourselves and the reason we do it, is really good marketing.
One platform that has been well known for doing this is Facebook. Facebook has dominated social media platforms for years, but in recently it has copped a lot of criticism. Think Cambridge Analytica. So, do we still trust Facebook? Do many people even use Facebook now or is it old news? Well, despite what you might think, Facebook is still the largest social media platform by far. Users not only continue to grow but are becoming more active on a daily basis. With over two billion monthly users, Facebook is where marketing performs well because that’s where people are going to “try the café”, “buy the outfit” or “read the article”.
Despite the fact that we all like to pretend we don’t use Facebook, this video by The Vox explains why we all still do. Basically, we all use Facebook, simply because we all use Facebook. Makes sense… Right? (#FOMO).
At a time where consumers are over-loaded with content, marketing is focusing on creating personal one-to-one connections with an audience. Facebook not only provides a GIANT audience for brands to build these connections with but also provides the technology to do so (and easily). As overwhelmed-time-poor-stressed out millennials, we are still always seeking more. More entertainment, more interaction, more anything. Social media is where we go and surprise surprise, Facebook marketing is a great source of entertainment. An article in the Journal of Retail and Consumer Services found that marketing is most effective on social media when the content is entertaining and can be circulated by peers who can informally participate in sharing, receiving and modifying the message. That’s right… Those memes you’ve been sharing or quotes you’ve been tagging your friends in — most likely, they were produced by a brand that wants you to engage in their content.
In fact, a lot of Facebook marketing has non-commercial value. And this is because we are more likely to be persuaded by peers based on their post-consumption experience. This takes us back to the friend who posted about the café, the influencer who posted the beautiful outfit or the news article that all of your friends commented on. We trust each other, and marketers know this.
Facebook knows how we like to engage, so we continue to use it. You call, Facebook answers. One of the ways Facebook is doing that is through its messenger bot. This is basically a way for brands to use Facebook messenger to communicate directly with consumers through a personal (automated) messenger service. An article about this in Forbes explained that over 73% of people prefer live chat than email, and Facebook is where the live chat is. So now not only are we chatting to our friends, family, groups and colleagues on Facebook, but we are now chatting with brands. With so many ‘on the go’ social media users, Facebooks messenger is the way of the future with a predicted 85% of customer relationships to have no human interaction by 2020.
So, yes. We still use Facebook (a lot). Which means marketers use Facebook (a lot). As long as it remains the place where we chat, share, like, read, post, buy, transfer, sell and work (i.e. where we pretty much do everything), it will remain the largest social media platform and a marketer’s haven.
