Can you remember the last 5 things you liked on Social Media?
Social Media saturation is at an all time high, and brands need to adapt and future proof to stay relevant and authentic.
The world in general is information hungry and within the realms of social media this information comes in the form of content either brand or influencer led. As platforms, influencers and brands all compete for reach and “space” in the feed, timelines and platforms become saturated and are fast becoming an affiliate market place.
It’s clear that these platforms are starting to lose sense of community and authenticity is dwindling. Fans are genuinely moving away, or limiting time spent in these channels via social media detoxes, delete facebook movements and social/influencer “cleans-ups” following all the influencer fraud noise we have at the moment.
It is becoming increasingly difficult for brands to own the news feed unless they are willing to throw huge amounts of money on ads and paid influencer posts but what is the ROI is often complex with the latter. Do these approaches give you the brand, the authenticity and emotional engagement that your fans and audience crave? I would say they are reach mechanics more than a genuine content/engagement play.
Don’t get me wrong, these are extremely useful and have their place, product launches for example from an aspirational world leading brand… In instances where you just need to get as many eyes on a product as possible and are confident that your brand reputation and product will almost sell itself, it works… Think a new pair of Adidas.
Everyday the same influencers posting the same kind of posts and we can’t be sure of the true reach or ROI of this approach, we also can’t guarantee their audience are authenticating their content or how engaged they are with it — yes we have “engagement rate” but is this a fool-proof method or is this just a percentage of people who have “liked” or “loved” a post.
Can you remember the last 5 posts you liked?
I can think of 3 pieces of content this week that stood out that I “liked” and I truly engaged with, but I most definitely liked/engaged with an awful lot more subconsciously, sometimes it just seems “right” to engage!
As we have the information overload on the same platforms with same posts over and over again, by the same paid influencers, the quality is diluted, the authenticity is diluted and fan trust and faith by proxy is becoming diluted.
With this in mind I think brands really need to think about how to combat saturation, how to own their audience and partner with their creative fan base to ensure that they are engaging at an authentic and emotional level through their social campaigns, activations and content strategies.
Building communities that develop audiences with staying power takes commitment. But creating an eco-system to support comprehensive, personal engagement across branded channels is imperative the way things are going. It’s something disruptors are doing from the off — and something bigger brands need to put the strategic effort into, pronto.
At Commit, it’s what we do, it’s all we do, we focus on building communities of creators and creatives fans for brands through the power of UGC.
We challenge brands to “Love their creators”, to be enablers and champions of their creative audience, that will in return partner and create truly authentic and engaging content that transcends (usually) the core product and gives the brands an enviable source of true story, real content and genuine relationships.
In this world where content is king and queen, authenticity needs to reign supreme, UGC provides this, and community is a great way to own and activate a captivated demographic.
