The largest shift in social media advertising and marketing over the previous 5 years hasn’t been short-form video, and even the event of generative AI. The key evolution, from a marketing-specific perspective, has been the transfer away from interplay and in direction of straight leisure.
Now, you could possibly, in fact, argue that leisure has at all times been a key aspect of selling. But within the early days of social media, a central focus for manufacturers was sparking interplay and driving engagement, by offering a method on your goal clients to get in contact and get responses out of your model presence.
The implementation of algorithms made this much more of a spotlight, as a result of extra feedback and likes resulted in additional attain. And whereas engagement remains to be an element, the platforms themselves at the moment are transferring past prompting likes and feedback, and are refocusing, as an alternative, on time spent in every app.
Which is all due to TikTok.
For years, Meta held the reigns in social media, and as such, it dictated the developments and norms that guided how customers work together. Meta had discovered that feedback and interactions had been what prompted customers to stick round, so its algorithm prioritized posts that garnered extra of those behaviors.
Which inadvertently incentivized extra divisive, argumentative takes, as a result of the content material that’s most definitely to spark response is that which drives excessive emotional resonance. Joy, concern and anger are the important thing feelings that immediate response, and unsurprisingly, the algorithmic shift led to these turning into the principle drivers of on-line exercise.
But TikTok flipped the paradigm, and has modified the best way that every one platforms now function.
Rather than relying on your connections, TikTok emphasised public posting, and fairly than focusing on likes and feedback, TikTok targeted on time spent, and taking in additional indicators from every clip to then refine the suggestions that it reveals every particular person.
Essentially, TikTok re-aligned the social media matrix round leisure as an alternative. Which is large, as a result of the precise ‘social’ features that had lengthy been the main focus have now been relegated to a secondary aircraft.
And that additionally implies that social media advertising and marketing methods want to be re-aligned in step.
Don’t consider me? Need extra convincing?
How about the truth that 50% of the content material that customers see on Instagram now comes by way of AI suggestions?
These will not be posts out of your family and friends, and this isn’t content material from accounts that you simply’ve chosen to comply with. Also, Instagram isn’t as involved about whether or not they’ll drive likes and feedback, the important thing measurement is how lengthy you spend watching, and how briskly you skip by every (or not).
Facebook utilization can be up, and 30% of the content material that customers see on Facebook additionally now comes by way of the identical AI suggestions system.
But the important thing consideration right here is that this: While time spent on Facebook has elevated on account of these topical suggestions, creation and engagement continues to decline, with fewer individuals posting to each Facebook and Instagram than they’ve previously.
That’s significantly true amongst youthful audiences, whereas notably, utilization of Instagram Stories can be in decline, down greater than 10% on earlier ranges.
People are spending extra time consuming AI-recommended video clips, however they’re more and more much less probably to remark and have interaction past viewing. As such, social media is turning into much less and fewer social, and is extra like conventional media, with interactive parts.
The consideration from a advertising and marketing perspective is that you could be want to shift your focus consistent with this, by shifting away from posts that spark feedback, and extra in direction of pure leisure consequently.
Triggering engagement has lengthy been a key tenet of social media advertising and marketing, as a result of as famous, platform algorithms have prioritized content material that generates direct response. But now, nearly each platform is more and more aligning with time spent, which comes, principally, by way of video clips.
And in that situation, essentially the most entertaining content material wins, not posts that prod customers for his or her ideas.
And whenever you additionally take into account the rise of generative AI, that’s probably to turn into much more of a spotlight, as a result of whereas generative AI instruments can give you human-like photographs, textual content and video clips, what they will’t give you is really inventive ideas, or at the very least, it’s not as really easy to make them provide you with such, with out having an idea in thoughts for your self.
For instance, I requested ChatGPT to give me an concept for a “wacky, humorous marketing campaign to promote a brand new lemonade model.”
Okay, #SqueezetheDay will not be horrible, however the tag itself has already been utilized by many juice bars and designers in each on and offline promotions. Which highlights the important thing challenge in utilizing AI turbines for such function, in that many of the ideas that such programs will produce are going to find yourself being pretty generic, and subsequently unlikely to resonate within the new, entertainment-focused social media atmosphere, the place idea, more and more, will probably be key.
The problem for AI turbines on this sense is that they’re inherently spinoff, because the system can solely iterate on what’s come earlier than, so every little thing that it spits out goes to really feel considerably cliché and repetitive.
Because it’s, the system is simply providing you with a variation of what it conceptually understands from the phrases that you simply enter. It’s going on “lemonade” and “promotion” and pumping out ideas primarily based on what it could actually match up, primarily based on earlier makes use of of those phrases inside a sure proximity.
As such, every little thing that comes out of an LLM-based system will probably really feel a bit stale, whereas the content material that’s most entertaining is contemporary, attention-grabbing, and usually a brand new take on previous concepts.
Is it attainable than a generative AI system may produce an amazing concept? Sure, however systematically, that’s not likely how they’re designed, which reduces the probability that an AI instrument would be the supply of the subsequent nice idea.
But regardless, AI instruments are getting used an increasing number of. Which may really additional improve the worth of really distinctive, attention-grabbing ideas, amongst a rising tide of previous concepts which have been regurgitated by AI programs.
Essentially, leisure, and growing time spent together with your content material, is what’s going to drive extra attain in social apps, because the platforms shift additional away from their social roots, consistent with consumer behaviors.
Past finest practices, together with engagement bait, hashtags, calls to motion, all of those are going to turn into much less vital, as extra platforms shift to focus on AI suggestions.
https://www.socialmediatoday.com/information/social-media-marketers-need-focus-more-entertainment/715609/
