Lately I’ve had this feeling about social media marketing. The feeling is that most people hate being marketed to on social media. From what the research tells us, this statement is true. According to Forrester brands are taking advantage of social more than ever–80% of the top 50 global brands actively post to the top five social media platforms, and their followings on those platforms has increased. But it turns out engagement is down over last year. Writer Erin Griffith of Fortune details these stats in her article “Brands are using social media more than ever, and users are ignoring them more than ever.” Last year, Instagram posts from brands created interactions with 4.2% of a brand’s followers. This year, that fell to 2.2%. On Pinterest, interactions fell from 0.1% to 0.04%. Consumers are developing what used to be called “banner blindness.”
Brands continue to find ways to force themselves into our screens. Apparently no one soaked up the lessons of permission based marketing.
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I will preface this by telling you I represent both sides of the coin. I am a social media user who notices the sponsored and promoted posts, and wonder what I clicked on to warrant such messages. At the same time as I write this I’m struggling to build my own Facebook Page for my consulting business Flight Digital.
Right now brands are scrambling to build a community on Instagram, and they are making a lot of mistakes. If you use social media and apps such as Instagram, you see how many brands are trying to win fans and followers. The way to do this is through the drudgery of customer engagement. But Instagram is not well-equipped for that. However the only brand I’ve seen actually engage and respond to customers is T-Mobile who will answer customer questions on Instagram, and redirect them to another support channel such as Twitter or Facebook. Instagram is not set up will for customer support, with little room for engagement such as direct messaging.
gggg
Even though there are anomalies such as the T-Mobile Instagram example, most brands are not trying to win with helpfulness and relevance but rather traditional advertising–slapped on to social media. Perhaps if these large social networks weren’t so pressured to make quarterly returns, they wouldn’t forego user experience in exchange for revenue.
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Social media users are trying to find better ways to avoid ingesting ads. That said customers are ready and willing to pay for premium content. While today consumers have little control over what they see in the future brands might need to get much more creative, much faster. It might be soon that users can block ads altogether. For example according to Wired, “Apple is trying to pull iPhone and iPad users off the web. It wants you to read, watch, search, and listen in its Apple-certified walled gardens known as apps.” Even Howard Stern is talking about ad blocking. Perhaps this is just the beginning.
In an email interview Michael Brito, Head of Social Media Strategy for W20 Group said his clients [brands] in general are happy because “brands can actually reach people based on targeting parameters – basic demographics, interests, passions and even through custom audiences.” He said his clients also feel frustrated they have to pay to promote their posts to people who already like their Facebook page. He details that Facebook engagement is only 4%. If you post something to 100 people, only 4 will see it. His clients are using Facebook to reach consumers, LinkedIn for IT/ B2B Decision Makers and Twitter for both. He mentioned excitement about new LinkedIn product offerings for sponsored content are emerging
But today social media still remains a constant battle for both marketers and consumers. Unless personalization improves, consumers do not want their content and streams interrupted with advertising. Consumers try and avoid as much advertising as possible, and marketers try and put as much of it in front of consumers as possible. Not much has changed.
Consumers want social media for “free.” And we had it on Facebook for a long time. So now that are our feeds are stuffed with sponsored and promoted content we don’t like it. I find the promoted posts on my Instagram particularly irrelevant to me personally. It almost feels like Instagram is giving free reign to any brand that wants to advertise, because it’s still early. And remember, Facebook owns Instagram.
In a few hours on Instagram I was marketed to by Oreo, Caress, Visa and Mastercard. I opened Pinterest to see an infographic posted by Ziploc. And to be honest I really can’t stand it. It feels phony. It’s like you meet someone at a party and they’re talking to you but looking in the complete opposite direction. It’s not a human interaction.
The thing is it can never not feel strange to have advertising on social. If you’re like me your eyes glaze over when you see a post is ”promoted.” I have never clicked on any ad ever on social media, banners or otherwise. Consider these comments from my own Facebook friend who said, “I do mind ads on social media. I feel they are intruding as when one would interrupt someone’s conversation. I do not click on ads or try not to no matter how tempting they can be as they can reflect my likes. A total invasion of privacy.”
The thing is brands are still trying too hard. They are awkwardly trying to reach young users, but they’re doing so in a forced way. The youth of today have grown up in a time where they were able to control their content more than any generation in history. Today’s brands need to learn how to be engaging–and it starts with being a good listener. Something most brands don’t know how to do still.
Source : http://www.forbes.com/sites/blakemorgan/2015/08/31/when-brands-try-too-hard-on-social-media/