Declining benefit of social media

I'm starting to question the value of social media accounts for marketing a

[scottb]

I'm starting to question the value of social media accounts for marketing a website. It seems more and more the major social sites are squeezing their users into paying for any benefit at all.

But the benefit of paying seems a stretch except for large sites or sites that have a product or service with a high return on investment.

Organic postings are attracting fewer new follows, much lower distribution and much lower clickthroughs. I know some companies are still doing well, but others I know are tanking.

Your thoughts?

[Mark_A]

We are techniical b2b so I don't bother with fb or twitter as they are more b2c.

[engine]

It really does depend on so many factors. Not least that people are on holiday right now. I'd also suggest that the novelty has worn off for many, and turning to social media is becoming much more focussed. Facebook has been pushing its organic to paid and it's almost impossible to get much traction unless you're a brand, or have a community on there.

I've had some success with twitter, but you do have to work at it.

As Mark_A indicates, is you market b2b or b2c?

[scottb]

I am b2c. What makes it more painful is how Google SERPs have changed. Some relevant, long tail keywords with no real competition that ranked #1 for 10 years are now at the bottom of page 1. Big brands with less relevant keywords knocked them out.

Even advertising isn't as productive as it used to be.

So between social media flattening out, ad weakness and Google SERP changes, I've had a tough time growing total audience.

[engine]

It might be worth trying to re-evaluate where your audience exists.
Age groups that use twitter or FB have changed. Younger groups see FB as the place their parent go to.

It isn't easy with so many places to go.

Work on one and try to make it a success instead of trying to work on them all.

[tangor]

The increasing number of players keeps changing things as well. It is simply more difficult to stand out in all the noise that is the web these days. Doesn't mean you can't, but finding that path is more difficult than ever. What worked 10 years ago will generally not work these days.

Engaging SM is one option, but as engine suggests, chose ONE of the SM platforms and concentrate time/resources THERE instead of spreading yourself too thin. If your site/product requires a specific age demographic, then determine where they are and do your work there.

[iamlost]

What engine and tangor said.

Also it depends on how you are attempting to use SM. Most/all of the default and bloggerati recommendations are over used or misused and increasingly useless. Also the various SM platforms have been doing a Google and working to retain and not refer their visitors.

There are no cookie cutter approaches. Each site needs to do it's due diligence research regarding where their market audiences congregate, how best to interact and engage without irritation/friction, and how best to encourage them to visit and revisit your site. No one method works wholly for any two SM platforms.

However, it can be worthwhile. How and how much is up to you.

[tangor]

If you have an A-List celeb in your pocket all you need is one tweet from them to see your site go viral.

</humor>

[scottb]

Tangor, I'm tight with Angelina Jolie, but even she doesn't have the same drawing power anymore. I need to move on to the Kardashians.

I agree about concentrating efforts on a single platform that has the best ROI.

Iamlost, you make a good point about retaining and not referring visitors. I just need to keep experimenting and adapting.

[Angelbma]

Social media marketing is always evergreen in the Digital marketing field. Moreover, if you want to generate leads for your business easily, then social media acts as a powerful tool for it. One can create it's brand awareness very soon from social media.

Even though some companies are declining in social media marketing, but that fully depends on their marketing strategy. However, there are many companies that have grown a huge brand awareness from this wonderful tool and also generated many leads for their business.

[JorgeV]

Hello-

All depends of the kind of profile you are targeting. Some content can perform extremely well with SN, but this content is often the kind which is harder to monetize too.

[Aussie Steve]

I agree that the value of the page is diminishing and whether it is still value depends on your business model. It is hard to rely on Facebook and you need to build email lists or other ways to own the correspondence with your customers. I do facebook ads but push the traffic to my website. My main goal is to get them to sign up but I also pixel them so I can remarket to them on other platforms. I think just don't put all your eggs in one basket and have a diverse away that you target new customers and communicate with existing ones.

[amyanderson]

Video isn't a new trend and a lot of brands are picking up this option on social media. Social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram etc are already pushing users to produce video content through Story Ads because these ad campaigns often see higher click-through rates than traditional posts and News Feed ads.

I believe it is important to come up with engaging content and live videos on social media in order to optimize your results.

[Leo_T]

Well, that's quite normal, people see more and more ads on their social media sites, so they actively try to avoid them because it's not the reason why they came there. But I still believe that social media account can be a great addition to your business website (in no way should it replace it, on the other hand). Social media can be a fun way to interact with your audience, organize contests, and giveaways, ask them questions, create polls, make quality content. For me, social media accounts of businesses/brands are not to get some price list or general information. It's to get a grasp of their culture and see photos of their products, as well as read reviews left by other customers.

[Washound]

My opinion is that it has to do more with the "exhaustion" of the major social media. They`ve been around for quite a long time and the companies behind them becoming short on ideas how to increase the revenue from them. I think that newer stuff, like tiktok or something like that with a more niche audience can still be used for organic posting and you`ll still get adequate revenue from it.