Social Media Marketing: Activate’s Report on Technology & Media

Every year for the last six years, Activate, the leading management consulting firm for media, technology, entertainment, and sports businesses, has released the Activate Technology and Media Outlook.

Their outlook for 2020 came out on October 23, 2019. Presented by Activate CEO Michael J. Wolf at the Wall Street Journal Tech Live Conference, the full report is available both on Activate’s website and on SlideShare.

Based on some groundbreaking and proprietary research, Activate is speculating not only into 2020 but as far forward as 2023. One of the things they are predicting is that by 2023, the average user of social networks in the U.S. will be up to 10 different networks. The current average is 6.

That means there will be lots of ways to reach customers, but it also means fragmented attention and possibly having to be on all (or at least several) of them in order to truly maximize your social media marketing. On the flip side, it will make choosing which networks to be on easier.

Here’s How:

This social network splintering is already affecting social media marketing in that people are looking for more focused content and authentic and trusted connections. Because of this, smaller networks are sprouting up and catering to niche markets such as Discord for gamers and TikTok for cosplayers.

For example, your online marketing is in make-up, which of the two preceding platforms would you choose? Discord is geared toward gamers, of which there are certainly those who buy makeup; but most likely you would choose TikTok and go for the cosplayers who are much more likely to use and talk about your product offerings.

A TikTok influencer who likes your brand could potentially put you in front of quite a few people on that app. Understand this is just hypothetical, but you get where I’m going at.

The takeaway is this:

Facebook isn’t going away, but it isn’t going to be the end all be all of the social media marketing in the future.

Facebook is already growing on a slower scale than Linkedin, Snapchat, and Twitter, according to Activate. In order to keep up, businesses using social media are going to have to figure out where they want to be and where they need to be in order to maximize their brand growth potential.

For a small to medium-size business, this is perfect because it allows them to pick their social media marketing niche and work it exclusively, ignoring other places which don’t offer the same potential for sales and growth.