Social networks’ era symbolically began on the 4th of February 2004 with the birth of Facebook. An era that has had a dizzying rise and that saw the emergence of various “little brothers” of the most iconic social networks, with more or less different uses. From LinkedIn, Instagram, Pinterest, to TikTok and, more recently, BeReal, the latest successful exponents of the category.
For years, Facebook has been the users’ favorite social network, and the easiest to use, to share their private lives, work achievements, opinions and inclinations with family, friends and acquaintances, whether close or distant. The platform’s focus, however, has always been to allow its members to stay up-to-date on what people in their group, be it small or large, were saying.
Over time and with the generational change, users have increasingly lost interest in this type of use of social platforms, going on to enjoy them almost only passively. People’s online lives are changing thoroughly in a short time. By now, with the exception of a few reactionary examples such as BeReal, subscribers no longer use social media to check out the life of their friends. The algorithms of the different platforms themselves have taken over the feeds following of TikTok, one of the most used social media.
Seeing the success of the Chinese platform, META decided to make changes as well in the way subscribers use social media, showing content that matches with your interests from creators you don’t follow yet.
The very structure of social media is therefore changing in support of professional content creators, in order to keep users on the platforms as long as possible. In particular, TikTok benefit from this and saw a doubling in its users in 2019, alongside with YouTube, which increased its potential reach by 11.9%.
Sounds familiar? Is the dear old world of entertainment coming back and knocking at the door of those who have something to do with communication. Yes, because today we use social media mostly for entertainment than community engagement. Briefly: we spend hours scrolling through content that is more or less engaging but certainly adjusted to our taste and that can entertain us. We are back to doing what we used to call “zapping” with regard to TV, but on social media. We watch (consume) more content than we produce, ergo the role of the creators increases in importance.
However, how can a brand make the most of this opportunity?
In every change, there are opportunities, and the fact that social users have become more passive and consuming large amounts of content, can translate into a chance for those who work with communication. How to do this? By enabling branded content actions after a careful analysis of potential targets and opportunities.
Through brandend content, creators think up, study and realise informative or entertaining content for the brand, but that doesn’t represents an explicit commercial advertising message for the receiver.
For example, it’s the case of the well-known creator Luis Sal and his Luisbar, branded Lavazza.
Through his usual ironic style, Luis targets younger users with content with great engagement and entertainment, which puts the commercial intention of the brand in the background, conveying and consolidating its values, and thus increasing its Awareness.
This type of action is more effective for a young audience than normal commercials, which instead targets older users.
Given the closeness of the content creators to their audience, these are very powerful marketing actions with an almost guaranteed effect, as they are not intrusive for users, are less 'advertising' and in the case of particularly interesting content may stimulate a possible increase in brand following.
It will be important for every brand in 2023 to make the most of this type of activity in order to avoid the “telesales” effect, by using influencers and creators and increase brand reputation and awareness to consolidate their market position.
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