There are so many social media platforms available today that it can get overwhelming when it comes to selecting where you should spend your time. The danger is that you can be on too many platforms and dilute your energy, or you can specialize in one and miss some opportunities.
In this excerpt from my
Music 4.0: A Survival Guide For Making Music In The Internet Age book, social media PR guru
Ariel Hyatt describes why
Facebook might not be the best alternative, and how to determine what might be a better alternative.
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"Are Likes important?
Facebook is the most frustrating platform. I read an article about the way life used to work a hundred years ago where you would have gone out of your house to the community bakery, hardware store (like my grandparents owned), or any local shop to buy your everyday needs. Then the Madison Avenue way of doing business came in the picture by advertising national brands as somehow being sexier and blew much of that model away, and we lost our way of communicating one on one as a result. Now social media brings us back around to where we started, where we only want to buy from people that we like, trust, and have positive engagement with. None of these principles are new, just the medium is.
The problem with Facebook is that it’s now placing the Madison Avenue approach on top of a community based platform, but the two are at massive odds. In the beginning there were all these people that you knew on Facebook that you might’ve lost contact with, like your school friends, teachers, babysitters, and long lost cousins. They weren’t necessarily on the other social sites, but they were on Facebook. It was all based on community and it was very personal and very much like the old community bakery or store.
Now Facebook has added a new twist in that no one will get to see your post unless you pay, and now we have a problem. We’ve been saying for years that it’s all about great content and engagement and keeping things interesting, and Facebook has come along and said, “Actually, no. If you pay us, we’ll promote something that’s not interesting to get you more eyeballs.” This is detrimental because it’s diluting the whole point of Facebook in the first place. The community is now muddled with Madison Avenue and the “buy a billboard,” or “buy an ad” mentality. I’m afraid that, just like when Madison Avenue rose in power, the people that don’t have the money to buy the ads and billboards are going to get squeezed out. That’s why I find Facebook to be a necessary evil. There’s still a huge number of active users so you need a strategy for it, but both the platform and the strategy are rapidly changing.
Do you recommend that a new client be on multiple platforms or just concentrate on one?
Just concentrate on one. I think that it’s so easy to get overwhelmed trying to do too much that some people will just shut down. Concentrate on one, and hopefully it’s not Facebook.
Which platform would you suggest?
Really it depends on that person’s capabilities. Are they visual? Then let’s do Instagram. Are they wordy? Then a blog strategy might be better. Are they ADD? Then let’s do some tweeting. Let’s find the thing that feels like it’s the most comfortable. I still struggle with pushing people to do things that they’re not comfortable with, because it’s not going to work in the long run."
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