Feature or fad? 7 Questions to ask before leaping on the next social media trend
Are you on Clubhouse? Have you tried Twitter fleets? Are you TikTok famous yet? With so many new social media platforms and features springing up, how do you decide which is a fad or a long-term trend, and which ones are going to get results for your business?
Whether it’s in digital marketing workshops or in conversations with long-term clients, there’s this common cause of anxiety: everything moves so quickly in social media it’s impossible to keep up.
And while you want to be experimental and seen to be ahead of the curve, you know that you can’t leap on every new platform or become adept at every new feature. Choice can be a burden!
The following questions will help you decide upon your next social media move.
1. Is it where our audience is?
This is always the first question you should ask yourself. If it’s a no, stop right there!
Facebook, despite its growth slowing in recent years, is still the mammoth. So, if you’re looking to garner the most reach, particularly if you’re a B2C brand, it’s the most obvious bet. But it’s fairly defunct for under-25s.
LinkedIn is, of course, best for B2B. But if you’re about immediacy and cutting-edge announcements around, say, news sources or tech, then Twitter might be for you. It’s also slightly younger, with most of its base under 50.
Instagram is the second youngest option, with most of its audience under 25, whilst TikTok is the most youthful, with the majority of its users at 18-24, and a total of 37 million UK users.
So think sensibly before you dive into a new platform to see if it’s a good fit for your brand.
2. What’s the competition up to?
You need to weigh up if you’re just following the trend and will look like a copycat - or if this is your chance to come up with a brilliantly engaging social media strategy that will leave them for dust.
Wherever your counterparts are, it’s always possible to stand out through a more niche platform.
So just because Instagram Reels is pushing lip-syncing and dance moves and trying to be like TikTok doesn’t mean you have to too.
Creating more sophisticated content will make you distinct from the competition - like Sookio Communications Manager Marisa did here, simply with some business cards and a bit of imagination.
And though TikTok primarily consists of Gen Z, its sheer numbers make it appealing and the form lends itself to creativity.
Creators are at its heart, so whether you’re an educational institution, fashion brand or restaurant chain, you’ll likely want to fit in by following the most common format of quirky and humorous videos.
3. Do we have the resources?
Another important question. The best advice is always to avoid spreading yourself too thin.
Better to have one brilliant Instagram channel than a presence on eight different platforms where you don’t have time to update any of them properly. Resources could mean:
Team members. If it IS just you managing the social media activity, look around. You never know, there might be someone in the company who would leap at the chance to be creative on Twitter or who could get YouTube up and running.
Social media management consists of a lot of different facets: customer service, analysis, strategy, admin, content creation and more - who can you get to support you?
Assets. If it’s a very visual platform like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest or YouTube, you are going to need to feed the beast with good content. Think how easy it will be to create in the long term.
Money. There’s a paid campaign for every budget, starting from just a few pounds. How much are you willing to spend if you start to see results?
4. How good are the analytics?
And talking of results, you’re going to want to measure this stuff.
So, get your KPIs and metrics together. These might be click through rate, comments on posts, or site traffic. All the social media sites will provide you with post performance in varying detail; likes, reach, shares, all the good stuff.
But only some will break down your audience by demographics - namely, Facebook - because of the amount of personal detail users submit.
Twitter’s analytics are very nicely laid out and easy to understand; Pinterest is good too. LinkedIn less so, presumably because they want to steer you towards the paid-for Sales Navigator option.
Always install Google Analytics on your website to track where the traffic’s coming from, and you could couple this with a more powerful paid option like Iconosquare for Instagram or a social media dashboard like Hootsuite (which works on multiple platforms).
5. How effective are paid social media campaigns?
The main social media platforms have the same broad approach, utilising ad formats consistent with the newsfeed, so your ad matches what people see every day.
Paid ads allow you to target a specific audience for a specific purpose. Facebook allows you to select demographics (location, gender, interests) for a certain objective, such as brand awareness, reach or traffic. If you don’t have the time to slowly build a community organically this can help you leapfrog over the competition and massively increase your reach.
LinkedIn advertising we find expensive but very effective if you want to target people by job roles.
Twitter, where so many users have anonymous profiles and give away less data, is less specific on the targeting front, but can be useful for campaigns around app installs or boosting follower numbers.
TikTok, being relatively new, does not have many established rules. Its videos are more authentic and community-led, so it can be difficult for brands to easily fit the mould.
Big fashion brands, for example, known for highly produced content, struggle to replicate TikTok’s lo-fi aesthetic, which is why they opt for high-budget, influencer-driven campaigns.
6. How easy is it to build connections?
Connectivity is an elusive thing. But platforms are generally built around making connections, because that’s what encourages users to stay long term. People want community.
So you need to think how well does the social media platform make it for people to communicate and interact?
LinkedIn places greater emphasis on more private networks, alerting users when others have viewed their page, and placing greater emphasis on friends of friends.
Facebook has great examples of groups and community tools which consist of anything from people who grew up in the same area to fans of a particular band.
Live, story and video posts all allow behind-the-scenes type posts, which quickly built intimacy and rapport with a fanbase.
And Twitter of course, was where the idea of ‘following’ someone on social media all started.
7. Do we like using it?
Most people in marketing have a platform they gravitate towards.
If you’re going to keep up the activity long term, it’ll be a lot easier if you enjoy it.
Maybe you’re full of ideas for short-form video formats like Reels, Stories or Fleets…or you want to try livestreaming on LinkedIn or Facebook.
Part of the reason Twitter was such an immediate hit with writers and journalists was the creative challenge of the 140 character limit. It made it easy to keep the content coming.
There’s a man on TikTok at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History who tells snail jokes; not your typical TikTok content but he just keeps them coming! If you have to force it, you’ll run out of steam.
And that’s the key here. Is this activity something we can sustain long term?
Your next step in making the right decision
Thinking of revamping your social media strategy?
Contact us now and the Sookio team will help you ask all the right questions.