Since the dawn of the social media age in the early 2000s, its widespread adoption has been one of the most paradigm-shifting events and has shaped society to a large extent. Not only has it changed the way we interact with our social circles, but it has also gone beyond its original objective by helping people form online communities based on shared interests, beliefs etc. The highly reliable first-hand psychological characteristics provided by the platform led to the birth of social media marketing. Since then, there has been no looking back as social media platforms went from strength to strength with currently over 4.62 billion users across the world.

Now, 2023 promises to be a redefining year for social media as a whole. Let us try to understand why:

Oversaturation

Like everything else in life, moderation is key. Given that social media sites typically do not have any subscription fees, they have made user growth their topmost objective and have ensured that everything on the platform is concentrated on enticing users to the platform and keeping them there as long as possible through whatever means necessary.

Unfortunately, this has led to a dilution in engagement quality as social platforms became more and more toxic with almost any given topic becoming extremely polarising.

Instability

Following from what has been mentioned above, the instability and chaos are major issues for users who don’t want to have anything to do with these mainstream social media platforms. As these platforms have largely created a digital world with no rules and have allowed toxicity, divisiveness and flow of unverified information to thrive, more and more segments of the user population tend to stay away.

Additionally, with the biggest social media platforms in the world like Twitter and Facebook undergoing seismic shifts in the way they operate and/or losing billions of dollars, it means that there is a lot of uncertainty in terms of the road ahead for social media platforms.

The Way Ahead

Regardless of all the issues with social media platforms we have discussed so far, the idea of a social media platform is inherently not a bad one and can help/has helped our modern society in many ways.

Recognising this, there has been a slew of newer social media platforms which operate on the basic tenet of social media - to build an online community where people can exchange ideas, have healthy debates, catch up on the latest happenings in their social circles and in the world as a whole. Platforms like Discord, Slack, and Mastodon are all fine examples of social media platforms built first and foremost for the users and not corrupted by massive multinational corporations.

In 2023, as more and more users continue their exodus from mainstream social media sites to more community-focused sites, brands will need to evolve to reach out to them, with more of the marketing strategy focusing on good content based on the merits of the brand and designed to appeal to the users rather than how much the brands can afford to spend in the form of paid ads.

While this doesn’t mean that you/all brands should stop advertising on Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn and shift to the smaller social media sites, it is a good idea to be prepared for the new age of social media by investing in grassroot advertising campaigns to ensure that when the time comes, you are not caught off-guard.

Schedule a call with our experts and discover how we as a Digital Marketing Agency can help you.

Schedule A Call