Why Social Media Marketing is getting Tougher Each Day: Advice for 2020 Marketers

It has been a decade since marketers around the globe have been depending on social media to leverage their businesses to new levels and use platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Interest instead of investing heavily in traditional marketing techniques. For some processionals, social media is a goldmine and social media marketing skills can help them fantastically to achieve new goals. For example, a simple kitchen blog known as Pescetarian improve their traffic with more than 15000 visitors only from their social media platforms within a period six months. It sounds cool; however, such cases are going to be harder to find in 2020 and beyond because marketing growth from social media has become tougher.

What that means is from a single influx of pages like Twitter or Instagram; digital marketers cannot expect to drive traffic miraculously using a tweet and photos. You may have uploaded hundreds of images on Instagram; however, social media marketing in 2020 will require investing a lot of time and effort to cash in big bucks. That is the reason only 48% of marketers have been able to generate real traffic from social media marketing efforts.

Why Social Media is becoming tougher to Crack

According to Search Engine Journal report 2019, more than 77% of marketers use social media for marketing boost and traffic purpose. But how many marketers can actually see the positive results of their efforts? That brings us to a question whether marketers should consider social media an integral part of their marketing strategy in addition to search engine optimization. That fact is that social media is evolving more rapidly in the current year; from a marketing perspective, less than 50% of the marketers are able to reap the rewards of social media marketing.

In the past year 2019, the SEJ report shows that Mark Zuckerberg announced a major change in Facebook that can drive many people away from the news feed. The research on Facebook show that most of the Facbook users are more interested in seeing the photos and posts of their friends and families in the News Feed section instead of reading the jargon-filled ads from brands. Therefore, you can expect an uphill battle on the Facebook in the New Year to continue boosting your brand on the social media. The chances are that if you are not investing anything in the Facebook ads, you are not going to get significant results for your campaigns.
In addition, Facebook is also threatening the marketers with privacy issues; the same gloomy story allows Twitter to delete hundreds of accounts daily due to privacy issues. A lot of people in the future will not be able to use their Twitter profile unless they are active and ethical users. This will allow the companies to post less Tweets and can drop the count of followers overnight.

Talking about the social media can never leave Instagram out; Instagram is also stopping brands from reaching their audience in 2020 by major shift in its algorithm. It has a crippling effect on the small business because their hash tags are not working properly due to the algorithm is hiding content from the followers. The biggest goal of users on Instagram is similar to Facebook that is to show their crispy images to their family members which have had a bad impact on the organic search of branded content.

The Real Reason for Mammoth Social Media Changes

Almost one third of the millennial have already deleted their Facebook accounts; Twitter is leading the list along with Facebook with 32% users leaving the platform. You might be wondering what has caused this disinterest in the social media networks with so many people quitting Facebook and Twitter. The main issue is breach of privacy; Facebook Cambridge Analytical Scandal has been the talk of the town lately. Even though Zuckerberg claims that user’s private information is never sold or disclosed to advertisers, people are still not happy about privacy issues on the Facebook.

It goes beyond nagging when social media companies use private information of people including their browsing history, IP addresses, and even home addresses for personal gains. People are worried and failing to understand the tricky strategies of social media platforms. Moreover, the new rule in the United States, General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) has failed to win the hearts of people since May, 2019; it has never been able to reshape the climate of social media using strict rules against businesses who reveal private information of users.

Mental Health Issues

Scrolling through the social media profiles and images of other people may make you insane or mentally ill; since you are not living as lavish life as they are, their dating, relationships, and gifts can make you feel peachy to fall into the pit of despair. Many scholarly articles have been published about the impact of social media on mental health of people; young people in the previous years have been investing too much time on Facebook and checking with others are doing too that generated mental health issues.

Commercialization

Since the changing sphere of social media is forcing many marketers to change their marketing strategies, many of them still fail to derive positive results from the rifle competition. Brands on social media are fighting hard to compete against each other to get their voice heard; that phenomenon alone is having a negative impact on the target audiences of many brands. The SEJ research reveals that almost 40% of social media users are already using ad blocking software which makes it even daunting for social media marketers to tap into their customers.

Strategies for Marketers to Improve their Social Media Marketing

What do the above changes really mean for social media marketers in 2020? Being an optimist, you can still believe strongly on the power of social media; however, there is an ongoing need to stay up-to-date with ever changing trends and Google algorithms to understand the behavior of social media for leveraging your brand. The following strategies will briefly explain a way forward for the marketers who feel dejected by poor results of social media marketing.

1. Always Divert your Focus on Engagement
2. Create strategies to Team Up with the influencers on social media
3. Focus on Niche Communities
4. Dive into Social Media Advertising

The Advice for Marketers

Based on the above facts, the conclusion of the post is that every marketer will be wondering in 2020 whether to continue with their precious resources to use social media to their businesses’ advantage or not. Is it really time to ditch social media marketing especially when Facbook, Twitter, and Instagram are already closing doors for marketers to gain significant advantage from their brand promotion? Does SEO sounds more appealing to digital marketers compared to social media in the evolving world of digital marketing? Even though social media will be tough to crack in the coming years, ending your social media marketing strategies altogether may be a hasty decision.

Marketers must devote their efforts on engagement activities, focusing on niche communities, and should use paid advertisement to have a better chance of success in their marketing endeavors. In the world of fast change, it is never too late to turn the wheel of your boat towards the right direction to avoid dangers.