Why brands should wait before jumping the gun on the hot and new social platforms.
For every ten successful social media platforms, at least 50 fail and fizzle out. As a brand, while it might be tempting to get excited and jump on the social media marketing bandwagon for these hot and new sites, it might be in your brand’s best interest — including time and money — to wait and see where the social media platform goes.
As a brand, there are several factors that you have to consider when deciding whether to join in on a new and trending social platform. This answer will vary for each brand; however, the questions are going to remain the same.
- Will this social media platform help you achieve your marketing goals?
- Will this social media platform reach your current or prospective customers and target audience?
- Will there be a beneficial ROI if investing in the social platform?
- Do you have the resources, time, and funding to delegate to this new platform?
- What are your competitors doing?
Most of the time, for any brand, it is going to be in your best interest to wait and see how long this trend is lasting. If it seems like the social platform is taking off, your competitors are joining in, and nothing seems to be slowing down — take the leap! Every brand has a marketing budget, and to be successful, it is vital that your effort, time, and funding is going towards tools and sites that are upping your ROI. It is a waste of time, resources, and, most importantly, MONEY to rush into getting your brand on a social site because it is new and popular.
There is doubt that social media is important to your brand. From being a great way to target your market audience, engage with your target audience, and increase your brand awareness and reach, it is vital that you are investing in the social media platforms that will benefit your business. We know that Facebook and Instagram are widely successful and growing in popularity, “With over 2.13 billion monthly active users, your mother, the postman, and the British monarchy are all using Facebook” (AllAroundDigital, n.d.). It is also worth looking at currently trending social media platforms and determine where we anticipate it going.
TikTok hit the scenes in 2020 and has grown exponentially. In 2020 it was the most download app, overtaking tech giant Facebook (Fanbytes, n.d.). With no end in sight, TikTok currently has 30 million monthly users in the U.S. — which surpasses the monthly users of Linkedin, Reddit, Snapchat, Twitter, and Pinterest — and it is anticipated that the site will reach 1.2 billion active users in 2021 (Fanbytes, n.d.).
With projected numbers like that, it is a no-brainer that this social media site is here to stay — at least for now. I would not anticipate this platform to fizzle out, as it has helped shape video trends for 2021. Once the lockdown hit, Tiktok’s popularity soared. With the pandemic still looming and future lock-downs in sight creates the perfect environment for the platform to grow even more momentum.
TikTok's popularity growth brought a new video trend along with it, user-generated video. “To win at video marketing in 2021, short-form, faced-paced, and energetic videos are trends to focus on when planning your video content for this year” (Idealinsight, n.d.).
So is TikTok here to stay?
As of now, yes. With TikTok’s creative content and with it being fueled by the younger generation connected to their smart phones, these 60-second videos are “rewiring entertainment, giving the next generation of activists new ways to tell stories and challenging the global internet order” (The New York Times, 2020).
