Time to look beyond social platforms as a medium

In fact, we conveniently call it social “media”. During one of my conversations with Ramesh Srivats, the CEO of TenTenTen Digital products, he shared an amazing insight about social networks, with a great sense of simplicity.  He said, “The moment you start referring to something as media, you start broadcasting. You begin to push a message, like how you do on mediums such as TV, radio and print. Social is a networking platform. A platform where people talk and brands listen, not the other way around.”

The social network platforms are evolving themselves according to the users. They are reconsidering their algorithms every now and then, content feeds get categorized according to user preferences and so on. 

While it is easy to get caught into the comparison of one social platform over the other, what’s important is to understand which behaviour of the target audience drives the social platform to be designed in a particular manner. It doesn’t matter if Facebook Live is becoming the most dominant streaming platform or Instagram winning over the photo sharing space, because it’s the user that plays a big part in designing the roadmap of these platforms.

To use social platforms effectively, we need a change in approach, i.e. the focus needs to move away from the mediums towards the user behaviour. In fact, if you observe, with more companies becoming socially savvy, newer job roles have come into existence. If you take a successful Facebook fan page for example, it would seek two way communication, in other words, conversational. The goal is not just increase the number of likes or follows but to build a community. 

This is mainly because, today people don't want to be told, they want to discuss, be heard and share opinions. The number of people posting opinions on political issues, movies, and sports clearly shows that. To stay relevant, it has become critical for brands to post content real time. 

Secondly, people seek real connections - something that they can catch up with, both online and offline. And this is exactly why, social listening has emerged as a separate job role. Tools such as SparkCentral, SocialMention, SproutSocial and more, help brands aggregate conversations across platforms and engage with their audience.

In short, we are in a social world, where brands are amplified by passionate supporters and influencers. It is extremely important to take care of this community by being authentic and drive meaningful conversations. The question to ask yourself is - Are you in sync with your audience?