Last week we talked about Instagram Stories vs. Snapchat Stories and what that means, or doesn’t mean, for small businesses on social. What we didn’t get into discussing is the underlying importance of what these social media changes and trends mean for how small businesses use social media as a marketing platform and how they strategize.
We Need to Talk About the Teens
Where the teenagers go, we follow. Think about it: Facebook got too crowded and popular (and old – AKA their parents joined) so they left at an astonishing rate of up to a million a year. Similar story, we followed them to Instagram (where they’re still quite prevalent) and then they went to Snapchat. 13-25 year olds now make up the core of Snapchat’s 150 million strong userbase. Teens are already looking for the next best thing and it’s being noticed, even by Mark Zuckerberg. The Facebook founder is famous for closely watching generational consumer behavior and that can be seen in Facebook’s purchasing decisions. Even last year he admitted Facebook is no longer the cool place to be so it’s a very good thing he had the foresight to buy Instagram!
But here is why this is important: as social marketers, as small businesses, as retailers, as strategists, as bloggers, we finally have a lighthouse in the ocean that is social media. Follow the light of the teens and it will allow you to anticipate and plan for the next big platforms so that you can get out ahead of your competitors. If social media marketing is where a lot of your budget is going (as it should) then you must watch the social behavior of teens and prepare accordingly. Businesses, blogs, strategists live and die (not literally) by their intuitive understanding of trends and their fearlessness with which they prepare for and dive into change and how well they can push innovation. Simply put, teens are the bellwether of social media platforms and businesses are going to continue to market on social media, so the importance of this relationship becomes quite obvious.
We Need to Watch The Teens
Keeping an eye on teenage social behavior is a good way of buying yourself more time before fully committing to a new platform. With this time you’re able to strategize, plan, produce a backlog of content, plan, watch major brand behavior and plan some more. This way when you do join you will have that edge over your competitors by being able to dive in (and capture the audience early) instead of wading. Or, if you’re not too worried about competitors, you will buy yourself more time and be more informed, which is never a bad thing.
Now go plan and make your social dive, and always keep a weather eye on the horizon for that lighthouse.
PS: Be sure to sign up for SmashFund to start building your social crowdfunding network!
