Antisocial

Social media continue to evolve; marketers must do the same.

Read on to learn why:

① Social media investments are at their lowest level in seven years.

② Social media has an immediacy and reach that is still impossible to beat.

③ The American economy and its banks are an absolute powerhouse.

④ There’s life in spreadsheets, and their faithful, yet.

⑤ It’s time for brands to consider adding Bluesky to their shared channels.

⑥ The return-to-office debate is missing the point.

⑦ Marketers and other writers should adapt to, not block, AI.

📸 But first, flashback to April when I told you that your spokespeople should be trusted not mollycoddled. This week, it’s clear Kamala Harris’ advisers get it.

What's new

A bi-annual poll of U.S. marketing leaders found that social media investments have declined to their lowest level in seven years, HBR reports.

Source: Harvard Business Review, 14 October 2024

① In short: “Social media investments declined from 17% in spring 2023 to 11% in spring 2024, their lowest level in seven years. Why?

Social media is a cluttered landscape: This may be driving advertisers away from social media as brands seek more effective ways to connect with their target audiences and achieve meaningful engagement.
Consumers are overwhelmed by content: Safeguards and attention splintering may be contributing to marketers’ search for alternative ways to reach consumers effectively.
Social media hasn’t delivered desired gains: Ratings of social media’s contribution to company performance have remained modest since the CMO Survey started asking about it in February 2017, with leaders rating social media’s contributions to company performance at around a 3.5 out of 7 for the last six years.
Determining social media’s attribution to product sales is difficult: Multi-channel environments further challenge companies’ ability to accurately track the customer journey through to purchase.
Social media may be misaligned with marketing strategies: Social media has sometimes been criticized for focusing on creative approaches and not on brand messaging.
Retail media is competing with social sites for eyeballs: Brand advertising at online retail sites is emerging as powerhouse tool for marketers.
Social media spending projections don’t meet reality: The practice of over-estimating projected increases points to a cycle of expecting too much or delivering too little with regard to social media’s role and may be contributing to marketers’ disenchantment.”

Why it matters

You might think that social media’s role in marketing financial services or technology might be on the wane, that it really only matters to marketers charged with selling consumer goods, but that’s not the case. LinkedIn is more powerful than ever as a channel to reach business decision makers and TikTok and Instagram - like them or loathe them - continue to dominate the attention of almost every age group. Indeed Barclays is so convinced that it’s advocating for a verification system for so-called ‘finfluencers’.

② Social media still represents one of the best ways to interact with people if for no other reason than most people use it daily and are willing to engage there. It has an immediacy and reach that is still impossible to beat.

This article matters because it reminds us how the social media landscape has evolved and that marketers need to do the same to continue generating results using the channel.

What to do about it

Take action

Some ideas on adapting your approach to this vital part of your marketing mix:

Target: The landscape is cluttered and noisy. So be clear about where your target audience is and focus on that.
Benchmark: As Picasso would have told you, there’s nothing wrong with stealing from others. Glance at what your competitors are doing by all means but look beyond that too. Above-average social media performers tend to be B2C companies, internet pure-play companies, and companies in the communications/media, consumer services, and education sectors. Steal from them.
Improvise: Reuse your own content, be agile and creative in your approach. It’s harder to get noticed than ever before so look for opportunities to react to what’s happening, in real-time, and ideally with humour.
Collaborate: The influencer phenomenon is real. Look for the influencers in your space and explore ways to work with them.
Leverage your employees and their networks: People follow people. You can have the best corporate social media presence in the industry but unless your team is amplifying its content to their professional contacts, you’re missing the most powerful aspect of social media.

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Top stories

The other articles that are worthy of your time.

FINANCE

Profits leap at Goldman Sachs as banks see steady economy

③ The American economy and its banks are an absolute powerhouse.

David M. Solomon. Source: The New York Times, 15 October 2024

“Goldman Sachs reported a monster jump in its third-quarter earnings, reaping $3 billion in profits — far higher than what Wall Street analysts had expected. How did the investment bank do it? The steadying economic environment helped.”
“Goldman pulled in nearly $13 billion in revenue during the third quarter, over $1 billion more than projections. […] A bank executive said that trading activity came in stronger than expected in September, the same period that the Federal Reserve announced a large cut in interest rates. It has been an insipid year for mergers and acquisitions. That said, the Goldman executive reflected a degree of optimism, saying that ‘the world is trending to above average,’ economically speaking.
“Those mixed feelings were shared by its rival JPMorgan Chase last week, when it reported bumper financial results. Bank of America separately reported its latest earnings and in keeping with theme it beat analyst forecasts. Although its profit in the third quarter fell more than 10 percent from the same period last year, the decline was not as steep as expected, bolstered by a jump in trading revenue and investment-banking fees. […] Citi’s earnings featured a smaller-than-expected drop in profit but a hefty provision to cover future credit-card losses.”

To understand why America’s economy is bigger and better than ever (it makes up half the GDP of the G7, and output per person is about 30% higher than in western Europe and Canada, and 60% higher than in Japan), read this >

TECHNOLOGY

Why Microsoft Excel won’t die

④ There’s life in spreadsheets, and their faithful, yet.

“Among financial analysts, management consultants and even the odd business journalist, Excel, which this month entered its 40th year, is a handy tool for everything from interrogating company financials to pricing assets. Satya Nadella, the boss of Microsoft, has called it the ‘best consumer product’ the tech giant ever made. The program even has its own world championship in Las Vegas, where spreadsheet wizards pivot, concatenate and vlookup their way to victory.”
“Exact figures are hard to pin down because the software is bundled with other Microsoft products, but last year the company reported that its cloud version had nearly 400m paid users. Mastery of Excel is prized: more than 100m LinkedIn users list it as a skill, compared with 61m for Google Sheets.”
“Might artificial intelligence steal its crown? With whizzy new tools powered by the technology promising to make data analysis easier, the familiar grid of numbers and calculations could soon feel outdated. Rather than replacing spreadsheets, though, AI might make them even better. Last month Microsoft introduced an AI assistant for Excel which lets users crunch data using natural-language prompts.”

MEDIA & MARKETING

Bluesky surges into the top 5

⑤ It’s time for brands to consider adding Bluesky to their shared channels.

“Social networking startup Bluesky, which just reported a gain of half a million users over the past day, has now soared into the top five apps on the U.S. App Store and has become the No. 2 app in the Social Networking category, up from No. 181 a week ago.”
“The growth is entirely organic as Appfigures confirmed the company is not running any App Store Search Ads.”
“The growth is not limited to the U.S. market, either. A number of countries are showing four-digit growth in downloads, compared to last Wednesday, leading Bluesky to enter the top 10 in countries like Japan, Thailand, and Taiwan, where it’s No. 1; Hong Kong, where it’s No. 2; Canada and South Korea, where it’s No. 4; and Singapore, where it’s No. 8.”

WILDCARD

What employers get wrong about how people connect at work

⑥ The return-to-office debate is missing the point.

“Connection in the workplace is, in fact, made up of four interrelated and essential elements:

Employee connections with their colleagues - Colleague connection includes opportunities for collaboration and interdependence with other employees, the social support that’s given and received, and the influence of these factors on team performance.
Leader - Research has found that 70% of the variance in team engagement can be attributed to a manager, making it clear that leader connection is a critical component of the workplace connections conversation.
Employer - Lack of employer connection can not only influence an employee’s job performance, but it can also influence the talent an organization attracts.
Role - When we experience role connection, we have a clear understanding of what our job is, we’re engaged in what we’re doing, and we have insight into how we can advance. When we have role connection, we are lifted up by the work we do.”

Above and beyond the return-to-office debate, this more accurate and nuanced view of workplace connections has implications for how organisations can design intentional talent strategies to create workplaces where employees are committed, engaged, and performing.”

Off cuts

The stories that almost made this week’s newsletter.

The last word

⑦ Jessica Scholz, Ringier's group chief marketing officer, on AI:

Jessica Scholz. Source: M&K, 18 March 2021

“In a few generations, they will look back at us and laugh that we didn't have a search agent who would do the search for us, instead of us going manually through homepages looking for things. […] We need to understand that it's not just the words we write, it's how we get them to people.”

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Wishing you a productive week,

P.S. Do you ever long for a simpler life? I do.