When everything we’re pushed to do revolves around sharing, consumers are becoming more aware that companies have a vested interest in encouraging them to do so.
Is the general notion of sharing threatened with becoming obsolete?
Social media trends – users mixing their own
Social media trends are fast bubbling phenomena.
The explosion of user generated memes recently illustrated that the regular user has the understanding and tools to create the rich content that marketers rely upon to influence and engage.
Reams of marketing assumptions are being ripped apart daily online. There’s no reason to assume that the production quality of your content will differentiate it in the conversation – users, everywhere, are creating increasingly slick productions.
Ideas, energy and the ability to be relevant alone are the lights by which your marketing can differentiate itself.
And even if your marketing department may no longer be creating the trends that emerge, they can do very well being reactive to the user generated social media trends which will continue to bubble through the social web.
The amount of traffic such trends drive can be short lasting, but huge in volume.
And with companies increasing internal collaboration and knocking down silos, nimble and savvy organizations are better placed than ever to react to these trends.
A wider question
There are the companies providing the social media platforms, aiming to make you share on them.
And there are the companies trying to keep up with individuals on those platforms, to provide enough quality content that users will share it amongst themselves.
And there are the users blithely utilising these platforms for everything from building business relationships to idling away voyeuristic hours oogling through their neighbours windows
And at the bottom of the food pyramid, this eco-system relies on those users sharing.
But even as the incentives for users to do so ramp up and up, the shouts of ‘why’ to the prompt of ‘share this’ are becoming louder.
And if they became too loud, and a tipping point was reached, that environment would stop revolving.
The social media trends that scare this new social environment most are those curtailing sharing, when users start closing their curtains.
Far be it from us to be sensationalist, but organizations should realize the unique benefits of the current landscape of social media trends, and enjoy reaping the rewards of being one voice of many in the conversation!