The Future of Social is 'Community'

You're not the only one who has felt "stuck" with social media within the last 6 months. I know you've probably been asking yourself "what am I doing wrong?" or "these strategies used to be fool proof, why aren't they working anymore?".

Everything and everyone has changed since the pandemic. Prior to that traumatic experience that we all shared, aspirational marketing was fail safe and effective. You create a brand and lifestyle around your product based on the desires and aspirations of your target audience. They buy into your product and brand because they want to achieve the lifestyle that you're selling. And you just think of creative ways to sell this dream to your customers over and over again. But, that doesn't work anymore. Aspirational marketing is over. Something happened over the past two years in the minds of consumers, nobody is buying the "dream" that marketers once sold so easily. They're not clicking the ads, they're not buying the products that "influencers" recommended. People no longer want the dream, they want the reality. Nobody wants the over curated feeds, the filters and photoshopped images. Nobody is interested in house tours or "luxury porn" anymore. With the cost of living crisis on top of the pandemic ptsd, people just want honesty. In fact, deeper than that, people want 'community'.

This is why they're running from Instagram and towards TikTok. Because Instagram is full of the filtered, branded and over curated content that everyone is tired of, it's really about keeping up with the Jones' and impressing people. It's fuelled by aspirational marketing. Whereas TikTok is all about just finding your tribe, finding people who are likeminded, finding your community.

People are still going to buy things, of course, but they're going to be buying a lot less. Consumerism is down and sustainability is up. The future is hand-made, local, small business, POC owned, women owned, lgbt friendly, and community focused. This is where things are going.

Corporations will never die, but they will have to focus on developing communities in order to survive.

The "us and them" barrier between brands, influencers and consumers is broken... we were humbled and bonded in a way that will never allow us to go back to the way things used to be.

Good business has always been about solving a problem, but now, more than ever we need to lean into that.

So, if I can offer any advice here, it would be to hone in on a "purpose" for your brand, build a community around it and let that be the main priority for the next 6 months.

Advice for how to build a community will be in my next blog so look out for that!