The Death of the Commercial

social media strategy

Twenty years ago, advertising was a lot more straightforward than it is today. It might not have been any easier, but it was definitely predictable.

At the time, the best way to get your message out was via television, radio, or print marketing campaigns.

Customers who turned on the TV or opened up a magazine expected to be met with all kinds of brand messaging.

But these days, social media platforms have arisen. Since Facebook alone has 2 billion users, it’s easy to see why marketers rushed to these sites in an effort to get their message out to a potentially massive audience.

These social networks, however, turned out to be different than any other platform marketers have ever approached. Customers join social media because they want to connect with family, friends, and things that they’re interested in.

Because of this, users on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and the like responded much differently to overtly promotional content.

They simply started to ignore it.

In 2009, Facebook responded to user sentiment and created their infamous algorithm. This algorithm (or at least the version of it we see today) exists to block anything but amazing content from the Facebook News Feed.

In fact, Facebook goes as far as to say that overtly promotional content is frowned upon by the algorithm that governs the “top content” for user feeds.

But if the commercial is dead (at least on social media) then how are marketers supposed to get their message out?

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