If the Internet were a house, what room would social media be likened to?
I believe social media is the living room. After all, this is where we socialize with others. It is a place for gathering, interacting, communicating and networking.
Hundreds of millions of people are now choosing to be social on their mobile devices. Every day, the shift from the web to mobile relentlessly moves ahead. The living room has become as portable as an RV.
Even though there has been an unprecedented move towards social and mobile these past few years, there remains a major problem. And by major, I mean HUGE.
There is an elephant in the social media living room. Few have had the courage or insight to talk about it.
Nevertheless, this elephant will not go away. It\’s time to point it out, and hopefully, come up with a solution that turns the living room into something truly livable for everyone.
So what IS the elephant?
The elephant is commerce.
You see, without a model for generating revenue the social media space cannot survive, let alone thrive.
Let me state it more clearly.
Unless marketers can find a way to effectively and efficiently engage with their customers in the social and mobile space, the elephant will take up permanent residence in the living room, squashing the hopes and dreams of both marketers and site owners.
Allow me to explain the problem with fewer metaphors and in more detail.
A number of years ago, MySpace demonstrated that social media was something that people wanted. We like connecting with friends, sharing information and having centralized locations to have a conversation.
But on top of the problems MySpace encountered from more advanced sites, they were unable to adequately monetize the millions of people who enjoyed the site.
Along came Facebook, Twitter and Google +, each one attracting hundreds of millions of users. Conventional wisdom has dictated that those with large user bases would most readily attract sponsorships, and thus be profitable ventures.
How do you NOT make money with half a billion members?
Enter the rise of mobile devices. As more and more people are going social on their phones and tablets, social media sites have adapted their platform to work natively on these devices. Essentially, they have recognized that their user base prefers mobile for using their sites. So far it all makes sense, right?
Wrong. There is a key component that is missing. That component is a way for business, brands and marketers to reach their fans in a way that is seemlessly integrated with the social and mobile platforms.
This is the core of the elephant currently taking up space in the social media living room.
You see, social media and mobile platforms were created to draw users. They were never made for businesses, brands and marketers to have a conversation with their fans.
But if the social sites require the funds provided by business and brands in order to survive and thrive, they must come up with new ways that businesses can leverage their sites.
How can that happen if the platform was never created for businesses to use in the first place?
Several of the major sites now accept advertising. But isn\’t that just a traditional way to monetize a user base? Isn\’t paid placement an old-school approach to a medium that is begging for something new?
You would be hard-pressed to make the case that Facebook\’s \”promote your page\” feature actually serves the advertiser. After all, a brand can garner 100,000 likes to their page and still only reach 20% of those users organically, even on a very good day.
Twitter is working to encourage businesses to spend money on promoted tweets. While this will help businesses to some degree, the model doesn\’t provide the greatest advantage to brands seeking exposure or consumers desiring to engage with their favorite brands.
The question isn\’t \”how do social sites make money?\” The gorillas of social will continue to research and deploy means of attracting brands eager to tap into their user base. But these sites are too far down the road to truly solve the problem. They built their platform on acquiring as many eyeballs as possible. Now they must find ways to monetize those eyeballs.
Recognizing that social, mobile and marketing must work in unison in order for platform, brand and consumer to win the engagement game, I would assert that none of the current giants of social media are going to be the ones to win this game.
There will be a newcomer that asks the right question and comes up with the solution that integrates social, mobile AND marketing as the prime directive.
This new platform will be designed FOR social, FOR mobile and FOR marketing, not as an afterthought to any part of this balanced three-legged stool.
When this platform surfaces, users will flock to it for their ability to engage with their favorite brands, and brands will flock to it for their ability to interact with their customers.
Until that time, the elephant in the living room will continue to sit there, causing a disconnect between the masses of consumers on social media and using their mobile phones, and the brands that so desperately wish to engage with them.
What are your thoughts? Please leave your comments below!