Social media is a misnomer

A standard line from some of my decks over the past three years — “Put the ‘social’ back in social media”. The context is generally for senior leaders, encouraging them to actively engage more with their social followers. There’s particular value in doing this on LinkedIn; building a network and demonstrating relatability for employees.

That, to me, was what social media used to be about, the sense of spending time with other people, albeit virtually. Putting “the ‘social’ back in social media” was an attempt to get back to that feeling of the early 2010s, when conversations were meaningful, and new connections flourished.

But I’m increasingly of the view that putting the genie back in the bottle isn’t viable — that the ‘social’ in social media refers to the other dictionary definition of the word. Social, “relating to society and living together in an organized way”.

Social media platforms have a defined stratum. Celebrities at the top. Influencers, which on Twitter includes journalists, are just below. The highly engaged underneath desperately want to get noticed so they can move up a level. Then you have your regular sharers, just looking to get on with their lives, with only the vaguest dreams of moving up a level. Then the lurkers, which is around 90% of us. At the bottom are the bots and spammers (pretending to be human and fitting into the highly engaged bracket).

As Brendan Mackie points out in this excellent, thought-provoking article in Real Life magazine, much of what we think of as social media is more like parasocial media. For the 90%, our social media experience is like “looking through a window at a group of friends having a conversation, who can’t hear you as you laugh along with their jokes.”

We’re following the main characters in our lives; that might be celebrities, influencers or just our friends. But generally, the interaction, via social at least, is pretty one way. Typically dialogue happens elsewhere — on WhatsApp, Messenger or Zoom. For younger audiences, it’s on Snapchat or in response videos and duets on TikTok.

You only need to look at the now pervasive range of payment options for “creators” for proof that this pyramid exists. As Ryan Broderick points out in Garbage Day, Twitter has tip jars, Facebook has stars. Even Tumblr now has a subscription option.

The stratification of social and the advent of parasocial relationships present a significant issue for brands and businesses. It’s doubtful a brand will be a main character in someone’s life unless they’re a Nike or an adidas. There might be an existing highly engaged audience, but so often, it’s only the same group of people — the most vocal, the most engaged and the most dissatisfied. If you’re not a main character, with how algorithms work, you’re also highly unlikely to appear in the newsfeeds of the silent 90%.

There’s no putting the social back into social media for brands and business profiles. Plenty of businesses focus on using paid social to boost posts and appear in their lurkers’ newsfeeds — this is not new, and if you can show the ROI, it works.

As I see them, the other options for brands are to try and take on some of that main character energy and put themselves out there. Standing for something. Operating with purpose (purpose as in a reason, not purpose as in ‘social purpose’). It’s the most challenging route — it takes bravery, commitment and investment in creatives who can make branded social posts people actually like. And even then it might not work.

If you can’t find your own main character energy as a brand, then the other option is to buy it in. Hire celebrities and influencers, use them to give people a reason to care and double down on the ‘new entertainment platforms’ (I just made this up). YouTube, TikTok and increasingly Instagram aren’t social media platforms anymore, if they ever were. They’re entertainment portals with a lower bar for access. You need major main character energy to make your presence on these platforms work, plus the same investment in creatives who can make videos people want to watch.

We’re not ever going to stop calling all these platforms’ social media’ platforms. We might argue over what constitutes a social media platform, and we’ll ignore Pinterest and Snapchat when they tell us that “actually we’re not social media platforms”. But when we’re thinking about how we approach social media as a channel for communications, we need to be cognisant of what the ‘social’ in that phrase stands for. Yes, we’re spending time with people, but the flow of conversation comes from a small group, and it is only one way.