When a brand wishes to communicate with a young audience, the automatic assumption is that Facebook is the optimum channel to do so. On first thoughts this seems to be a logical choice. Young consumers are digitally minded and therefore enthusiastic Facebook users, right? Wrong. Yes, Facebook is important when communicating to a young audience, but its popularity is declining among young consumers.
This poses two interesting questions for marketers: why is Facebook usage among the young declining? And what implications does this have for how we communicate with young consumers?
Facebook’s inception started the social media revolution as we know it and as a pioneer of this, it assumed a leadership position.
However, three key social media developments have meant that Facebook’s grip as ‘social media leader’ has been loosened, causing its usage by young consumers to decline:
Expansion of Social Choices
In recent years, the choice of social outlets for young consumers has exponentially grown, often with functions that allow them greater benefits than simply networking – Facebook’s core function. You Tube and Pinterest, for example, allow young consumers to show off their life experiences and creativity to the entire web, not just their Facebook friends, whilst allowing them to assume a quasi-film-director/photographer role.
Similarly, Twitter offers young consumers the latest news and knowledge in a concise format vs. Facebook whose news feed is not as fast moving or easy-to-read as its 140 character-based rival.
Speed of Change
In order to try and maintain their social media leadership position, Facebook has employed an aggressive innovation strategy, frequently making alterations to their offering. Whilst this has added value in the long term, functional changes to Facebook cause young users immediate frustration. The wider cultural picture of young consumers plays a large role in this, as the millennial category is living in a turbulent life period, where lives and outlooks are changing every day.
As such, young consumers require consistency in the fundamental elements of their lives – like communicating with their friends. The rapidly changing nature of Facebook goes against this grain, causing annoyance, and fundamentally causing the young to look for other, more stable social communication tools.
The Cruel Price of Success
From its beginning in Harvard’s halls of residence, to its $104 billion valuation, Facebook is a social media success story. However, this has started to work against it. For young consumers, Facebook was once a hip and trendy organisation, dedicated to helping the world network. Now, it is a corporate giant, more associated with Wall St than Hacker Way (Facebook’s notoriously trendy California offices).
This has also led to Facebook hitting the headlines as much for business indiscretion as for social innovation. As young consumers become savvier, they too know and appreciate the importance of CSR, and press coverage on the issue of Facebook’s tax affairs will not have escaped the young. As such, for the youth of today, to say ‘I am not on Facebook’ is akin to saying ‘I am in Greenpeace’ in the 1980s.
Given these three detracting drivers, marketers now need to consider how they socially engage with young consumers, given that Facebook communication is no longer a viable ‘go-to’ solo approach. That said, much can be learned from Facebook’s rise and recent decline:
Monitor Social Developments
Due to their digital upbringing, young consumers are at the forefront of social media change, and often the first to adopt new social outlets. Resultantly, brands need to continuously monitor the bigger social picture, and be ready to adopt new social channels when they start to gain traction.
One Size Does Not Fit All
Declining Facebook usage by young consumers has shown marketers that there is not a single solution to social communication with this audience. Therefore, youth marketers need to consider all social outlets when engaging with their audience – exploring usage demographics and primary market research serve as logical starting points to ensure your channel selection is as robust as possible.
Social Infinity Does Not Exist
To suggest declining Facebook usage 12 months ago would have been met with cynicism. However, Facebook’s declining usage among the youth has shown that even social media leaders are not safe from usage decline.
Youth marketers need to have flexibility in their communications strategy to reflect this – correlate your social channel usage with target audience usage to be as efficient and engaging as possible.
