Shortly before Black Friday this year, one of the largest cosmetics companies LUSH deleted its accounts on all social networks, including Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, TikTok. The reason for this extreme action is the latest reports, which the Wall Street Journal (WSJ) has revealed in portions for weeks. They say that social networks, in addition to tolerating violence, hatred and division, lead to serious mental disorders in teenagers and adolescents.
Such research is not novelty, but the documents distributed by the WSJ tell the story of the active neglect and circumvention of all warnings of experts who are aimed at detecting the damage and reduce it. In the end, nothing happens and…
The free market strikes back!
Nothing has worked better than the free market and that is why this concept is so strong. Facebook has constantly neglected the harm that social networks do to people, in order to make more money from advertisers. But exactly these advertisers stop paying and delete their accounts in an attempt to protect their users.
LUSH’s loss from this action is estimated at 13 million dollars, but CEO Mark Constantine says he is not worried at all, because this action is correct.
A number of small and large companies have taken similar action in recent years. Some have boycotted specific social networks to put pressure on the US presidential election, others in connection with the Black Lives Metter protests.
Tesla and SpaceX were among the first to delete their Facebook and Instagram accounts and pages due to numerous user data leaks and to protect their users.
In our opinion, the process of outflow from social networks will continue and although at the moment this seems shocking to us, it is rather part of a natural cycle – users have created social networks, users can destroy them. The same thing happened with forums decades ago, with IRC chat rooms, with BBS before them (you don’t even know what they are, do you?).
How will we do business in the post-social era?
Businesses are becoming more and more nervous about the change in the effectiveness of social media advertising and the outflow of users. Even more annoying is the constant race for new technologies, where investing in one social network this year may be in vain, because next year users are captivated by another network, application or trend.
What will happen to businesses?
There are several types of businesses. Some existed before social networks, exist today and they will exist after social networks. Their way of working is not directly related to finding likes, followers or sharing hourly posts just to keep their page alive. These are companies such as mobile operators, hardware stores, food companies, car companies and other similar that we use every day without even logging into their Facebook page.
However, smaller businesses that started entirely based on social media may suffer serious damage.
Merchants who do not have a website but sell entirely on social media will experience a shock. The way to get out of the situation relatively quickly is to create a website and actively impose it while still having an audience on the web.
Stores that, although they have a website, advertise mainly on social media. This type of business is already experiencing a reduction in the effectiveness of advertising and its price increase. It is important to note that if the efficiency has dropped twice but the price has doubled, this makes the ratio between price and quality more than 4 times worse, which is 400% in the negative direction. Doesn’t sound good, does it? This type of stores urgently need to focus on investing in SEO or search engine optimization. This can make their website discoverable without need someone to hang out on social media for hours.
Influencers – these are businesses based entirely on social networks. They are created by social networks, live and function there. If people are not on social networks – there will be no influencers. The solution for them is one – either to redirect the money earned to a real business or to find a real job.
The good news is that changes are relatively slow and everyone has the opportunity to prepare. But as often happens, people like to ignore red flags and believe in their judgment until they are on the edge of the abyss.
We recommend that you think as quickly as possible about whether you are prepared for the scenario in which social networks no longer have the strength you need for your business and take action today. If you need a website or optimization – write to us. We are your people.
