do you really still need social media for your business?
Whenever I write something critical of tech or social media, I think about the business owners, especially small businesses like artists, who depend on social media for visibility, reach, client acquisition and so on. This was just a fact in my mind that held true for a very long time now, so I went on to not question it that much. But now I do. Does it still hold up?
I see artists everywhere usually saying that engagement has dropped lower and lower on the bigger platforms (X, Instagram, etc.). Their reasoning is usually
- less of their target group is still on that platform; they got alienated, got sick of social media, migrated or kept off of it and don't keep up with the artists new releases anymore
- people got lazy about engaging with content; they just scroll instead of commenting or liking
- the algorithm de-prioritized their content randomly, or: their content was deemed unsuitable for audiences or advertises and was limited on purpose, maybe even down to being outright shadowbanned
- their content gets drowned out by ads, low effort content, etc.
- not social media related: people are more reluctant to spend money on recreation and art now as compared to necessities, or literally do not have money left to spend
So that makes me wonder: What is the advantage of being on there? Is it actually still necessary, or are small business owners still holding on to what used to be true and in some sort of sunk cost fallacy? Is social media still the best way to acquire clients and sell, or would an independent site (even if it is on Squarespace or Shopify, I guess) with a newsletter and RSS do the same, maybe even more? What speaks against doing both; syndicating via social media, but having your main hub under your control and off of it and offering alternative methods to stay informed and keep in touch?
Artists increasingly don't know why their content does well or does poorly, spend more time optimizing for virality than creating (and especially creating things they enjoy), have to continuously adapt and game the algorithm, need to participate in trends to be visible and are subject to being demonetized or banned on a whim based on automated systems. At the same time, everything is being stolen without credit by randoms that even claim to be you, AI is being trained on it and there's an arms race with watermarks and tools to fool AI. It sounds like a massive pain in the ass, actually, and the reason they stay are like 5 huge artists or other businesses they know for whom it works extremely well; the 1% of that group, if you will, and even if the chances are extremely slim to become like that too, they don't wanna give up on it.
I am not affected by this; I don't own a business and I don't need to advertise anything I offer online. So to better understand, I would love if both business owners and people without it would share their views either via mail or as a blog post, too. Maybe there is something I am missing, and I would love to understand.
community echo
Published 09 Jan, 2025