Not an island, but a web.

We had Myspace then we had Facebook, those were the innocent days of Tumblr, of the blog. People posted things that make us shudder looking back on them. Then came Twitter, SnapChat, Tik Tok (I know, I know, not in that order…). Once upon a time you would blog or post and more or less whatever you created stayed put on the platform where it was originally shared. Facebook albums would live only on Facebook and tweets would stay on twitter.

Probably because of the amount of platforms and the increasing amount time we’ve all begun to spend online, cross pollination of content started crop up. A tweet becomes an IG post set against a colorful 1:1 background and a Tik Tok is reposted on FB and mixed into a YouTube Compilation which is shared in a subreddit group. Hell, Tik Toks are re-creating

memorable Vine moments (RIP Vine) like this one right here.

Reddit continues to be somewhat of an outlier, yet you’ll see trends and memes emerging onto other social media networks, having originated deep within the super specific subreddit universe.

Here’s the point, everything is enmeshed and it’s not really important to dissect Facebook/Twitter/Snap/TikTok individually, but rather it’s interesting to see how what we create and post tends to migrate across the social scape either gaining ground (becoming more visible) or losing steam.

It’s interesting to see how what we create and post tends to migrate across the social scape

To that end, in advertising we think a lot about what is the right platform for the campaign or the audience. It’s not a one single answer though and case closed. Instead, what platforms we use and what fits best for the type of content we’re creating or distributing really comes down to a cocktail like preparation (a little bit of Instagram followed by a splash of Twitter topped with a blue cheese stuffed olive aka Tik Tok activation).

You’ll have a more effective campaign/integration if you select the right space for your engagement, however you’ll go much further by understanding that natural behavior means interacting with multiple forms of social media, the more you can build a cohesive experience with these interconnected platforms, the better off you are.

The average internet user in the U.S. has 7 social media accounts (GlobalWebIndex, Q3, 2019) so we know the conversation is more intertwined than a two lane highway type of situation. You may find out about an Indie jewelry designer from IG and you might look at their collection on Insta or even purchase right then and there (they hope so!). But you could also interact with their customer service bot/person via FB messenger after seeing that IG ad to make sure you get the right size, that is if they don’t respond to your DM. The “customer journey” will bend and shift depending on the item/service/product but you catch my drift.

I started off this analogy with islands vs. a web. The internet is a messy yet beautiful place and while none of us can ever profess to completely understand it, we can stand and pick apart how we behave as opposed to placing everything in a petri dish, acting like that’s the normal way to study social behavior.

I think the most interesting conversations we can have isn’t around how many people are using platform X and what is the most popular, instead, it’s about how each interaction complements and builds on the next one. If you don’t like spiders and thinking of a web (too literal for you digital people?) go with your beloved “ecosystem” buzzword but lord help me, I promised I wouldn’t use that phrase and I've managed to do without so far ;).