Many companies and influencers who have long relied on Facebook to connect with fans, advertisers, clients, and to sell products are rethinking where they post after the companies platform went offline earlier this year. With the outage many small businesses realized how much they rely on social media not only to get their message out, but many saw a direct hit in their sales during the disruption.
With these finding some businesses are leaning towards other channels of communications. We meet up with Katriana Zommers on her feelings about the outage and what we may see in the future regarding social media.
Video Transcriptions
Harry Brelsford
Hey nation nation. We have one of our rotating analysts back Katriana Zommers . Kat, I understand you're in the same state, the state of Texas. How're you doing?
Katriana Zommers
I'm great. How about yourself?
Yeah. Good, good. Good. So, yeah, so let's talk about Facebook. And in the outage, you have some feelings about that.I have quite a few feelings about that. Um, I think. So. Earlier in October, we experienced what is known as the great Facebook and WhatsApp and Instagram outage of 2021. And I think if there's one thing that I that a lot of people need to take away from it, it's that all of these tech companies, you know, you really, really need to diversify. You can't rely on one social media platform, one marketing plan to, you know, get your word out to get your strategy out when you're marketing yourself as a small to medium sized business.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah, yeah, no kidding. So yeah, what's the word on the street? I mean, you know, go ahead. No, no, go ahead.
Katriana Zommers
So, the big thing that I wanted to say is that a lot of people, especially startups that I've been talking to a lot of startup founders have been saying, Get away from Facebook, especially because of iOS 14. And also secret. Apple is currently working on its own paid search engine, at least I hear on the street that Apple is working on a paid search engine, in addition to the fact that, you know, with meta being announced and everything like that Facebook is dying, which means, you know, go somewhere else, for lack of a better term. Well, Facebook may seem evergreen and has been evergreen for the last decade, we're seeing it slow demise. So YouTube, I'm seeing a lot of people headed towards YouTube. I'm seeing a lot of people headed towards Tik Tok. Believe it or not, I'm seeing a lot of people headed towards, you know, alternative methods of digital marketing and digital advertising outside of the Facebook sphere. Because we saw how fallible it can be if you rely entirely on that strategy in your marketing. Yeah,
Harry Brelsford
yeah, no, it's certainly not entirely and you know, I tend to spend my time on LinkedIn. I don't know if it's a generational thing, but it fits my business model. Rightly, my interchange up there. And then Facebook is more for you know, Strava, bicycle bragging and you know, I rode 15 miles so I use it in a pretty much a different realm. But do you think you'll do you think it will ever be disappearing like MySpace think it'd be that bad? Or will it always be there?
Katriana Zommers
It's interesting, because I actually read a statistic recently that Facebook is trying to appeal to Generation Z, and well, and it's actually Facebook generation Z. Only 23% of Generation Z uses Facebook, whereas 73% of Generation Z uses Tik Tok. So I actually think we're seeing the demise now as Gen Z becomes more and more of a buying power, you know, I'm technically late millennial early Gen Z, right. So 24 and under 25. And under, you're starting to see them actually have part of the market share now. And because of that, the trends are going to significantly changes. There's a generational shift.
Harry Brelsford
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Well, I tell you, my head's exploding as usual, when I talk to you. Yes. So what's, what's next when When do you go back to New Jersey and in such,
Katriana Zommers
I head back to New Jersey on Saturday, and then I will be you know, I'll be there. I'll be doing doing my own thing with all my other social media clients. So feel free to contact me if you ever want a free social media audit, consulting on Instagram. So thank you so much.
Harry Brelsford
Thank you