Is your content strategy ready for the disruptions being faced by social media platforms?

We’ve long cautioned our clients against modelling their customer communication strategies through relying too much on third party sites.

Instead we work with them on ways of owning content, using social media and other platforms only to ‘amplify’ their voice, not become the primary source.

If for example if Facebook changes its algorithms you see how quickly and heavily it can impact some groups. The same is true for many others.

Which is why this article from Rolling Stone looking at the future of Twitter should be something to take notice of. What if Twitter changes the rules? How will businesses who embed Tweets for example adjust?

Social media, including video platforms, Linked In, TikTok, Instagram, Discord and the rest are like Facebook and Twitter massively in being powerful and influential tools. They set their own rules.

But these too are being challenged, notably in the EU and with the Digital Services Act

READ MORE: Overview of EU social media regulation – Lexology

The US is taking notice, particularly as on the face of things it impacts the use of information rather than freedom of speech.

Digital companies are paying attention. They know lawmakers are increasingly uneasy about the power being wielded by their firms.

Yet the biggest changes may come through Web3, a mission led by the inventor of the Internet Tim Berners-Lee to return ‘data sovereignty’ back to users.

READ MORE: Tim Berners-Lee’s plan to save the Internet – The Conversation

Our personal information is something most of us have probably become conditioned to sharing with digital platforms by default. We click, we tick, we accept cleverly worded consents.

That data, that knowledge, is a primary source of monetisation for digital platforms. It is how advertisers, campaigns, media outlets, retailers, political groups, and so many more learn to understand what makes us tick.

You can’t put a price on the value of retaining control of our own identities, and ways to do that more effectively at source are coming down the track.

It will be for these platforms and those who are built upon them to pivot to the new way of doing things, not the user.

Any business plan that suggests otherwise, is for the birds.