Digital Marketing & Social Media
Recently, I have noticed a shift in my career interests from traditional public relations to marketing, with an emphasis on digital strategy and social media. I currently serve as a digital intern for Brodeur Partners, a public relations agency headquartered in Boston, which has allowed me to further explore my interests in digital marketing.
I sat down with my manager, Brittany Wallace, Digital & Social Media Specialist at Brodeur Partners, to further discuss the rapidly ever-changing nature of the field and how digital marketers can adapt to these changes.
Having worked in the digital marketing field for six years, here is a summary of the advice she gave me:
Perhaps the most recent change in the digital marketing industry is the acquisition of Twitter by Elon Musk. Within less than a month of his purchase of the social media platform, he put into place several extreme decisions, such as reinstating former president Donald Trump’s Twitter account. Despite the account being used in direct relation to the January 6 Capitol Hill attacks, Musk nonetheless decided to reinstate it.
Because of these changes, more than a million users deactivated their accounts (source). Some of them have since migrated to platforms with a similar user interface, such as Mastodon and Post News.
“On November 20th, the Mastodon handle @LauraMartinez posted, ‘I’m here because Elon broke Twitter.’”
On the other hand, users have also been advised not to delete their accounts, but to instead make their accounts private (source) in the interest of personal security.
“The danger sets in with account deletion as your Twitter username is thrown back in the pool, as it were, and can be grabbed by anyone setting up a new account. Depending upon your threat model, this could lead to impersonation using your name and status for nefarious ends, which is why there has been a multitude of warnings encompassing everything from law firms, privacy and security experts to political analysts and just concerned users, to lock your Twitter account down instead of deleting it,” writes Davey Winder, senior contributor at Forbes.
With all of this mind, frankly, I am still having a hard time comprehending the chaos that has ensued on the platform and its further long-term impact. However, I disagree with Musk’s decision to reinstate Donald Trump’s account given the violence that ensued following his reckless tweeting on January 6 at Capitol Hill. All in all, it’s difficult to determine whether the Elon Musk era of Twitter is its downfall because social media in general is so deeply engrained into our daily lives; those who check Twitter on muscle memory will continue to do so.
As digital marketers, the best we can do to adapt to these changes is to be agile and vigilant to new trends in the field and in behavior of our target publics. If our target audiences migrate to other platforms, we must then figure out what is the best way to communicate with them on those platforms. I believe the commonality and driving force behind both traditional public relations and digital marketing is knowing your target audience, and it is critical we do not lose sight of this goal.
