Source:
https://www.podbean.com/eau/pb-hwip6-14f5af7

The social media landscape has changed drastically over the course of this year. What does that mean for our clients as we plan for 2024?
 
Transcript
Michelle Kane (00:03):
Thank you for joining us for another episode of That's Solo Life, the podcast for PR pros and marketers who work for themselves, people like me, Michelle Kane, with VoiceMatters and my ever steady co-host, Karen Swim with Solo PR Pro. Hi Karen. How are you doing today?
Karen Swim, APR (00:21):
Hey, Michelle. I am very chilly, which is why I am wearing my comfy little coat during this broadcast because we're in the thirties here in Michigan, but other than that, good. How are you doing today?
Michelle Kane (00:37):
I am doing well. We are not quite that chilly here in the Philly burbs, but there's that beautiful fall crispness in the air that even though I'm not thrilled about the temperature plunges to come, I will take it. It adds a little snap to or step.
Karen Swim, APR (00:56):
We're just going to call this fall crisp with a little bit of rain. That's what we're going to call it. We're going to call it fall crisp because it's still technically fall, and I am determined to enjoy fall until the very last day. I refuse to accept that it's over because it's not technical.
Michelle Kane (01:18):
No, no. In fact, I saw a hysterical Instagram reel from Michelle Stafford. She's a soap actress, Nina General Hospital, everyone. But the whole point of the reel was that her young son was very disturbed that we were skipping Thanksgiving. We were hopping right from Halloween to Christmas, and you hear him in the backseat of her car going, “Where's Thanksgiving?” And so they go to Home Goods and they're shopping around and they found fall on a clearance table and the little boy says, “The boss here mustn't do Thanksgiving.”
Karen Swim, APR (01:59):
That is adorable and so sad. Help the children do not just push you all to the side. Do not push Thanksgiving away. I mean, listen, no matter what you feel about the pilgrims. Let's not rush it to Christmas.
Michelle Kane (02:15):
No, let's let our Thanksgiving meal digest properly. We don't want to get acid reflux as we hurl into the holidays. But she did end up buying some holiday items and she said, “I'm not proud.” And he goes, “I'm not proud either.” So check out Michelle Stafford's Instagram. It's very funny and not that we want to rush things, but speaking of social media and how fun it can be and how it can still be effective today, we're going to go on a little bit about social media planning for 2024. It's been a while since we stopped to sort of take stock and see what's going on out there. Where are our clients' audiences spending their time, what is still worth our time to use it as organizations and corporations? So we're going to talk about that a little bit.
Karen Swim, APR (03:09):
Yeah, honestly, Michelle, it's amazing to me that in this past 10 months how dramatically the social media landscape has changed, and maybe it's just me, but I feel like the changes have been as rapid as when social media really started to take off many, many years ago. I've not seen this dramatic of a shift in such a short period of time, all driven of course by the social media site formerly known as Twitter. It really just led to a deluge of changes and it's definitely well worth it to take a hard look at strategies and understand audit for your audiences again and make decisions about how you advise your clients or how you as a brand advise your company on what to do in the coming year.
Michelle Kane (04:07):
Yeah, that's so true, especially with regard to that channel. I know many have full on abandoned it for very good reasons because just of who has the hate speech and the things that have been allowed to take place. I mean, I still do find it a fair resource for journalists that are still hanging in there and trying to, it's for better or for worse, still a place where you might find up-to-date information. With yesterday being election day, it certainly wasn't like the good old days, but I thought, oh, okay, I can still get up to the moment information. But for the rest of it, if I were advising a client, a fresh new client today about using it, I would not, because it's almost like when you take your clients to lunch, do you want to take them to a nice place or a place with questionable actors?
Karen Swim, APR (05:01):
Yeah, it's really, I thought in all of the movement and all of the things that have happened on X this year, I was certain at some points that it would be gone by now. I really thought it would be gone or that it would have lost every shred of usefulness. Now, for some people, it really has. The interesting thing to me is that there were some media companies that made a wholesale decision that we refuse to be on this platform and support the ethics and the morals that are coming from the top, from the leadership a