Is the future of social media to not be on social media?

Guest article from Alma Brosnan is part of the Social Media Consultancy and Training team at Fuzion Communications who provide services from offices in Dublin and Cork, Ireland

Is the future of social media to not be on social media?

That seems to be the viewpoint of Lush UK at the moment.

Out of nowhere, they announced recently that they would be shutting down their social media platforms and communicating with their customers through live chat on their website, email and over the phone.

Their reasoning behind it is due to all the algorithm changes from the various social media platforms making it harder for their content to be viewed by their audience.

As we all know, Facebook wants your advertising money and due to this, organic posts (those with no advertising budget) don’t reach as many people as they would have previously by a huge margin.

So clearly, Lush just reached the end of their digital marketing tether and gave up…. Or did they?

Lush UK may be closing down their social media operations but the main Lush accounts are not.

The @LushCosmetics Instagram account has 4.4 million followers, a huge difference from the now-defunct @Lush account with only 571 thousand followers.

This is an experiment whereby they’re not risking losing their core audience, but want to see if their direct communications with customers will benefit them in the long run.

We all know that the end goal of all communications is reaching your audience and achieving ‘that’ objective, which in their case is sales. If the only way people can contact them is via their website, they’re already close to the bottom of the funnel and that bit closer to making a purchase.

By Lush encouraging their followers to communicate with them via their website, they’re effectively cutting out the middle-man.

One of the main reasons we encourage our clients to use social media is so that they can better control their messaging. It also gives them a unique opportunity to demonstrate the personality of the brand or organisation and tell their story in a unique, authentic voice.

This is not just interacting with customers, but also “listening” to what they’re saying.

Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon is quoted as saying, “Your brand is what other people say about you when you’re not in the room”, and this is always something I will refer back to with clients.

Telling your story online, being able to converse “socially” and being able to respond to negative or positive comments will help to build the brand and hopefully build trust and a much better connection with your customers (as long as you get it right, of course!).

Social media is one of the many powerful communication tools offering you a special way of telling your story and by removing yourself from these platforms, will you hurt your brand in the long run?

Let’s see how it plays out for Lush?