Staring at the fridge

“We first make our habits, then our habits make us.”

― John Dryden

It’s been said that visiting Facebook today is like opening the door of the fridge and staring mindlessly when you aren’t even hungry.

An interesting thought to be sure.  Admittedly I’ve found myself clicking on Facebook absent-mindedly with no real intention to read or post – so what the hell am I doing there?

Regardless of the user numbers and revenue that Facebook and other social media sites put up, we may be reaching (or have already reached) a point of habitualized indifference when it comes to social media.  When we visit these sites are we really in a mind to consume, engage, listen and converse, or do we visit just to say we were there – like some poor kid desperately seeking validation by semi-sort of hanging with the presumed cool kids.  Let’s call it Social media Affective Disorder (SAD).

Regardless of the reasoning or lack thereof, this SAD situation has broad implications for brands and marketers who expect to increase their social media spend from $2.1B in 2012 to nearly $5B in 2016 according to Forrester Research.

To be clear, I’m not advocating that social media is dying or dead as a medium, but rather I’m calling attention to the changing usage patterns that are emerging and what marketers and brands need to be aware of as they increase their investments in this medium.

Simply put, irrespective of the goals or KPI’s we establish to justify our media spend, changing consumption patterns via social media bear continued examination and media plans require continue fine tuning as these platforms continue their evolution.