Laggards vs Innovators: Where Do You Fall in Social Media
Laggards vs innovators… how would you describe your company? Figuring out where your company falls in the adaptor category will guide you in handling your brands’ presence on a new social media platform.
For example, in 2008 I worked for WFTX, the FOX station in Fort Myers, Florida. High definition cameras had been out for a few years already. In fact, WRAL in Raleigh, N.C., was the first to broadcast local news in HD in 2001. They were the early adaptors, my company was a little slower. Management at WFTX decided to let other companies figure out all the pros and cons first. They were not rushing to be the first in the market with the newest technology. In fact, they were last in the market to join the HD revolution. In other words, we were the laggards.
Being late to the party has its advantages. We learned form other stations that having a new studio was imperative to the new cameras that would show every fingerprint, a more skillful mix of lights, angles and shadows was needed to create the illusion of depth and airbrush makeup was a necessity to hide imperfections. By the time we launched our new HD cameras, we were well prepared for the change with no curve balls thrown our way.
If we think of my local news station using social media in the same way, WFTX would wait a few years before joining the TikTok revolution, being the laggards that they are. This allows time to see if TikTok can maintain its social media presence before spending time and resources on a potentially failing social media platform.
The early adaptors are on the platform now, figuring out how to monetize the platform and adjusting to the option to film and share up to three minutes of video — much more time than its original 60-second limit. A potentially fatal change as longer TikTok videos may change the rapid-fire rhythm the app became known for. Another obstacle for TikTok to remain standing is surviving lawsuits that could take the whole platform down. In May 2021, TikTok changed the voice on its text-to-speech feature, just weeks after actor Bev Standing, claiming to be the original voice filed a lawsuit claiming she never agreed to be featured in the app.
TikTok also has to overcome its data collection violations as the UK investigates how it collects and uses data from children. Anne Longfield believes that TikTok is “a data collection service that is thinly veiled as a social network” which has been able to deceive parents regarding its true motives. They have already been fined $5.7m by the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) for mishandling children’s data. TikTok was also fined in 2020 for the same reason in South Korea by the Korea Communications Commission (KCC).
For the early adaptors out there (like WRAL in Raleigh who was the first news station with HD cameras), TikTok offers a whole toolbox to make your brand stand out from your competitors. Including a way for users to apply for jobs by recording “TikTok résumés” to send to select hiring companies.
Top social media platforms can be obsolete (do you remember your MySpace page)? The culture of your company dictates if you jump on board to new platforms or if you wait and let others work out the kinks. With Instagram using TikTok’s platform for inspiration, there is nothing proprietary to making TikTok last for years to come. The future of TikTok is not as easily forecasted as the necessity of HD TV cameras.
