Where consumers live on social media
Image: Dairy Management Inc
The news that Elon Musk has completed the purchase of Twitter must be disconcerting for a lot of people who use it, for whatever reason. I’m indifferent to who’s running it. I admit I’ve come to the party kind of late on this one. I left it while the previous occupant of the White House was in full flow on the platform, and have now come back to it and use it regularly.
On my personal account, I follow both the cat feeds of the UK government’s Treasury cat (Gladstone) and Prime Minister’s residence cat (Larry), as well as Wrexham AFC (yep, been watching Welcome to Wrexham on Disney+). Larry is the more political of the two moggies, but both have been more stable than their human occupants lately. Our magazine account is @dairyindustries for those who don’t follow us already.
But what do the kids look at? While my offspring is on Twitter, he follows me and little else. He’s on Snapchat, or looking at TikTok or YouTube. Forget Facebook – that’s just a collection of the older relatives and friends. He has an account, but only to get in on the family clan messaging thread. Everybody uses WhatsApp for their day to day organising.
I can take or leave Instagram, as I think, well if I’ve already posted to Facebook, why do I have to post on Instagram too? Seems like extra work to me. The teenager doesn’t bother with it.
No wonder the Dairy Management Inc team in the US decided MrBeast was a good linkup to get in with the kids and promote dairy to them via TikTok, YouTube and gaming platforms. It shows that there can be an upside to social media with positive messages about the industry.
Basically, dairy has to meet the consumers where they live, and not where we would like them to be. Plus, I think farmers, dieticians and makers of dairy foods seem to have a very good time with TikTok, as I’ve seen on the clips I’ve viewed. It is mesmerising and I enjoy the music too, so perhaps it is on its way out if I’m interested. I’ll ask the teenager what the next platform is.
- Suzanne Christiansen, editor, Dairy Industries International.
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