Social Media has evolved, I've been on facebook 11 years and Twitter 9.  In that time there has been a massive change, for the better I would say.  We have, or are moving from the "wild west" to a more mature realisation of what social media can and cannot do.

GDPR has helped as people have to realise that they cannot be fast and loose with other people's data.  I say other people's as if you ask them about their data or their mother's data you always get a sensible and robust response, but ask people about other people's and they "don't care".

So what about this article I'm Passling?  It is half right.

Social Media as has the whole internet, gone mobile.  Most people are concerned about their own privacy, see comment above.

Social Media has lost trust, which is why Facebook ads are down by 20%.  This is more B2C, LinkedIn is different there has not been the FakeNews and I would suspect that people have not lost trust in LinkedIn.  In fact, as Facebook lost trust, I would suggest LinkedIn gained it.

Changes in algorithm are good.  On all platforms, like Google, social networks promote goodness.  Clickbait, posting for the sake of it, etc is bad and demoted.  If you are creating insightful, educational content that people engage with, you have nothing to worry about.  In fact you are a winner.  If you are posting boring, corporate content that nobody is interested in, you will be a loser.

ROI is measurable now and you can "connect" tweets to revenue and it's the norm that you can show a ROI for social media.  Which brings me on to paid versus organic media.

There is no way you need to pay for media.  As above, if people trust you, if you are creating engaging content then you don't need it.  Everything we do is organic, we don't pay for any media and don't need to.

My advice on influencers is spend time upfront choosing the influencer then get the hell out of their way.  In the B2B world that I live in if you want top of funnel leads and to be talking to a new audience then use influencers.

Where is social media heading?  With nobody looking at adverts, nobody reading unsolicited emails, nobody taking cold calls.  Plus the technology such as ad-blockers, email blockers and cold call blockers the window to use such legacy methods is closing day by day.

This is a wake up call to get on social, build your network and engage.