Social Media strategist Johan Friedner

Gone are the days when Social Media was a toy just for fun. Social Media Influencer, that is an actual job. Even more so, it is a vocation that has created multimillionaires. SM (Social Media) has become one of the most (if not the most) successful informative and promotional avenues across all brands: tech, fashion, the arts, anything that involves commerce. Anyone under the age of forty who is interested in a product or service will likely grab their smartphone to investigate. Decades of celebrity endorsements have taught us that consumers steer towards brands that are endorsed by those whom the public trusts and wishes to see themselves as similar to. 

Social Media offers this opportunity by means of an ubiquitous platform capable of reaching anyone at any time. There is an undeniable generational aspect to this but there is no doubt that this is the future of marketers and consumers. To properly understand this at its core, its best to consult the experts. Just as you would ask a doctor or nutritionist about your diet or your mechanic about the best gas or oil for your automobile, Johan Friedner is the proper professional to consult about the role of SM in modern business. 

His resume includes Advertising Strategist for PSFK Labs, inventor and founder of virtual reality company Scentience, and among others, as a Social Media strategist for PSFK. As someone who has grown up with the prolific integration of modern communication styles and placed himself at its epicenter (San Francisco/Silicon Valley), Johan’s understanding is almost instinctual at this point. He is able to communicate the role of SM in today’s market in a way that exceeds almost all others. 

One of the most misunderstood facts about SM in today’s business market is that it is simply a way to advertise. SM exceeds every other format in its ability to provide an immediate and uncensored line of communication. A lot of businesses are investing heavily in personalization of their products and services, especially in the beauty and technology space. Businesses also try to leverage their customer base to crowdsource advice on how to make their products better and even find new markets. Social media and the one-on-one communication possibilities it offers makes it the perfect tool for this interaction. If a person feels like he or she is listened too, it will reflect in how that person perceives the company and they will be sure to share it with their friends. 

Johan notes, “I think many brands are missing the great opportunity to hit their consumers at different touch points in their consumer journeys. Many companies just see them as outlets to post marketing messages but they should think about all the possibilities. Use Twitter as a support forum, use Facebook to post content that your brand ambassadors create around your product and use LinkedIn to acquire the best talent to work for your brand. Maybe even create different personalities for the different sites and let them interact with each other, there are so many fun ways to play with SM. It can be used to loop back to the consumer journeys. What is your objective? Do you want more consumers to discover you? Then create a paid campaign on Facebook. Do you want to convince more evaluating customers to make the purchase? Upload a competitive review on YouTube. Do you want to retain more customers? Encourage them to engage the brand conversation on Reddit to get a discount. There are so many possibilities.” 

Friendner’s role as Advertising Strategist for PSFK Labs led to his role in SM for the company. After making an audit of how PSFK works with social media, Johan realized that PSFK was cluttering their space with too many feeds. This left their followers unsure about what to follow. He created a new/cleaner direction of their platforms focused on Twitter, Facebook, and LinkedIn. Following this, he looked at what content was being distributed. Drastically reducing the number of articles being shared, Friedner created a feed were the highest viewed content was posted, increasing engagement among all platforms. Johan introduced the platform Slack to create a chat that every PSFK visitor could use to contact the company. This became a “Chat-A-Researcher” function which is now sold together with memberships. This chat function also brought new sales leads and increased work efficiency internally for PSFK. 

Friendner points out that LinkedIn is the clear winner of PSFK’s social media influence and is not to be underestimated in today’s SM world. As a niched company for business executives and marketing agencies, PSFK and the like are required to market themselves in professional environments. To be able to directly reach thought leaders and experts on a platform were everyone is already in the mindset of being forward thinking generates a lot of attention and lead-gen for these companies. Finding the most appropriate SM vehicle for your purposes is more important than jumping on the bandwagon of what’s currently trending, according to Friedner who professes, “Social Media is interesting as it (just like trends) swings back and forth. As a company, you shouldn’t only invest in one platform and hope that it will prevail forever. Many thought Facebook was the end of the line but now they are losing more and more users and more importantly, activity and engagement on the site. As a brand, you need to invest in a communication strategy that is flexible and will work among several social media platforms to be able to adopt newcomers. Find your brand voice and use it with whatever medium is currently most profitable for your brand and marketing. Right now, we’re seeing personalization of communities were people use groups more on Facebook than their regular feed and other more personalized sites targeting specific subcultures are popping up as well.” 

As the types of SM continues to evolve, so do their means of delivery. The public is ahead of the curve, searching for the best means to receive information. Johan concedes, “Even though live streaming is more mainstream now, I’m still very excited about it. As a gamer who watches E-sport for fun, I think there is so much untapped potential for brands to use it to build communities and show transparency. Also A.I. chat bots are fun. There is a Twitter bot that combats Internet trolls by arguing back with solid facts. The longest conversation I saw that a person had with this bot (unknowingly that it was a bot) was 10 hours.” The technology we use in today’s culture may have been one of the most significant inventions of the past century but the way and means by which it is used to affect our culture is on a course to quickly exceed that. For those like Johan Friedner, that path is both clear and exciting. For those of us less certain about what the future holds, the wise move is to place your bet with Johan and his peers to insure that you are on the new path which is being laid out before us.