Social media marketing has always been somewhat fraught with uncertainty regarding which platforms, communities, and strategies might be the best fit for a given product or service. This uncertainty has only grown in recent years, and will likely continue to do so for the foreseeable future, as the entire landscape of the internet changes.

On this blog in the past, we have discussed the effects of declining consumer trust in Facebook, and the growth of TikTok as a platform for marketing to young consumers in particular. It’s not clear that Facebook ever recovered from its problems, though the platform has endured and retained much of its popularity, making it a still-viable marketing platform for some companies, and an essential one for people trying to reach certain demographics. Meanwhile, TikTok has certainly exploited its early advertising potential, but now that platform is also threatened by an emerging crisis.

Unlike the prior issues with manipulative content on Facebook, the issues facing TikTok are not of the app’s own making. Instead, it’s ownership by Chinese nationals and the accompanying threat of data harvesting by the Chinese Communist Party has prompted American lawmakers to take steps toward banning it in the US.

A bill to that effect has already passed the House of Representatives and will now be taken up by the Senate. Its ultimate passage is still not guaranteed and TikTok owner ByteDance could resolve the issue by selling its American operations to a domestic company. But of course anyone who is now relying on TikTok for their social media marketing campaign cannot take it for granted that the platform will be around in a year’s time.

This obviously puts social media marketing professionals in a difficult position, because they cannot assume they need to pivot away from TikTok, either. In the interest of providing the best long-term service to their clients, they must have plans in place for how to proceed whether the platform collapses or rebounds. They should also probably be prepared to make on-the-fly adjustments in the case of some unforeseen third outcome that keeps TikTok around but changes the way it operates for advertisers and influencers.

As a matter of fact, changes along those lines have already taken place, and not just on TikTok. Users of various platforms have complained over the years about new algorithms reducing the number of impressions they’re receiving, or changing their audience demographics. It is a perennial challenge for social media marketing companies to recognize, understand, and adapt to those changes.

There is good reason to believe that this trend of instability will only continue to grow, whether because of legislative entanglements as in the case of TikTok, ownership changes as with Twitter, or a more gradual shift in consumer attitudes as with Facebook. Unfortunately, there is no easy way of keeping social media marketing effective amidst this instability. Each new development should just serve as a reminder that companies and their marketing partners cannot rest on their laurels after finding platforms and strategies that seem to work – not in 2024.