K atie c ouric

Adapt to Changing Platforms by Testing and
Learning
Chan feels that being good at social media is hard because you have to
excel and remain relevant even while the landscape and the social media
platforms are constantly changing. New platforms emerge every few years
and it keeps you working hard to adapt.
Wade agrees that there’s constant volatility and that you need a way of
navigating through those changes, which is exactly what building a brand
helps you do. Brand building is one of the ways in which you can deal with
the short-term ups and downs of consumer behavior changes or cultural
shifts and societal pressures.
Chan thinks that a big contributing factor to his continuous success is
that his team is constantly learning and testing to figure out new ways to

---

improve. The core principles about storytelling, entertaining, and engaging
people through content have stayed the same, but the constant learning,
testing, and iteration bears on how you package that content in a specific
format for each platform.
For example, Facebook just announced a major change is coming to its
news feed—it will focus on showing more content from family and friends
rather than from brands and media companies.
2
This makes my strategy of
leveraging the advertising platform even more important to stay relevant on
this channel. A lot of companies will struggle if they don’t see the value in
using paid media to be seen. Organic marketing for brands and media
companies on Facebook will now be more difficult than before.
One (but not the only) way to adapt to this change is by lever-aging the
advertising strategies provided in this book and by having integrity and
creativity in the content offered. If your content isn’t highly shareable, then
it absolutely won’t be seen. This change is just one example of how social
media requires you to work hard and constantly keep your strategies up-to-
date.