Intimacy - The Social Media Queen of 2024?
Intimacy - The Social Media Queen of 2024?
Building up on authenticity, intimacy enters the social media landscape.
Summary:
With freedom of expression capturing fully the zeitgeist of the last decade, trends no longer have such strong holds as they used to have. Building further on the authenticity wave, intimacy enters the social media landscape to further elevate relationships between business accounts and their community. Is “intimacy on social media” for everyone though? A deep dive into this concept, its application within the social media context and some key consideration for small business owners interested in taking the pulse and deciding if to embrace it or not.
Yes, it could very much be that intimacy takes this year the crown from authenticity as the prime theme of the social media content and communication strategy.
What does intimacy on social media really mean?
If and how to adopt it as a business owner and what are the avenues towards unfolding a communication style that has intimacy as its core motive? Sharing our thoughts on the matter, sprinkled here and there with some relevant references on this topic.
Let’s start at the top. What is the definition of intimacy? A theoretical definition for intimacy is this: the quality of a relationship in which the individuals must have reciprocal feelings of trust and emotional closeness toward each other and are able to openly communicate thoughts and feelings with each other. (1)
Some synonyms for intimacy include: familiarity, closeness, understanding, confidence. Now, if we place intimacy in the context of social media, its meaning brings into the spotlight:
A sense of connection and support - emotional but also spiritual, intellectual, experiential, there are many layers to it.
A sense of safety around sharing thoughts, feelings and experiences with the implication that others, feeling aligned with you, will relate and respond.
A sense of openness and vulnerability - being open and vulnerable is also a requirement of the authenticity concept, the one demanding realness over filtered and beautified content.
A sense of mutuality, to share openly how you feel and to receive the thoughts, hopes and dreams on the other side of the conversation.
In a recent interview discussing the trend report for 2024, Instagram’s Eva Chen surfaces the idea of pursued intimacy as a trend among Gen. Zs, and not only. “Years ago it was all about the public feed, and now we’re seeing that people have so many different layers to their online representation. So the way people are using close friends, notes, and direct messaging has skyrocketed, in particular with teens, because there’s an intimacy to it. You know exactly who’s going to be seeing it. And you can build on and become closer with already close friends.” (2)
Is intimacy on social media, a good fit and a must try for every business?
According to us, the short answer is no.
Trends nowadays come in multiple and parallel waves and there is a lot less rigidness to them. With freedom of expression being louder and clearer as never before, businesses have a wide choice of communication strategies & styles to choose from and they should adopt trends only when they are a true good fit for their audience and their goals, as well as their brand personality.
While the idea of “intimate marketing”, “customer / brand intimacy” are not new (all putting focus on building a lasting and personal relationship with the clients), the task of creating content and communicating on social media aiming to build “intimacy” is surely newer and absolutely not an easy feat.
The good news for small business owners is that intimacy, as a communication theme, can be a very good fit for them, in particular because small businesses are much more personal to begin with.
Has your social media account been narrating for a while the values and story behind your small business, the dreams that fuel it, mixing in those happy dance moments with openly shared hard times and an occasional sneak-peek into the private life of the owner(s)? If yes, you are actually very well equipped to step it up and aim to bring the relationship with your community to a higher level - the one where intimacy reigns.
Truth be told, small business owners who have embarked on the authenticity journey previously, and have been comfortably wearing the vulnerability cap when showing up on social media, are probably already reaching the destination of having built a mutually understanding and intimate relationship with their community.
The easiest and surest way to know if your business is there, or at least on its way to communicating intimately with its community, is to look at the response received back. Did all the personal material created, with occasional edges of private and vulnerable moments of joy and hardship, triggered an emotional response? Was it confirming and validating what was shared or did it also trigger a mutual disclosure of feelings, challenges, thoughts, hopes and dreams?
When the latter hits your DMs, it means your efforts are making a difference for others and they are also paying off for you. This is because the one thing that intimacy is deeply defined by is the constant swap of roles between disclosers and responders, each becoming increasingly willing to share personal thoughts and feelings. Intimacy, of any sort and at any level, is both recursive and reciprocal.
A few more final thoughts on intimacy on social media
Intimacy is built over time, it requires a conversation and exchange.
There is a controversial aspect within the concept of “intimacy on social media”. Intimacy generally implies a 1-to-1 relationship, deep and private conversations. Social media is mostly about the 1-to-many, the public sharing and the (targeted) mass-communication. However paradoxical, intimacy on social media is possible because social media has evolved and keeps on evolving in a way that really makes room for everyone and everything.
The number of DMs you get on your business account is a good indicator of the “intimacy” stage you have reached. Did you notice (except those giveaway posts or the ones with dogs) there is a lower tendency to comment and a higher tendency to send a message?
For all the obvious reasons, baking intimacy into your social media presence will demand even more of your time. Consider wisely where you decide to invest your time.
Intimacy can be nurtured at several levels: emotional, intellectual, spiritual, creatively, experiential.
Times of crisis are fertile grounds for planting the seed for intimacy. Think of a team that works together through tough times, a client in distress who receives swift support. Both are experiences that set the stage for mutual understanding and assistance.
Intimacy is not exclusively attainable by social media accounts that publish face pictures of the people behind them. While opening the door to that surely helps, the rise of faceless social accounts proves that emotional triggers and a sense of closeness and relatedness can be achieved without selfies too.
To wrap this up, our thought is that intimacy on social media does not come to replace authenticity but rather builds further upon it. Ultimately, we should each adopt the trends that suit us. Both authenticity and intimacy, as social media trends, are here to stay - think of them like animal print: if you like it, if it suits you and you can pull it off, it will never go out of style!
