The success of social media lies in the right mix of fruitful strategies. The incorrect combination will simply decrease the traffic from targeted customers instead of attract them. If you devise your social media marketing strategies such as social media marketing optimization based on current trends, you can increase profits and use social networking sites effectively for marketing. Listed below are the recent trends highlighted within an article published by Forbes based on the 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.
Low Usage of SOCIAL BOOKMARK CREATING Sites
Based on the research reports, using social bookmarking sites has decreased to ten percent from 26 percent in 2011. This considerable drop of usage clearly indicates the fall of bookmarking sites. Even though the sites including Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Pinterest remain popular among marketers, most sites (e.g. DIGG, Friendfeed) are almost dying. Therefore, it isn’t an excellent practice to trust a bookmarking site blindly for marketing purposes in today’s scenario. Instead, check for the websites that are hottest and perform the bookmarking very cautiously.
Decline of Daily Deal Sites
Daily deal features or just daily offerings of deals are regarded as a powerful way to attract a large number of targeted customers at the same time. The research report says that around 80 percent of marketers are not interested in using the hottest daily deal sites including Groupon or Living Social for his or her campaigns in the near future.
Now people concentrate more on the considerable amount of returns they receive from their purchases as time passes. Hence, you should use social media sites for long term marketing goals instead of daily goals.
Top Sites for SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING Campaigns
Marketers who use social media marketing for marketing will obviously carry out social media campaigns (using social networking sites for promotion) for his or her services or products to attract targeted customers. The campaigns will undoubtedly be successful only if the relevant site is popular among the customers.
The study report indicates that marketers who spend more than 40 hours a week for social media marketing perform their campaigns more intensely through Google+, You Tube, Pinterest and Instagram in comparison to those who spend six hours or less a week on social media marketing. Also, around 92 percent of marketers who have five or more years of experience prefer LinkedIn than 70 percent of marketers having significantly less than five years of experience. Forum marketing has also decreased to 16 percent this year from 24 percent in 2011.
Around 67 percent of marketers are planning to increase campaigns through Twitter even though it is a slight decrease from 69 percent last year. Young marketers, more than older ones prefer photo sharing sites including Instagram for launching campaigns. 62% chose blogging because so many suitable platform to master, that is the highest one accompanied by Google + (61%) and Facebook (59%).
Trends of B2C and B2B Marketers
Business to Consumer (B2C) Marketers use Facebook at a higher rate of 67% than other platforms. Regarding Business to Business (B2B) marketers, both Facebook and LinkedIn have equal majority of 29% each. Given below may be the pie chart showing usage statistics for every platform with regard to B2C and B2B marketers.
B2B marketers Social Media Brand Management agency with a more diverse array of platforms in comparison to B2C marketers. Both of these usually do not completely utilize blogging and have minimal You Tube usage.
If you are a B2B or B2C marketer, try to encourage blogs because they are regarded as the most used social media marketing platform. YouTube being the second largest search engine, it is possible to enjoy the benefits it provides by posting low-cost videos. Orabrush (B2C Company) and Blentec (B2B Company) have become strong brands by using low cost YouTube videos.
As B2B marketers increasingly use LinkedIn, they have a chance to utilize SlideShare (owned by LinkedIn). This social media marketing entity may be used for generating leads for B2B organizations.
Fewer Check-ins Online
As per the study reports, there is a reduction in the usage of geo-location services including Foursquare from 17% in 2011 to 11% this season. These services allow check-in to your locations automatically online. The decline in most of these services indicates that people are actually concerned more about privacy and safety. Marketers can tackle this example by introducing contests and rewards. This will encourage people to check-in more.
If you are still following a old strategy for social media marketing, then it is the time to develop new strategies based on all these current trends. It is best to entrust this tedious task to a reputable social media marketing company that offers reliable social media services instead of try implementing the strategies all on your own.