The success of social media lies in the right mixture of fruitful strategies. The incorrect combination will simply decrease the traffic from targeted customers rather than attract them. If you devise your social media strategies such as social media marketing optimization on the basis of current trends, you can increase profits and use social media 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 Bookmarking Sites
Based on the research reports, using social bookmark creating sites has decreased to 10 percent from 26 percent in 2011. This considerable drop of usage clearly indicates nov bookmarking sites. Even though the sites including Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Pinterest remain popular among marketers, majority of sites (e.g. DIGG, Friendfeed) are almost dying. Therefore, it isn’t a good practice to trust a bookmarking site blindly for marketing purposes in the current scenario. Instead, check for the websites that are hottest and perform the bookmarking very cautiously.
Decline of Daily Deal Sites
Daily deal features or simply daily offerings of deals are seen as a powerful way to attract a large number of targeted customers at a time. The study report says that around 80 percent of marketers are not interested in using the hottest daily deal sites including Groupon or Living Social because of their campaigns soon.
Now people concentrate more on the significant amount of returns that they receive from their purchases as time passes. Hence, it is advisable to use social media sites for long term marketing goals instead of daily goals.
Top Sites for Social Media Campaigns
Marketers who use social media for marketing will obviously carry out social media campaigns (using social networking sites for promotion) for their services or products to attract targeted customers. The campaigns will be successful only when the relevant site is popular amonst the customers.
The research report indicates that marketers who save money than 40 hours weekly for social media marketing perform their campaigns more intensely through Google+, You Tube, Pinterest and Instagram compared to those who spend six hours or less a week on social media marketing. Also, around 92 percent of marketers who’ve five or even 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 season 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 this past 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 followed 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. In the case of 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 work with a more diverse array of platforms compared to B2C marketers. Both of them 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 famous social media platform. YouTube being the second largest search engine, it is possible to enjoy the benefits it offers 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 will have an opportunity to utilize SlideShare (owned by LinkedIn). This social media entity can be used for generating leads for B2B organizations.
Fewer Check-ins Online
As per the study reports, there is a decrease in the usage of geo-location services including Foursquare from 17% in 2011 to 11% this year. These services allow check-in to your locations automatically online. The decline in these kinds of services indicates that people are actually concerned more about privacy and safety. Marketers can tackle this example by introducing contests and rewards. This can encourage people to check-in more.
If you are still following old strategy for social media, then it is the time and energy to develop new strategies predicated on all these current trends. Social Media Marketing firm is best to entrust this tedious task to an established social media marketing company that provides reliable social media services instead of try implementing the strategies all on your own.