The success of social media lies in the right mix of fruitful strategies. The wrong combination will simply reduce the traffic from targeted customers rather than attract them. If you devise your social media strategies such as social media optimization based on current trends, you can increase profits and use social networking sites effectively for marketing. Here are the recent trends highlighted within an article published by Forbes using 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 websites including Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Pinterest remain popular among marketers, most 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 most popular and perform the bookmarking very cautiously.
Decline of Daily Deal Sites
Daily deal features or just daily offerings of deals are seen as a powerful way to attract a lot of targeted customers at a time. The study report says that around 80 percent of marketers aren’t interested in using the hottest daily deal sites including Groupon or Living Social because of their campaigns in the near future.
Now Premium Vacation Packages 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 marketing for marketing will obviously carry out social media campaigns (using social media sites for promotion) for his or her products or services to attract targeted customers. The campaigns will be successful only if the relevant site is popular among the customers.
The study report indicates that marketers who spend more than 40 hours weekly 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 weekly on social media. Also, around 92 percent of marketers who’ve five or more years of experience prefer LinkedIn than 70 percent of marketers having 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 preparing to increase campaigns through Twitter though it is really a slight decrease from 69 percent this past year. Young marketers, a lot more than older ones prefer photo sharing sites including Instagram for launching campaigns. 62% chose blogging because so many suitable platform to master, which 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. In the case of Business to Business (B2B) marketers, both Facebook and LinkedIn have equal most 29% each. Given below may be the pie chart showing usage statistics for each platform pertaining to B2C and B2B marketers.
B2B marketers work with a more diverse selection of platforms in comparison to B2C marketers. Both of these usually do not completely utilize blogging and also have minimal You Tube usage.
If you’re a B2B or B2C marketer, make an effort to encourage blogs as they are regarded as the most used social media platform. YouTube being the next largest search engine, you can enjoy the benefits it includes by posting low-cost videos. Orabrush (B2C Company) and Blentec (B2B Company) have grown to be strong brands by making use of 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 research reports, there is a decrease in using 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 these kinds of services indicates that people are actually concerned more about privacy and safety. Marketers can tackle this situation by introducing contests and rewards. This can 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 predicated on all these current trends. It is better to entrust this tedious task to a reputable social media marketing company that offers reliable social media marketing services rather than try implementing the strategies all on your own.