The success of social media marketing lies in the right mixture of fruitful strategies. The wrong combination will simply reduce the traffic from targeted customers instead of attract them. If you devise your social media marketing strategies such as social media optimization based on current trends, it is possible to increase profits and use social media sites effectively for marketing. Listed below are the recent trends highlighted within an article published by Forbes in line with the 2013 SOCIAL MEDIA Industry Report.
Low Usage of Social Bookmarking Sites
In line with the research reports, the application of social bookmark creating sites has decreased to 10 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 is not an excellent practice to trust a bookmarking site blindly for marketing purposes in today’s scenario. Instead, check for the sites 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 lot of targeted customers at a time. The research report says that around 80 percent of marketers aren’t interested in using the most popular daily deal sites including Groupon or Living Social for their campaigns in the near future.
Now people concentrate more on the considerable amount of returns they receive from their purchases over time. Hence, it is advisable to use social networking 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 media sites for promotion) for their 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 save money than 40 hours a week for social media marketing carry out their campaigns more intensely through Google+, You Tube, Pinterest and Instagram compared to those that spend six hours or less weekly 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 less than five years of experience. Forum marketing in addition has 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 really a slight decrease from 69 percent last 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 an increased 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 is the pie chart showing usage statistics for every platform with regard to B2C and B2B marketers.
B2B marketers use a more diverse array of platforms compared to B2C marketers. Luxury Travel Experiences of these usually do not completely utilize blogging and have minimal You Tube usage.
If you are a B2B or B2C marketer, make an effort to encourage blogs because they are regarded as the most famous social media platform. YouTube being the next largest search engine, it is possible to 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 utilized 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 most of these services indicates that people are now 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 the 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 instead of try implementing the strategies all on your own.
