The success of social media marketing lies in the right combination of fruitful strategies. The wrong combination will simply reduce the traffic of your target customers instead of attracting them. If you read your social media strategies such as social media optimization based on current trends, you can increase profits and use social media sites effectively for marketing. Here are the recent trends highlighted in an article published by Forbes based on the 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.
Low use of social bookmarking sites
According to research reports, the use of social bookmarking sites has decreased from 26 percent in 2011 to 10 percent. This considerable drop in usage clearly indicates the decline of bookmarking sites. Although sites like Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Pinterest are still popular with marketers, most sites (eg DIGG, Friendfeed) are on the brink of death. Therefore, it is not a good practice to blindly trust a bookmarking site for marketing purposes in the current scenario. Instead, look for the sites that are most popular and bookmark very carefully.
Rejection from daily deals sites
Daily deals features or just daily deals deals are seen as a powerful way to attract a large number of target customers at once. The research report says that around 80 percent of marketers are not interested in using the most popular daily deal sites, including Groupon or Living Social, for their campaigns in the near future.
Now people are more focused on the considerable number of returns they receive on their purchases over time. Therefore, it is advisable to use social networking sites for long-term marketing goals rather than daily goals.
Top sites for social media campaigns
Marketers using social media for marketing will obviously run social media campaigns (using social networking sites for promotion) of their products or services to attract targeted customers. Campaigns will be successful only if the relevant site is popular with customers.
The research report indicates that marketers who spend more than 40 hours a week on social media marketing campaigns more intensively across Google+, YouTube, Pinterest, and Instagram compared to those who spend six hours or less. a week to social media marketing. Additionally, about 92 percent of marketers with five or more years of experience prefer LinkedIn than 70 percent of marketers with less than five years of experience. Forum marketing is also down to 16 percent this year from 24 percent in 2011.
Some 67 percent of marketers plan to increase campaigns through Twitter, though that’s a slight decrease from 69 percent last year. Younger marketers, more than older ones, prefer photo-sharing sites, including Instagram, to launch campaigns. 62% chose blogging as the most suitable platform to master, which is the highest followed by Google+ (61%) and Facebook (59%).
B2C and B2B Marketer Trends
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 an equal majority of 29% each. Below is the pie chart showing the usage statistics for each platform with respect to B2C and B2B sellers.
B2B marketers use a more diverse range of platforms compared to B2C marketers. Both are not fully blogging and have minimal use of You Tube.
If you are a B2B or B2C marketer, try to encourage blogs as they are considered the most popular social media platform. With YouTube being the second largest search engine, you can enjoy the benefits it offers by posting low-cost videos. Orabrush (B2C company) and Blentec (B2B company) have become strong brands by making use of low-cost YouTube videos.
As B2B marketers increasingly use LinkedIn, they have the opportunity to use SlideShare (owned by LinkedIn). This social media entity can be used to generate leads for B2B organizations.
Fewer online registrations
According to research reports, there is a decline in the use of geo-location services, including Foursquare, from 17% in 2011 to 11% this year. These services allow check-in at their locations automatically online. The decline in these types of services indicates that people are now more concerned with privacy and security. Marketers can address this situation by introducing contests and rewards. This will encourage people to sign up more.
If you’re still following the old social media marketing strategy, then it’s time to develop new strategies based 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 trying to implement the strategies on your own.