The success of social media 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, you can increase profits and use social networking sites effectively for marketing. Listed below are the recent trends highlighted in an article published by Forbes based on the 2013 SOCIAL MEDIA Industry Report.
Low Usage of Social Bookmarking Sites
In line with the research reports, the application of 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, majority of 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 the current 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 seen as a powerful way to attract numerous 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 because of their campaigns soon.
Now people concentrate more on the significant amount of returns they receive from their purchases over time. Hence, you should 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 networking sites for promotion) for their services or products to attract targeted customers. The campaigns will undoubtedly be successful only if the relevant site is popular amonst the customers.
The research report indicates that marketers who spend more than 40 hours weekly 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 a week on social media. Also, around 92 percent of marketers who’ve five or even 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 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 as most 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. Regarding 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 with regard to B2C and B2B marketers.
B2B marketers work with a more diverse selection of platforms in comparison to B2C marketers. Both of them do not completely utilize blogging and also have minimal You Tube usage.
If you are a B2B or B2C marketer, make an effort to encourage blogs as they are regarded as the most popular social media platform. 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 grown to be strong brands by using low cost YouTube videos.
As B2B marketers increasingly use LinkedIn, they have an opportunity to utilize SlideShare (owned by LinkedIn). Personal Development 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 actually concerned more about privacy and safety. Marketers can tackle this example by introducing contests and rewards. This can encourage visitors to check-in more.
If you are still following the old strategy for social media marketing, then it is the time and energy 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 services instead of try implementing the strategies on your own.