The success of social media marketing lies in the right mix of fruitful strategies. The incorrect combination will simply reduce the traffic from targeted customers rather than attract them. In the event that you devise your social media strategies such as social media optimization on the basis of current trends, it is possible to increase profits and use social networking sites effectively for marketing. Listed below are the recent trends highlighted in an article published by Forbes in line with the 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.
Low Usage of SOCIAL BOOKMARK CREATING Sites
Based on the research reports, the application of social bookmark creating sites has decreased to ten 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 are still 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 most popular 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 numerous targeted customers at the same 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 for their campaigns soon.
Now people concentrate more on the significant amount of returns they receive from their purchases as time passes. Hence, you should use social networking sites for long term marketing goals instead of daily goals.
Top Sites for SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING Campaigns
Marketers who use social media marketing for marketing will obviously carry out social media campaigns (using social networking sites for promotion) for his or her products or services 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 who spend six hours or less a week 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 year 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 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. 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 each platform with regard to B2C and B2B marketers.
B2B marketers use a more diverse array of platforms in comparison to B2C marketers. Both of these 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. Premium Vacation Packages being the next largest search engine, you can enjoy the benefits it provides 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 have a chance 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 using 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 situation by introducing contests and rewards. This will encourage visitors to check-in more.
If you are still following a old strategy for social media, then it is the time to develop new strategies predicated on all these current trends. It is better to entrust this tedious task to an established social media marketing company that provides reliable social media services rather than try implementing the strategies all on your own.