The success of social media lies in the right mixture of fruitful strategies. The wrong combination will simply decrease the traffic from targeted customers instead of attract them. If you devise your social media strategies such as social media optimization based on current trends, it is possible to increase profits and use social networking sites effectively for marketing. Here are the recent trends highlighted within an article published by Forbes based on the 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.
Low Usage of SOCIAL BOOKMARK CREATING Sites
Based on the research reports, the use of social bookmarking sites has decreased to 10 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 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 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 hottest daily deal sites including Groupon or Living Social for their campaigns soon.
Now people concentrate more on the significant amount of returns that they receive from their purchases as time passes. 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 marketing for marketing will obviously perform 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 research 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 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 season from 24 percent in 2011.
Around 67 percent of marketers are preparing to increase campaigns through Twitter even though it is really 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, that is the highest one followed 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. Regarding 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 every platform pertaining to B2C and B2B marketers.
B2B marketers work with a more diverse array of platforms compared to B2C marketers. Both of these 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 used social media marketing platform. YouTube being the second 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 using low cost YouTube videos.
As B2B marketers increasingly use LinkedIn, they will have an opportunity to utilize SlideShare (owned by LinkedIn). This social media marketing entity can be utilized for generating leads for B2B organizations.
Fewer Check-ins Online
As per the research reports, there is a reduction 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 situation by introducing contests and rewards. Premium Vacation Packages will encourage people to check-in more.
If you are still following a old strategy for social media marketing, then it is the time and energy to develop new strategies based on all these current trends. It is best 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 on your own.