The success of social media lies in the right mix of fruitful strategies. The incorrect combination will simply reduce the traffic from targeted customers instead of attract them. In the event that you devise your social media strategies such as social media marketing optimization on the basis of 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 using the 2013 SOCIAL MEDIA Industry Report.
Premium Vacation Packages of SOCIAL BOOKMARK CREATING Sites
Based on the research reports, using social bookmarking 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 isn’t an excellent practice to trust a bookmarking site blindly for marketing purposes in today’s scenario. Instead, check for the websites that are hottest and perform the bookmarking very cautiously.
Decline of Daily Deal Sites
Daily deal features or simply 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 his or her 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 media sites for longterm marketing goals rather than daily goals.
Top Sites for Social Media Campaigns
Marketers who use social media for marketing will obviously perform 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 when the relevant site is popular amonst 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 in comparison to those that spend six hours or less a week on social media marketing. Also, around 92 percent of marketers who’ve five or more years of experience prefer LinkedIn than 70 percent of marketers having significantly 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 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 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 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 each platform pertaining to B2C and B2B marketers.
B2B marketers use 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, try to encourage blogs because they are regarded as the most used social media platform. YouTube being the second largest search engine, you can enjoy the benefits it provides 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 will have a chance to utilize SlideShare (owned by LinkedIn). This social media entity can be used 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 now concerned more about privacy and safety. Marketers can tackle this situation by introducing contests and rewards. This will encourage people to check-in more.
If you are still following the old strategy for social media, then it is the time and energy to develop new strategies predicated on all these current trends. It is best to entrust this tedious task to an established social media marketing company that provides reliable social media services instead of try implementing the strategies by yourself.