Note: This was featured as part of our Web Wednesday segment on Charleston’s 105.5 The Bridge with Box in the Morning. You can catch us every Wednesday morning at 8:20 am ET for your dose of social media & digital marketing news. You can listen to the segment below:
Social media is constantly changing, and it’s important to pay attention to new trends, stats, and predictions every year. We always recommend revisiting your strategy every other quarter or so to ensure that what you’re doing still makes sense for your business (yes, it changes that fast).
Major social media software company Buffer puts together a “State of Social Media” report at the beginning of every year, and we wanted to share a few of their most important takeaways.
1. Take advantage of messaging apps.
First of all, the top four social messaging apps (Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp, WeChat, and Viber) have more monthly active users than the top four social platforms (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram). So if you want to reach a bigger audience, you need to be taking advantage of this one-on-one communication method with customers.
In fact, Facebook is making it easier and easier to customize your own Messenger bot. There are also tons of third-party software available to create custom messages for your audience if they have any questions about your business, products, or services.
And only 20% of marketers right now are utilizing this strategy. So the time is now.
2. Social media advertising is the best way to tell that social media marketing is effective.
Out of all of the businesses/marketers surveyed, 45% said social media marketing was somewhat effective and 29% said very effective (other options were uncertain, somewhat ineffective, and very ineffective).
But when looking at the results and comparing businesses who had used social advertising to businesses who hadn’t, the “very effective” responses doubled. So essentially, business owners and marketers are twice as likely to say that social media marketing is effective when social advertising is a part of their strategy.
It’s true that social media is becoming more of a pay to play game. But the advertising is so cheap and so targeted that it’s 100% worth it. If you want to see success in social media, you need to have an advertising budget.
3. Engagement is the number one way of measuring ROI in social media.
In both organic and paid social media content, marketers use engagement with the post as the number one way to determine success. In fact, 47% of marketers said engagement is their top ROI measurement while only 17% said leads and 15% said sales.
Marketers are putting social media engagement (likes, reactions, comments, shares) above leads and sales. Yes, you 100% want your social media to generate new customers. But it’s important to remember that social media is about being social. And if you’re getting good engagement on your posts, you’re doing something right.
If you’re not sure where to get started with your social media marketing in 2018, let us help you! Sign up for a free, no obligation consultation today or give us a call at (843) 728-2988. We’d love to walk you through it!
