All posts in Social Media Marketing

The world of social media marketing is changing all the time, so no matter how well you think you’re doing in that area, don’t start getting complacent. New forecasts from eMarketer project which social networks will be the most popular business marketing tools in 2017. Here’s what’s hot (and not-so-hot):

Instagram will overtake Twitter as a social media marketing channel. Nearly three-fourths (74 percent) of businesses will use Instagram for marketing, up from 53 percent currently.
Twitter will hold steady, with 66.2 percent of marketers using it in 2017 compared to 66.1 percent this year.
Facebook has already reached saturation, with 85.3 percent of marketers currently using it and 85.8 percent projected to use it next year.
YouTube, too, has pretty much plateaued: 48.2 percent of businesses will market with YouTube next year, up from 45.6 percent this year.
How does your small business compare?

With any social network, the most important thing to remember is to go where your customers are. Just because Instagram is growing rapidly doesn’t mean it’s the right platform for your social media marketing. For instance, if you sell enterprise software to major corporations, chances are your buyers aren’t checking out your latest ’grams. On the other hand, if you’re in the fashion, cosmetics, or food business, Instagram is where it’s at.

To pinpoint the most appropriate social media marketing platforms, begin by searching out statistics on the demographic makeup of each social network’s user base. Further refine your data by conducting surveys of your customers. Which social networks do they spend most of their time on? Do any of the networks actually influence their shopping behavior?

Read more: How Does Your Social Media Marketing Measure Up?

Social media can be a great way to grow your company if you know how to go about it. People today spend a majority of their time scanning their feeds on these popular platforms. Because of this, companies are doing what they can to connect as much as possible with potential customers.

That being said, there’s a lot of information out there that suggests social media is the “be all end all” to a company’s success. Before you hop on board, though, there are a few things you need to know. We just hope you won’t get too disappointed…

Social Media Can Be a Hot Lead Generation Tool

When we tell you not to overestimate the power of social media, what we’re really saying is don’t believe what all the buzz says. Yes, if treated right, taking advantage of it can do a lot for your company. It’s certainly a great way to get a good idea of who your audience is and what they like to see from you. But, as with anything in the marketing world, it’s more about producing quality over quantity. Don’t invest so much time into possibly gaining leads from social media that you don’t have time for other things.

Likes Don’t Always Mean Leads

Getting a lot of likes on your content? That’s great, but don’t let that fool you. After all, likes are just “likes.” What you do with them says a lot more about how your company operates. Despite the popularity of social media, email marketing is still the number one way to bring in leads. You can try to engage with these potential leads via Facebook or Twitter, but the rest of the relationship building needs to be done elsewhere.

Read more: Don’t Overestimate the Power of Social Media Marketing

Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Pinterest and the many other social media sites have changed the face of the internet. They started out with just free ways to allow businesses to market and drive traffic to their websites. However, many of the social sites now offer paid marketing options, which allows businesses to gain massive exposure to a very highly targeted market.

Paid social media advertising can be very powerful when used correctly. When you choose major platforms and you target the right segment of users, you may find that you gain a ton of great exposure. Each platform will be a bit different, but every business can benefit from paid social media marketing.

Benefits of Paid Social Media Marketing
There are several key benefits businesses of all sizes gain when they pay for social media marketing. Whether you’re running a small, local business or a large worldwide corporation, there are plenty of benefits. Some of the key benefits include:

Read more: Should you Pay for Social Media Marketing?

Social media is generating better returns on investments this year than it did last year, according to Salesforce’s new “2016 State of Marketing Report.”

The report finds that 75% of retailers and other marketers say that social media delivers either a “strong” or “some” return on their investment. That’s a 46-percentage point increase from the 29% who said so a year earlier.

“Social media marketing is a core piece of a lot of retailers’ businesses,” says Vala Afshar, Salesforce’s chief digital evangelist.

That’s despite the fact that social media led directly to relatively few sales over the most recent holiday season. Only 1.8% of online retail sales over the holidays stemmed from shoppers clicking directly from social networks to retail sites, according to marketing platform vendor Custora, which examined online shoppers’ visits to more than 200 online retail websites.

In part, social media has become a more effective marketing tool because marketers are increasingly developing holistic, cross-channel marketing campaigns rather than developing their social media marketing campaigns in a silo, Afshar says. The report finds that 63% of self-declared “high-performing” marketers integrate social media into their overall marketing strategy, far more than the 28% of marketers who say they are “moderate-performing” and 20% who say they are “low-performing.”

Read more: 75% of marketers say social media marketing is paying off