Important Social Media Trends Taking Place

Over the years, things have been changing rapidly and it’s important that we understand the new trend developing. Social media has completely changed the way we interact with people and market our business. It’s allowed us to reach people all over the world quickly and efficiently, often leading to content, products, and/or services going viral within minutes. However, just like search engines have changed over recent months, we have seen a change in social platforms as well, which are both positive and negative.

For you to increase social engagement, brand awareness, profits, and conversions, it’s important that you implement social media strategies based on current trends. Let’s look at important trends taking place in social media.

social-media-marketing

Social vs. Daily Deals

At one point, to find the best deals and huge targeted people, you would rely on “daily deal” websites. This was something noticed when referring to marketers and buyers who would be looking for niche relevant offers. However, many people are now posting these same deals on social networks because they are converting much better compared to traditional daily deal websites. For example, here’s a quick graph comparing the usage and trend of the following: Groupon.com and Twitter.com

MARKETING_TRENDS

You’ll notice the search pattern for Twitter.com is higher than Groupon.com. Twitter is a social media network and the truth is, advertising a product or service to relevant people is much easier on social media networks because of your ability to target relevant people. Relevant people increase the chances of converting an offer to a sale, which is the ultimate objective of a company. With Twitter, you have the ability to advanced target people using #hashtags and auto tweet tools, keeping your product in front of people.

Online Check-in Down

When Facebook introduced online check-in, they were hoping to encourage the growth of their social network. Even though many businesses and people use this feature, research shows it is down compared to previous years. Many attribute the change to an issue with privacy and people being more careful about letting others know where they are. For you to revamp this feature as it applies to your business, try implementing more rewards and features for those who will check-in online. Here’s a great strategy my friend uses to promote his restaurant…

For the past month, anyone who checks-in online will receive 10% off their meal and this strategy has worked well, especially because he’s a brand new business. Obviously, before you can start using this feature, you have to ensure you have a Facebook.com fan page.

Social Marketing Higher

Before starting, here’s something to pay close attention to…

  • The number of businesses that say Facebook is critical or important to their business has increased by 75%. (State of Inbound Marketing, 2012)
  • 62% of marketers said social media became more important to the marketing campaigns in the last 6 months.
  • 36% of all marketers have found a customer via Twitter in 2013

The statistics speak for themselves, however, you can understand how important social marketing is for brand awareness and profits. As a matter of fact, social media marketing has seen an increase every year since they went online and in the last 3 years, this number has doubled. If you’re a business, then make use of social media marketing to get your product in front of relevant people.

Decrease in Some Networks

Over the years, some social networks have not proven themselves as major players and seen a decrease in their engagement. Search trends and engagement has been slow for StumbleUpon.com, Digg.com, Delicious.com, etc., which is not a surprise because traffic is what businesses are looking for. The major “3”, like Facebook.com, Twitter.com, and Google+, have been able to double their traffic in the last 3 years while others have failed to provide the same result. Here’s something I think will be happening…

I think only the “3” major platforms will survive going forward as they are finding creative ways to tweak engagement. They know what they need to do to stay alive, which is providing businesses traffic to market their products and offer an advertising network that no one can beat. Here’s a cool stat: Facebook advertising revenue for last year was 2.96 billion, which is up 64% from previous.

Big Company = Facebook and Twitter

The statistic I outlined above, “Facebook advertising revenue for last year was 2.96 billion which is up 64% from previous” is the result of the larger businesses investing more money in advertising their products on these networks. The trend will continue to grow each year as companies begin to make even more money. However, we’ve noticed a bulk of social media revenue comes from these larger companies that have the money to invest. Smaller businesses prefer to use photo sharing networks like Instagram.com to promote their business. Much of this has to do with the products being relevant to a younger age group and these same people using Instagram.com.

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