The success of social media lies in the right mixture of fruitful strategies. The wrong combination will simply reduce the traffic from targeted customers instead of attract them. In Luxury Travel Guides that you devise your social media marketing strategies such as social media optimization based on current trends, you can increase profits and use social networking sites effectively for marketing. Listed below are the recent trends highlighted within an article published by Forbes using the 2013 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.
Low Usage of SOCIAL BOOKMARK CREATING Sites
In line with the research reports, the application of social bookmark creating 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 are still popular among marketers, majority of sites (e.g. DIGG, Friendfeed) are almost dying. Therefore, it isn’t a good practice to trust a bookmarking site blindly for marketing purposes in today’s scenario. Instead, check for the sites that are most popular and perform the bookmarking very cautiously.
Decline of Daily Deal Sites
Daily deal features or simply daily offerings of deals are seen as a powerful way to attract a lot of targeted customers at the same time. The study 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 in the near future.
Now people concentrate more on the considerable amount of returns they receive from their purchases as time passes. Hence, you should use social networking sites for longterm marketing goals rather than daily goals.
Top Sites for Social Media Campaigns
Marketers who use social media marketing for marketing will obviously carry out social media campaigns (using social media 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 weekly for social media marketing perform their campaigns more intensely through Google+, You Tube, Pinterest and Instagram compared to those that spend six hours or less weekly on social media. Also, around 92 percent of marketers who’ve five or even 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, 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, 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 an increased rate of 67% than other platforms. Regarding Business to Business (B2B) marketers, both Facebook and LinkedIn have equal most 29% each. Given below may be the pie chart showing usage statistics for each platform with regard to B2C and B2B marketers.
B2B marketers use a more diverse array of platforms compared to B2C marketers. Both of these usually do not completely utilize blogging and also have minimal You Tube usage.
If you’re a B2B or B2C marketer, try to encourage blogs as they are regarded as the most famous social media platform. YouTube being the second largest search engine, it is possible to 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 marketing entity can be utilized for generating leads for B2B organizations.
Fewer Check-ins Online
As per the research reports, there is a decrease 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. This can encourage visitors to check-in more.
If you are still following old strategy for social media marketing, then it is the time to develop new strategies predicated on all these current trends. It is best to entrust this tedious task to a reputable social media marketing company that provides reliable social media services rather than try implementing the strategies by yourself.