What is Social Media – Does it work?
"Whether it’s Instagram for your storytellers, or LinkedIn for your business users, or Twitter for your thought leaders, marketers have been trying to understand and harness social media as a tool to make their business successful. The question is how do we use it? Business leaders want results, return on investments and strategies around Social Media Marketing. Audiences want reasons to come to your site and engage your content. Social Media is the tool to achieve both results, but to make all participants happy there is no exact science.
Luckily, a study has been done every year since 2009 to understand the struggles, benefits, and platforms in Social Media Marketing. The Social Media Marketing Industry Reports clarifies this for us. For the latest edition of this study - https://www.socialmediaexaminer.com/social-media-marketing-industry-report-2020/
There are some key takeaways when we look at the report over the past years. The most notable, the question shifted from where do I start? To how do we use it effectively? In the initial study in 2009 the three most important questions were: what are the effective tactics to use? How do I measure the effectiveness? And where do I start?
In the early years, when some of the major social media platforms were just a few years old, marketers were just trying to understand it as a platform and its uses. There were no questions about strategy and no real measurements on ROI. These tactical questions were not in the top five questions until 2013 when it the study resurfaced. By 2014, the landscape started to change, just five years later. The most popular questions became, what social tactics are most effective? What are the best ways to engage my audience with social media? And how do I measure the return on my social media marketing?
This is where we see strategy starting to form, as we look to questions about the return on investment (in the third question, above). Our marketers are trying figure out engagement. How do we tool Social Media to give content that would be beneficial to our audience? In 2014, we are not asking where to start, we are slowly asking how to harness Social Media.
Now in 2020, the questions that marketers are struggling with show us not just how to harness Social Media but how to use it effectively.
What are the best ways to engage my audience?
What are the best social media marketing strategies?
What are the best social tactics?
Although ROI is still a question marketer struggled with (currently ranked at 6th in the most popular questions) the top three show us the shift. We want to develop strategies with end goals in mind that engage our audience, but we also want to build tactics that align with our social and business strategies.
The key to Social Media success, is to understand what your audiences wants, and capture their attention by developing stories to bring them in, to eventually turn those users into potential buyers of our products.
To learn more about what social media is, how it works, and how to use it to its fullest potential, schedule a consultation today! PointSocial is always available to point you in the right direction!
