They say that statistics can be used to prove anything, but this does the sheer power of numbers an immense disservice. On a fundamental level, statistics can offer a fascinating insight into a specific target market or a crucial business discipline, helping you to refine your strategy and overarching approach in the process.
This is certainly true in the world of social media marketing, where numbers reflecting the size of the market and the typical behavior of users can prove invaluable to business-owners. Without this insight, it is almost impossible to optimize the ROI on your social media marketing efforts, while it can also be difficult to determine a viable strategy for each individual campaign.
3 Seminal Social Media Statistics and What They Mean for your Business
So if you are to build a genuinely effective and engaging social media presence, it is imperative that you research the market and its most insightful statistics. This will help you to make informed and ultimately profitable decisions, whether you looking to build consumer loyalty (and maximize the value that each customer holds for your business) or market a new product range.
To help you on your way, here are three of the most interesting statistics for 2016 and an insight into what they mean for your business: –
- 91% of Retail Brands Use 2 or More Social Channels
While this statistic is focused on retail brands, it reflects a wider trend in the behavior of corporate social media users. A staggering 91% of retail outlets now utilize two or more social channels, as they look to create an integrated profile that can optimize their reach across targeted customer segments.
This trend has also been driven by the fact that one million new mobile social users are added each day, as this has created a new medium through which brands can directly engage customers. As a result, brands have been forced to embrace social platforms that are accessed predominantly by mobile users, including Twitter and increasingly popular outlets such as Snapchat.
This empowers real-time communication and engagement with customers, which can help to create more emotive connections and genuine relationships.
The message here is simple; you must look to research your target audience and the precise segments that you are looking to engage through your campaigns. This will help you to create an integrated and optimized presence that includes multiple social channels, based on the core user demographics associated with each one.
- Blogging and Social Media are the Most Effective Content Marketing Tactics
According to statistics, blogging (65%) and social media engagement (64%) are the two most popular and effective content marketing strategies in action today. These two entities are no longer mutually exclusive either, as the two can dovetail seamlessly to drive a more effective and ultimately impactful marketing campaign.
With more than 56 million blog posts published each month on WordPress alone, it is clear that this channel represents an ideal medium through which to add depth to your social media profile. Similarly, your integrated social presence can serve as a platform from which you promote your blog, including all of your carefully cultivated content and any insightful guest posts that you may have published.
With these steps, you can begin to establish your brand as a thought leader, as you first develop a voice and then ensure that this reaches as many target consumers as possible.
With this in mind, it makes sense to actively integrate your blogging and social platforms, using actionable icons to encourage sharing and solicit comments from readers. The result of this is that you will combine your two most potent content marketing tactics, while also ensuring that your social media campaigns are able to engage customers through the insightful copy.
- Facebook Now Sees 8 Billion Average Daily Video Views
Historically YouTube has been the dominant social video channel, and in some ways, this status remains unchallenged. This site is now facing serious competition from social giant Facebook, however, which now reports a staggering eight billion daily video views from 500 million unique users.
When you consider this alongside the fact that YouTube boasts an estimated one billion unique users, this hints at a staggering trend that underlines the importance of video marketing within the social arena.
Clearly, there is a growing demand for video content among consumers, so brands must ensure that they feature this as a staple feature of their marketing campaigns. From VOD (video-on-demand) advertising to customer testimonials and brand narratives, it is crucial that businesses look to develop a proactive content creation strategy that places an emphasis on video marketing across channels such as Facebook, YouTube, and Vimeo.
This should also be augmented by additional examples of rich media too, including images, graphical icons and of course supportive text.
When you do begin to create and share videos socially, however, be sure to pay attention to the important technical elements. The most crucial of these is the selection of a host site, as it while be tempting to upload videos to your own website that can cause significant in terms of landing page loading times. Instead, we recommend that you host your videos through a third-party resource such as YouTube, before sharing these and embedding them on your own site.
So there you have it; three insightful social media statistics that can inform your marketing strategies. There are more, however, so be sure to research the market further to ensure that you get the most out of each individual campaign!
