Inbound Marketing Age

Instagram. Whether you love it or loathe it, it's more than just an app for taking photos of your food. But is it right for your social media strategy?

We’re all familiar with the benefits of social media marketing. More exposure for your business, increased traffic and leads, improved sales, developing loyal fans, and so on.

Common sense would argue that if you want to generate awareness of your brand, then the more social media platforms you infiltrate, the better.

On the other hand, could you be better off putting your efforts into one or two social media platforms that are the best fit for your business, and not worrying about the others?

Editor's note: This blog post was originally published in June 2014.

A few years back, I spoke to Anna Lawlor, who at the time was the writer and director of Social i Media, who offered some fascinating insights into why writing and thinking like a journalist can give content creators a real edge. Anna is now co-founder and Head of Content & PR at Luminescence Communications Ltd, a company specialising in creating high quality communications for professional services.

What Anna had to say back in 2014 still rings true today, and she offers some interesting thoughts on how content marketers should be thinking like journalists.

New research published last week by Backlinko has revealed some interesting insights into the types of blog posts that garner the most shares on social media.

Backlinko analysed 912 blog posts, looking at how things like content format, word count, and headlines correlate with social media shares.

We delved into the findings.

So, which types of blog posts are most shareable?

Social media has solidified its reputation as a viable B2B marketing tool.

Rather than the fun, leisurely pastime it once was, it is now prolific in the digital marketing space and has been adopted by major business brands looking to take full advantage of the opportunities it offers.

As a B2B marketer, you already have a strategy in place when it comes to social media - you may even have established a social media policy for your workplace. But the goalposts are always changing.

So what challenges will 2019 bring?

New opportunities

Last year there were several announcements that promised to affect social media marketing in 2019, for example:

• LinkedIn Dynamic Ads will enable you to personalise the content in paid ads and automate individualised campaigns at scale. 66% of B2B marketers used paid methods to distribute content in 2018, so this development is sure to make waves.
• Snapchat announced a partnership with Amazon to offer a "visual search" shopping experience directly from the Snapchat app. There are likely to be improvements in image recognition technologies that will open up the potential for multimedia search. This will shake up SEO tactics.
• Twitter brought back the chronological News Feed format.
• Pantone revealed the colour of the year: Living Coral. Visual media trends continue to favour the bright, cheerful, pale and pure.

And that's not all.

Social media platforms connect businesses with prospects and existing customers. They paint a picture of your audience's needs, spread your brand message and inform future marketing goals.

And, with social media marketing, you can position your product or service right in front of the very people who need it. Sounds great! But how can you gain more reach?

Revisit your buyer personas

Growing an audience is one of the biggest challenges for businesses on social media.

Think about your channels. What’s really in it for your followers? Unless you are creating content that genuinely delights, people won’t be prepared to follow or subscribe. 

To date, there are 25 million business profiles on Instagram.

70% of Instagram users use the platform to check out a brand they’re considering and 35% check their feeds multiple times a day.

On top of that, 400 million people use Instagram stories daily and one in five organic stories from businesses gets a direct message.

Over the past ten years or so, we’ve seen social media move from being an early adopter’s marketing experiment to a tried and trusted channel for both B2C and B2B marketing.

But that doesn’t mean you should rush in and use it without thought – like any communications medium it has its benefits and its drawbacks.

And like any marketing medium, there are things it’s great for, things it’s not good for, and things it should never be used for.

Until recently, Baby Boomers, Generation X, and Millennials have been the target demographics for most modern businesses when marketing their services/products.

However, businesses should consider the purchasing power and the burgeoning influence of another: Generation Z. Generally considered to include people born between 1996 and 2014, they are the rising demographic armed with an economic force to be reckoned with. So, turn your attention to the effects of the youngest generation of consumers. Many B2C and B2B businesses have already started.

94% of content marketers are using social media as part of their strategy. And for good reason - 54% of buyers use social media to research potential vendors and solutions.

But social media is a crowded space, and the challenge is getting your content heard above the noise.

To really illustrate this point, here are some stats about what happens on social media every minute;

• 448,800 tweets are published
• 3.3 million Facebook posts are published
• 65,972 photos are uploaded on Instagram

Facebook has been getting a pretty tough time of late in the media and the courtroom. Fake news, scandals and security breaches meant its reputation took a battering.

In January 2018, Facebook's algorithm changed drastically to prioritise posts that create meaningful conversations and interactions, especially between friends and family.

Great news for Joe Public, but not so great for businesses looking to gain new customers via Facebook marketing.

The new algorithm makes it much harder for business pages to get seen unless you have a very engaged audience who frequently like, comment and share your social posts.