Social Media Engagement Trends You Shouldn’t Miss [Infographic]

Many companies have clued-up the fact that being present and active on social media platforms is imperative if they are to succeed in their marketing efforts. Organizations have found it critical to use social tools to engage their customers, employees and other external stakeholders. Through social tools, they are able to listen, gather actionable intelligence and measure outcomes and progress.

So social media engagement is as important to organization as their products and services. As a matter of fact, it can be said that social media is the best thing that ever happened to online businesses. According to statistics, 88.2% of U.S companies use social media and the figure is expected to grow to 89% by 2017.

70% of internet users are active social media users

The rise of social technologies and mobile phones has given customers more power than ever. Now, customers are more informed, dynamic and alert to what is happening around them. 7 in 10 internet users are active social media users; hence, they can access information regarding various company offers, news and trends. Their ability to find information in a matter of seconds puts them in firm control of their own destiny. Consequently, this trend is forcing marketers to rethink the way they connect and engage with their customers. About 40% of internet users use social media apps. This means that marketers face the daunting task of providing real-time, tailor-made experiences that make customer experience a blissful event. Whether it be a mobile app that provides online customer care services or a push notification that promotes a sale, marketers must now appreciate the full impact of social mobile apps. This is a grand opportunity for organizations to engage with their customers like never before.

Facebook remains the most active social media platform, while the rest aren’t left behind

Facebook continues to be the most active social media site. According to pew Research findings, more than 71% of internet users are on Facebook. You can’t ignore Facebook as a major tool for social engagement because it is the ultimate beta business. Nearly 50% of Facebook users use it on a daily basis while 25% use it on weekly basis. YouTube (28%), Google + (25%), Twitter (27%) and Instagram (24%) are all social networks that record significant interactions by its users on a daily basis.

Because post engagement on Facebook is about 75% in the first 5 hours, it means that regular updates is important in order to maintain customer engagement. It is also important to note that Thursdays and Fridays record 18% more post engagements. 64% of marketers say increasing customer engagement is an essential thing in their social media marketing strategy. Therefore, regular updates with particular emphasis on Thursdays and Fridays is a sure way to increase your social media engagement.

Instagram has better brand engagement than any other social media platform

According to a recently released study by Forrester, for every one million brand followers on Facebook, there were only 700 interactions (sharing, liking and commenting) and 300 interactionsfor every 1 million followers in the case of twitter.

By all means, these are very dismal rates. However, Instagram presents an exception. For every1 million followers on Instagram, there were 42,000 brand engagement. This is about 58 and 120 times more brand engagement in Instagram than on Facebook and twitter respectively.

This tells us that Instagram is a more effective social tool for brand engagement than Facebook and twitter combined. If you have been overlooking Instagram thinking it isn’t valuable tool for branding, then you might have to think again. Ignore Instagram at your own peril.

Type of social content that result in more engagement

Perhaps another interesting fact about social media engagement is that some rules are quite different from what happens with website and blog content. In social media, engagement is at its peak where the amount of text is kept at its absolute minimum.

Facebook posts with less than 250 characters receive 60% more engagement. 87% of Facebook post engagement happens on posts with images while twits with images receive 150% more retweets. It is even better to post more than one images in Facebook to achieve 12.9 time more engagement. Another interesting take away is that tweeting more than 3 times a day will decrease your brand engagement by more than 300%. Tweeting with 3 or more hashtags will also hurt your engagement by 17%.

Final thoughts

Having said that, it is important to ensure that your social media profiles are complete and optimized to attract and engage your audience the way you want. Adding relevant keywords in your social media updates and profiles is often the first step towards social media engagement success.

Irrespective of the social media platform you are using, integrating visual media is important because it increases engagement. Text-laden and formulaic posts are boring and devoid of human touch. Once you understand the potential of visual social media, you will begin to see dramatic improvement in the way people engage with your brand.

Another critical point of consideration for marketers is not to view social media as simply a platform to amplify their products and services; instead, social media should be used to provide more value to their customers. It should be used to discover new customer trends, new technologies and better ways of relating with customers before the competitors do.

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Four steps to stay on top of social media trends

Between Plag** (formerly Plague), YikYak, Meerkat, Periscope, and the hundreds of other apps that have sprung up in the last few months, Marketing FOMO, or “Fear of Missing Out,” can be a very real thing. While reports that teenagers still use Facebook might be comforting, that market share is rapidly dividing among smaller niche apps, even among some that have been available for a few weeks.

How can a busy marketer possibly keep up with these social media trends?

I’m here to tell you that it’s not impossible and that it shouldn’t take a large chunk out of your schedule, either. It does mean committing to experimentation, however. So first I’m going to discuss a few principles to help you stay on track, and then I’ll go over a few can’t miss apps you should check out now.

Strategies to Keep on Top of Social Media Trends

1. Own an iOS (Apple mobile) device. Much as the average Android user hates to admit it, the newest and hottest apps usually start on iOS, Apple’s mobile operating system. If you carry an Android phone, consider investing in an iPod Touch just for testing purposes.
2. When you hear about a new app, write it down.  I cannot stress the importance of this enough. Usually, you have to hear a new term 3-5 times before you bother to look into it—so if you check it out on day one, you’ll be that much further ahead of your competition.
3. Spend a half an hour every evening using a new app: No amount of research and TechCrunch reading will ever provide a substitute for hands-on experience. Connect with friends, create a personal account, and use it like a real person would use it, not a marketer. Get a feel for how the app works, and try not to get sucked in for more than a half an hour—if you can!
4. Subscribe to the Product Hunt newsletter: Product Hunt is a ranking site for new products on the market. You can visit every day to stay abreast of the hot new trends—or you can have the top 10 performers emailed to you daily. You decide which level of commitment is right for you.

The Top 5 Apps You Need to Know Now

1. Meerkat/Periscope: These two apps are at the forefront of the live-streaming video trend. As a female, I have a slight preference for Meerkat, as it has a better anti-harassment setup. But otherwise the two apps are more or less interchangeable, and you should test out both to see with which you prefer.
2. Product Hunt: So nice I’m going over it twice, Product Hunt has a vibrant community, with voting, live meet-ups, and now, even a community for the product makers themselves, MakerHunt. You should be familiar with this wundercompany and their meteoric rise.
3. Slack: You might have used IRC in the past—in which case, you’ll wonder why Slack is so hot right now. But if you’ve never handled IRC, you’ll likely be stunned by the simplicity and beauty of this people-connecting software meant for company teams—but rapidly being hijacked by communities like MakerHunt.
4. Plag**: I mention this once more because it is more like an interesting phenomenon than a useful tool (if you do make headway on this platform with marketing, please tell me!). Plag** is a cross between Tinder and Imgur, a place to share information and photographs for rapid dissemination across borders—just like an airborne virus.
5. Kong: The latest thing from the makers of Path, Kong is a delightful advance in the art of the selfie, animating your best duck faces as a GIF-file. The genius viral nature of Kong’s share structure is that you’re not just limited to sharing on Path—you can also post to Facebook, Twitter, save to your phone as a GIF or a video, and send it as a text or as an email. This app has only been out for 1-2 weeks, but I predict it will go far.

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10 Social Media Marketing Trends to Watch Out for in 2015 (Infographic)

It was a little over five years ago when MySpace was still popular and Facebook just rolled out the now iconic “Like” button. Since then, social media grew into a huge worldwide phenomena with more than 1,730,000,000 users uploading 20 thousand pictures on Tumblr, 104 thousand images on snapchat and 2.46 million posts on Facebook every minute.

These figures are expected to grow substantially next year, with a projected 2.44 billion users networking with friends and family on their favorite social networks. Such figures attest to how influential social media can be in how people communicate and engage with others online, as well as how they do business and commerce.

As much as 97% of marketers use social media, with up to 92% acknowledging the importance of this tool for their businesses. The following provides an overview of new trends, highlights and things to watch out for next year so you can prepare yourself and your business for what’s in store for social media in 2015.

1. Content Marketing Gets More Social – The strength of content marketing relies not only on the creation of an Epic content but on how you can effectively distribute this content for your targeted audiences.

2. Real Time Social Media Marketing will Be a Buzzword - By monitoring and responding promptly to their targeted audiences’ needs, business owners and digital marketers can generate better engagement that drives conversions and sales.

3. Audio and Video Will Dominate Social Content - Just like any other digital marketing channel, audio and video elements evolved to become powerful visual tools that generate better engagements and positive responses.

4. Steady Shift towards Mobile Social Media – With experts projecting that more than one billion people in 2015 will access the Internet only through their mobile gadgets, focusing on mobile social media will be a very logical thing to start right here right now.

5. The Continued Rise of Paid Social Media Advertising – The organic or natural reach of a typical Facebook post will only be a mere 0.073 percent. If you really want to get more mileage from all your social media efforts, then it would be wise to consider paid social media advertising.

6. Payment Features Using Social Media Wallets – The phenomenal rise of mobile usage have driven major online tech players like Paypal and Apple to take action and grab a good hold of the mobile payment space.

7. The Rise of the Social Media Commerce – Social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter are capitalizing on this by testing their eCommerce “buy” buttons that will eventually roll out next year in full swing.

8. Social Media Becomes Smarter and Analytical - Experts from Gartner and SocialCode all agree that the way businesses use social media will become smarter and more analytical in 2015 and beyond.

9. Social Media and the B2B Market – In 2014, Facebook still stood on top as the main social network used by marketers in the B2B arena, with a high 89% usage rate. LinkedIn however is following at a close second at 88%.

10. The Rise of New Social Networks - Among the more prominent of these new social networks include Ello which claims providing an ad-free social network that will not sell vital user data to third parties, Yik Yak which focuses on anonymous post exchanges on physically adjacent people. Others includes Tsu which offers revenue sharing on popular posts.

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Five things great brands will do differently on social media in 2015

Social media marketing is coming of age, but we need a common sense shake up for the medium to truly deliver for brands next year.


As social media marketing matures, how can brands make the most of its potential? Photograph: Ognen Teofilovski/REUTERS

Social media marketing came of age in 2014 with Facebook named advertising medium of the year and big brands doubling down on their paid media investment. Marketers have begun realising that these channels have huge potential to drive results when done right. It’s a good time to take stock and think about what brands could be doing even better going forward and here are five suggestions I think should shake up the industry a little in 2015.

1) Deprioritise some Of that data
You’ll hear a lot about big data, but while statistics can be revelatory they’re more commonly the scourge of social media marketing. Just because you can follow every like, comment and retweet doesn’t mean you should – in fact the kinds of activities which pander to driving these digital actions tend to be the worst kind of digital marketing. So-called engagement metrics are at best measuring the tip of an iceberg and give only the slightest indications of whether your content is truly driving actual business results, offering surprisingly little correlation with actual return on investments (ROIs). The data that matters shows if you’ve truly affected the hearts and minds of your consumers, or ultimately driven them to purchase, and today any businesses can use simple online survey tools to monitor their ongoing brand metrics.

2) Realise that less is more
If engagement data has driven marketers to cats, babies and competitions then the seeming pressure to post something every day has driven them to stock photography and possible insanity. Consumers have no expectations of hearing from brands every day and actually probably a strong feeling that they’d rather not. Creating less content means brands can realistically put paid media behind every single post and ensure a meaningful number of people are reached with their message (something which correlates far better with ROI and sales). The answer to how many posts should I create is often pretty simple – how many can you afford to put paid media behind?

3) Tell true brand stories
Getting off the treadmill of daily creative executions means brands can put more effort into what they do post and they can stop jumping on every event and meme just to find something to say. Great social media content isn’t about tricking someone into clicking like, it’s about being remembered by that person days later. That means telling powerful stories, while staying true to your brand’s essence, and increasingly it will mean higher production values and more video. Remember that more people can now see a heavily-promoted Facebook post in a day than would see an advert you ran during the X Factor final.

4) Get more personal
If reaching millions of people with great content sounds too much like traditional broadcast media thenpersonalisation at scale is where unique digital creativity comes in. In 2015, there’s no reason to be reaching all your potential consumers with the same piece of creative when you can use simple targeting and basic adaptations (even just tweaking video thumbnails or lines of copy) to make it personally interesting to them all. Don’t take it too far though, as people aren’t ready to be stalked by adverts that address them by name.

5) Throw a laptop at a creative
Not just out of frustration that they’re pitching a complicated digital activity no one will ever do, but because they’re showing it to you on a laptop in the first place. In 2015 as much as three quarters of social media marketing will be seen by consumers on their mobiles so if you’re not considering how your campaign looks on a 5-inch screen then you’re out of touch. If some interactivity isn’t mobile compatible then why are you doing it at all?

Ok, violence in the workplace is never acceptable, but if 2015 is going to be the year that social media marketing truly starts delivering for brands then the industry does still need a bit of a common sense shake-up. Detailed consumer interaction and customer service are vital in some sectors, but anyone not seeing the chance to go large on social media is missing out on the biggest innovation of them all.

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How sport dominated social media in 2014

If you were on Facebook or Twitter this year you will have heard a lot about the World Cup and the Champions League – while watching people douse themselves in ice-cold water
• Who are the world’s most popular football clubs on social media?

 David Luiz and Luiz Gustavo react after being thrashed by Germany 7-1 at the World Cup. Photograph: Pool/Getty Images

It says something about human nature that the most tweeted about event in sport this year was Brazil’s 7-1 trouncing against Germany at the World Cup. The hosts fell from their perch the way Homer Simpson falls off a cliff: the pain went on and on and on and on and on and on and on. And the people of the world united to tweet in derision, delight, dismay and disbelief. 

The World Cup dominated the attention of sports fans across the globe in 2014, with six of the 10 most mentioned moments coming from those 33 days in the summer. Mario Balotelli offering his romantic services to the Queen, Mario Götze scoring the final goal of the competition and Wayne Rooney’s strike against Uruguay were all popular topics, but the World Cup was a victory for the German concept of schadenfreude.

Biggest moments of 2014 on Twitter

Eight of the UK’s 10 most tweeted about moments of 2014 (so far) were related to sport. Brazil’s defeat to Germany tops the list, followed by Rooney’s equaliser against Uruguay. The World Cup dominates the list – six of the 10 biggest events on Twitter related to the World Cup, with two more from the Champions League.

Highest trending sporting events of the year

With events at the World Cup dominating in 2014, it comes as no surprise that #WorldCup and #WorldCup2014 top the list of sporting event trends on the social media site this year. With fans (and critics) loving to get involved in the conversation, a range of sporting events in 2014 offered the chance for people to offer their views on Twitter. Tennis, horse racing and winter sports also proved popular.

World Cup 2014

There were 672m tweets sent about the World Cup finals in Brazil, with 35.6m of them sent during Germany’s 7-1 win against the hosts in the semi-final, setting a new record for the most-discussed live event in Twitter’s history. The most retweeted message of the tournament came from, well, who else ...

If we beat Costa Rica i want a kiss,obviously on the cheek, from the UK Queen.😂😂😂.
— Mario Balotelli (@FinallyMario) June 19, 2014

The Premier League clubs’ most tweeted about players

Top 10 topics on Facebook in 2014

Again the World Cup dominated. The tournament in Brazil was the most discussed global moment on Facebook and the third most talked about topic in the UK. The Scottish referendum was the most discussed event in the UK on the social media site. According to Facebook data, there were more than 10m interactions on Facebook about the referendum in the five weeks leading up to the vote on 8 September.

What would a social media roundup of 2014 be without a selfie mention?

Twitter are calling 2014 the year of the selfie. Now, argue among yourselves in the comments section about whether this is a fair summary of the past year, but according to the social media site’s stats, the term “selfie” has been mentioned more than 92m times on Twitter. Among the most memorable sport related selfies of last year is the Queen’s photobombing of Australian hockey player Jayde Taylor’s picture taken at the Glasgow National Hockey Centre during the Commonwealth Games in July. 

Ahhh The Queen photo-bombed our selfie!! 😄 👑 #royalty #sheevensmiled #amazing #Glasgow2014 @Hockeyroos @AusComGames pic.twitter.com/ZMtHYFUqHk
— Jayde Taylor (@_JaydeTaylor) July 24, 2014

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