They say ‘follow the money’ and that certainly applies to understanding the strength of various social media platforms regarding where advertisers spend their money.
Social media spend investment last year overtook Search for the first time to become the largest channel worldwide by advertising investment according to information and data analytics company, WARC.
Meta Ads is enjoying a bumper year according to smk and WARC, with advertising money flowing across Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp and Messenger.
According to WARC both Facebook and Instagram grew by more than 20% year on year in Q1 2024. It estimates that Meta now holds 63% market share of global social spend.
“Much of social media’s success has been driven by Meta’s remarkable renaissance. However, social’s stronghold on budgets can also be seen in TikTok’s rise, and a return to double-digit ad revenue growth at Snapchat and Pinterest.” Alex Brownsell, WARC Media, May 2024
Some other key takeaways:
Despite geopolitical concerns, marketers are forecast to spend US$23.1 billion on TikTok this year
Pinterest is forecast to grow 17.3% year-on-year in ad revenue
Snapchat is forecast to grow 13.7%
Elon Musk’s X (formerly Twitter) will see ad revenue decline by 6.4% globally.
With social media investment firmly establishing itself as the number one channel across the world, marketers need to understand some of the leading trends to optimise their spend.
The AI Trend:
Companies that prioritise AI for customer service can expect 25% higher revenue compared to those that focus only on AI for productivity, according to a recent study by Accenture (via Hootsuite).
The Platform Trend:
With a potential TikTok ban looming over the U.S., eMarketer predicts a possible decline as focus shifts to other platforms particularly if you have a strong focus on TikTok consumers. Be adaptable with your spend and be ready to go on other platforms like Instagram.
The ROI Trend:
Hootsuite delved into what consumers really want from brands on social. They found their three favourite types of content: something new, something funny, and something inspiring. Are these in your content mix?
With a finding of consumers’ patience for brands on social media being on thin ice, you need to become celebrated – not tolerated with your social media marketing.
If you’re in the tourism industry and looking to enhance or begin your social media and online presence, then there’s some key considerations to think through and some planning required. Have a look at what other successful businesses are doing and learn from their efforts. Think about what types of online media your audience is likely to use. Is it Snapchat, Facebook or Twitter? Or something else? And don’t forget about TripAdvisor. Many consumers rely on online reviews for their decision making. Peer influence is very important in the process. Over 50% of Facebook users say their friends’ photos have inspired their choice of holiday and shaped their travel plans. Here are five key considerations to shape your tourism social media efforts: 1. Be informative Your goal should be to become an authority on your region and its attractions. Avoid the temptation to simply plug your own business at every opportunity. You will win a loyal following if you’re able to provide a regular flow of useable information that provides advice and tips for visitors. Provide accurate updates on local happenings and interesting events, new tourism product, travel conditions and yes, even the weather. Suggest a list of key things to visit, great photo spots, provide maps and amazing photos.
A photo posted by Visit Fraser Coast (@visitfrasercoast) on
If you employ an imaginative and informative content strategy it will help in SEO and have your business rank more highly on search results. If you give potential visitors value in terms of superior content, they are more likely to have a connection with your brand. 2. Be authentic Be real and believable. The effect of ‘gilding the lily’ can be a loss of confidence in your business by visitors and result in negative online reviews and an erosion of trust with your audience. Show what the experience is that visitors can truly expect – accommodation, activities, scenery, food and most importantly the character and characters around you. A rising tide floats all boats, so the more you can accurately enhance the profile of your region the better for you. There’s not a finite amount of success available. 3. Involve your audience Social media is very much a two-way street. Interact with and have a conversation with your online community. Ask questions, ask for feedback and invite them to contribute content. You’ll be amazed at how many gorgeous photos, stories and experiences can be shared from your own visitors.
A photo posted by Daydream Island Resort And Spa (@daydreamislandresortandspa) on
They’ll give you honest feedback and recommendations. Thank them for their reviews and don’t ignore their communication – good, bad or otherwise. Consider what competitions, promotions or incentives you can run on your platforms, big or small. Encourage guests to tag your accounts on their posts on their own pages. 4. Employ a content marketing strategy A lot of great content doesn’t happen by accident. Much of it is planned and thought out. A simple but effective tool is to utilise a content marketing strategy and it can be as simple as using a calendar. This can be a spreadsheet, online doc, or paper diary.
What advice pieces can we create?
Consider the time of year e.g. Christmas, Easter or school holidays
List local events we can post about
Look at seasonal opportunities
Are we running any promotions for specific booking periods?
Look at a theme for a certain period – e.g. to coincide with Mothers’ Day, or a local food festival.
Once you start its pretty easy to brainstorm a whole list of topics and specific pieces that can form your content platform. You will also need to consider what medium it’s best for – your website, blog, newsletter, Facebook, Instagram, local or national media, or all of these. Don’t forget to include video. It’s one of the most powerful forms of delivery and all platforms are embracing it. Your videos don’t need to be long or elaborately produced productions. Once you’ve got a calendar settled it will help drive your activity and keep you focused and motivated. It needs to be flexible but with a bit of effort should help fuel your content creation. Here’s an example of what a calendar may look like: Source: Webbedfeet.com.au5. Post regularly across all channels Don’t allow your content or online presence to wither on the vine. Post regularly across all your social and online assets. It doesn’t need to be every day for each medium but you should feature regularly and make sure you are responding to messages and thanking your community for their involvement. They will like being appreciated. And, don’t forget to share… https://youtu.be/V3OJkky52c0
Manage your social media community before it begins to manage you. This is good advice if you’re building your social media presence and intend to use it as a useful marketing tool and a source of information for your audience including potential customers. A dedicated social media presence takes time and requires daily attention and some planning. Don’t feel you need a presence on all social media accounts, especially if your resources and time are limited (Do you really need that Pinterest account?), but narrow down the key ones to a manageable few and make a concerted effort on those. It’s better to do a few channels well than a lot poorly. Here’s some other key tips to help you save time and be more effective. Implement a content management plan A proactive social media presence requires a solid content marketing plan. Your audience will respond more positively if your content is well thought out and timely. It doesn’t need to be complicated. Maybe call it an editorial calendar and identify key dates, events, holidays or seasons. Work out a monthly plan and break it down into weeks. Is there a specific theme for the month? Is it a holiday or a summer related activity you wish to promote? Try and mix up your content so it’s not too repetitive but make sure it’s all relevant. Indicate which platform it will be posted on and what external resources are required e.g. images, video etc. Identify your clear target audience for each post and keep them in mind when you create the content. Use a social media management platform There are various tools that help you manage multiple social media accounts and platforms. Some of these include Hootsuite, SproutSocial and TweetDeck. There are others but these are three popular suites that can integrate your Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn accounts (and others), enable posting to different accounts from one central dashboard, view numerous feeds and schedule posts in advance, which can be a lifesaver. These tools also have the added advantage of giving you metrics of all your accounts in one place like your reach and levels of engagement. SproutSocial also has a nifty service called Landscape for resizing an image beautifully for each social media platform. Practice social media listening Social listening is the art of listening in to conversations taking place and being willing to engage or join in the conversations. If you’re not monitoring your accounts then you will be missing out on important feedback and insights into your community and customers. It’s important to note that many customers may not say exactly what they feel directly to you or on your page; their criticism may be on an anonymous page or competitor profile. Put simply, you need to expand your efforts in just looking in the obvious places for feedback. The above companies also incorporate social media monitoring into their tools where you can monitor sentiment and search for key words or terms. Put simply, there’s no point in engaging in a social media marketing effort if you’re not going to monitor and interact with your audience. Image copyrights: rvlsoft / 123RF Stock Photo and 2nix / 123RF Stock Photo
Another year is underway and nothing’s more certain than the changing social media landscape. It’s important to keep updated with relevant changes to your social media accounts and initiatives.
Here’s a wrap of a few recent changes and trends which may impact your social media strategy:
News Feed Update Now Responding To Surveys
Facebook continues to tinker with its News Feed as it tries to improve the experience and show more relevant stories. This will of course assist with targeted marketing activities.
Facebook has traditionally used technology to hone the News Feed, tailoring the experience based on your likes, clicks, comments and shared posts. Facebook of course recognises that technology is not perfect in assessing your varied interests. It is now using qualitative research to have users rate their experience and assess posts in their feed. By surveying users and asking the question “how much did you want to see this story in your News Feed?”, Facebook is gaining a better understanding of what people are interested in seeing regardless of whether they interact with the post.
According to Facebook people are having a better News Feed experience when the stories they see at the top are stories they are both likely to rate highly and and likely to engage with.
Facebook is making an update to News Feed to incorporate this likelihood based on their research.
These changes will have a varying degree of impact depending upon the composition of your audience and posting activity. Facebook says that in general this update should not impact reach or referral traffic meaningfully for the majority of Pages.
Overall you should continue to post content that your audience finds meaningful and interesting.
Facebook provides some good information on News Feed Best Practices and also Page post best practices. Review these regularly and track the effectiveness of your posts to give you greater insight into your most valued content and best posting habits.
Facebook Sports Stadium
Facebook is clamouring to get a slice of the real-time chatter which goes on during big events, particularly big sporting match-ups.
Photo by Donald Miralle for Sports Illustrated
This has long been the domain for Twitter where people can instantly share news, scores, opinions and generally vent about the last score. Twitter registered 28 million tweets for Superbowl 49 – up from 24 million the previous year and is favoured because of its immediacy.
Facebook has responded by launching Facebook Sports Stadium aimed at their 650 million followers who like sports. It’s a place where you can see:
-posts from your friends and their comments on the game
-expert commentary and posts from those who cover the game and access to their Pages
-live scores and stats
-other game information like TV schedules.
Currently available for American football games it will soon cover other sports around the world. We’re bound to see it in Australia soon.
It apparently struggled to keep up though with traffic during the recent Superbowl 50 between the Denver Broncos and Carolina Panthers and was a number of minutes behind with the scores.
It took 7 mins for Facebook Sports Stadium to update the score with the Panthers’ touchdown. Early days but Twitter is still winning. #sb50
Facebook will persevere and it will be hard to bet against them making an impact during these live events. Soccer and the Olympics will surely be a huge worldwide draw card.
Instagram Multiple Accounts One eagerly awaited Instagram feature, which has been a long time coming, is the ability to run multiple accounts on Instagram. Up to now, you had to log off Instagram and log in under another account if you were, for example, using a private account and also managing a corporate account.
Twitter and Facebook has had this capability for a while and finally it has come to iOS and Android in the latest Instagram version, 7.15.
You now have the ability to add up to five accounts and you will be able to see which account you have active from several points in the app.
This will be a huge time saver.
Podcasts
Podcasts are poised to become one of the fastest growing mediums for individuals and brands wishing to reach new audiences according to smk (social media knowledge).
Podcasts have been around for some time and were first mentioned back in 2004. The rise of smartphones and tablets has certainly boosted their popularity.
smk identifies a defining moment in the rise of Podcast being when ongoing true story Serial became the first to pass five million downloads in 2014.
Podcasts are great to consume whilst you’re on the move with most listeners loving to learn about new things.
Some of the most popular Podcasts in Australia currently include:
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