Summary of Key Social Media Trends in 2013 and 2014

Thursday, 03 October 2013 / Published in Social Media

Unlocking The Social Media Puzzle

Yesterday we covered a lot of ground on digital marketing trends in social media and content marketing, as well as how the U.S. government has been using (and will use once a spending bill is passed) social media to engage its constituents. I also covered some ways in which your company can engage the government in social media.

Below is the video from yesterday’s event. Click here to download the slides.

Unlocking The Social Media Puzzle: Engaging The Government and Business Through Social Media from Michael Hackmer on Vimeo.

There are many keys and important take-aways from the Webinar. In fact, there are at least 10 core groupings of takeaways. However, for this blog post I am only going to focus on 3 and summarize them as best as I can below:

1. Background On Key B2B and B2G Marketing Trends
Research from MarketingProfs, emarketer, Duke University and others shows that social media is growing in adoption for B2B and B2G companies. Social Media is being used successfully to entice people to enter into conversations, build relationships and improve a company’s brand identity and customer recognition. SMB marketers are using Social media to increase traffic, exposure and generate leads, which with a growing focus on using big data and analytics is proving to be more possible today than even just 2 years ago. In addition to social media, content marketing also is increasingly in popularity. Spending increased by more than 7%, with 33% of marketing budgets being allocated to content marketing. This year 54% of CMOs survey by Duke University anticipated spending more, and 2014 spending is expected to rise again. The benefits of using social and content marketing include driving more traffic to offerings, better search rankings (improvements to organic results which save your company money on advertising) and more. But perhaps the most important part of the growth in social media marketing is the rise in creating video and the visualization of data. Video and infographics have increased dramatically over the last few years. In the last 2 years there has been over an 800% surge in searches for infographics and data visualization has enhanced by 9900% since 2007. With the growth of tablets and smartphones, and everyone’s desire to get visual and receive quick-bursts of useful information for decision-making, this is one area businesses trying to reach other businesses and the government need to pursue aggressively.

2. Social Media And Messaging: How Different Is Government From Business?

In my view, social media, content marketing and message all comes down to something very basic: storytelling. The focus on Social Media for marketing has to be part of a total program around sharing and story telling, but even more specifically, sharing content that your audience wants to hear and telling stories that your audience can relate to – mainly from the perspective of other people like them. In some ways, the government’s focus in using social media should be different from that of a business. The government’s goals can be summed up in three points: 1) Share: Inform citizens of public services through social content. 2) Listen: Observe, analyze and understand what citizens are sharing to improve public services. And 3) Engage: Respond, collaborate and create with citizens to improve public services (sharing and listening). But boiled down to its core, the government is just trying to meet the needs of its constituents or customers, just like your company should be doing on a daily basis. Therefore, when it comes to social media and messaging, you need to have a highly detailed understanding of what your target audience is interested in and serve those interests.

3. How Do You Begin To Plan Your Social Media Strategy?

Starting to plan your social media strategy or re-evaluating where you are in social can be a challenging undertaking. There is a natural apprehension within companies to dive into a world that may be highly unfamiliar or beyond management’s core expertise. What I do with every company I work with is to focus on the basics. Understanding your customer is key. Jimmy Baker does customer research exceptionally well, and not because he has been doing it for over 20 years. Rather, he is a great listener, loves to ask questions and knows the right questions to ask. Once you have a thorough understanding of your customer and the various customer personas and needs, you can then take an accounting of your assets and resources. The next step is to layout a blueprint of your content marketing strategy. It is only when these pieces have been done that you should start to plan your social media strategy. And the planning process should rely heavily on the information you’ve gathered (all the components I mentioned above), your company’s mission and your goals.

For more information on how to build out a compelling and successful social media strategy, reach out to me, Jimmy or anyone else on our team. We are interested in working with your company these and any other sales and marketing projects you may have that could use a quality partner.

Michael Hackmer

Michael Hackmer is the founder of Social Web Tactics. Born in Boston, MA, Hackmer has lived in the metro Washington, DC region since 1998. He specializes in digital marketing strategy, seo and sem, social media, merging online and in-person events for best engagement, business development and more. With over 15 years experience in government, non-profits, public and private corporations, spanning a number of industries, Hackmer has a unique wealth of experience. He currently resides in Ashburn with his daughter.

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