5 Social Media Trends for 2014: New Research

#1: Social Listening Becoming Important

More brands are beginning to really listen to their customers.

According to the report, 60% of marketers were using social listening strategies in 2013 and 24% plan to do so in 2014. The sad news is that only 31% of marketers think their social listening is fully effective.

Consider the context of social conversations and respond strategically. Image source: iStockPhoto.com.

Key Takeaways

Social listening offers opportunities to interact directly with consumers. But it’s not just about setting up a HootSuite account and watching tweets that mention your brand’s name.

• Don’t just listen; understand first—are you hearing one loud voice or a growing trend? Is positive sentiment due to great advertising or an awesome product? Understand the full picture before you respond.
• Consider the context of online updates and conversations—are consumers reaching out to you directly or venting to their friends? It’s their context (not yours) that matters. Your response should fulfill their expectations.
• Engage with the intention of delivering mutual value—consumers have shown they’re willing to give up some level of privacy in exchange for better service and incredible value.
• Demonstrate how listening builds relationships, rather than simply “intruding” on consumers’ conversations. People are still sensitive about privacy and listening for listening’s sake is simply creepy.

#2: 57% of Marketers Use Social Advertising

The lure of social advertising is fascinating. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and others are daily destinations for millions of U.S. consumers who spend an average of 37 minutes per day on those channels.

No wonder 57% of marketers used social ads in 2013 and another 23% are expected to start using ads in 2014. But again, only 23% of digital marketers find their social advertising efforts effective.

Marketers’ budgets indicate the appeal of social advertising.

Key Takeaways

The problem for marketers is that social ad options are very confusing. What’s the difference between a Facebook promoted post and a Facebook sponsored story? When should you promote a check-in story? And do social ads even work?

These are some of the questions that make social advertising very tricky. But don’t be caught flat-footed when what used to work starts failing. Educate yourself and learn the most effective ways to leverage social ads in the current market. Here’s a simple plan to get started with social ads:

• Establish measurable marketing goals.
• Set your budget (start small).
• Know your audience’s needs.
• Pick the channel.
• Research different ad types (how they work, how to leverage them and how your audience will perceive them).
• Check out the competition.
• Optimize your landing pages.
• Experiment and create ad copy (two or three versions).
• Test and measure.

#3: Email and Social Integrate

You would think the widespread use of social media has made email obsolete. But email is alive and well, according to 68% of marketers who say email is core to their business. In fact, social media has made email even more powerful than ever. Take a look:

Email is core to business performance, but social is the other side of the coin.

Key Takeaways

It’s important to understand the relationship between email and social. With email marketing, you have the ability to stay top-of-mind with existing customers, which helps bring them back to your door. Then by encouraging your email subscribers to connect with you on Facebook or Twitter, their friends will see your brand on their news feed, thus generating more social visibility for you.

On the other hand, you don’t want to leave your social connections at the mercy of Facebook’s arbitrary algorithms. You want them to receive your content straight to their email inbox, where you have more control and can extend those relationships.

• Use email subject line testing to optimize Facebook ad headlines and vice versa.
• Incorporate your most popular email content into status updates (and vice versa).
• Test image effectiveness via email and incorporate into status updates (and vice versa).
• Just like sponsored stories, incorporate your fans’ enthusiasm for your brand into your email content.
• And finally, tease upcoming emails via a Facebook status update.

#4: Assemble Your Social Media Dream Team

The survey found that social media teams are becoming more common, with 57% of respondents having a dedicated team to strategize, execute and steward social media initiatives. Typically a social media team has three people or fewer.

Having a dedicated team is key to social media marketing success.

Key Takeaways 

Most brands understand that having a dedicated team is key to social marketing success. It’s also clear that one-person social media “teams” are most common (probably due to small budgets or lack of buy-in from upper management).

Of course, having a social media team of more than one person would be great. But don’t be discouraged if you don’t have the budget to make it happen. There are always things you can do to create social media success. However, you also have toadjust your expectations to match the level of investment in your budget and team. Here are some basic tips if you’re a one-person show:

• Start with a strategy. Know what you want to accomplish from social media and choose your social networks wisely.
• Create a workflow process. Schedule some time each day for routine social media activities (e.g., listening and monitoring, posting updates, networking and so on). The more you repeat these tasks, the better you’ll get at it.
• Develop quality content. You’ll need to create original content on a regular basis (e.g., blog posts, images, videos, graphics, etc.). Even with a small budget, you can get other people to create high-quality content for you by using a service like Fiverr. You can also get free images from Flickr or Wikimedia Commons.
• Get the word out. Let your co-workers and customers know that you have a Facebook page or a Twitter profile. Encourage them to engage with the company on these channels. It’s also a good idea to join an online community where you can tactfully get the word out to others (without spamming them). The more value you add to their conversations, the more receptive they will be to discovering and engaging with your online brand.

#5: Social Media ROI Remains Elusive

While marketers are dedicating more time and resources to social, they’re not 100% sure how effective it is in terms of ROI. Thirty-four percent believe they’re currently seeing ROI, while 52% believe their social media efforts will eventually produce ROI. This is not good.

Measuring social media can be tricky, but not doing it at all is damaging to business.

Key Takeaways

Many business owners make the mistake of not measuring social media ROI. Know this—As long as you’re not measuring, you will never understand how social media marketing can benefit your business.

Measuring helps you to be intentional about your marketing activities instead of spending time and resources on useless tactics that don’t work.

Start by defining clear, measurable social media goals such as brand awareness(e.g., Facebook likes), lead generation (e.g., email opt-ins or content downloads) orcustomer retention (compare cost of retaining a social media customer vs. a non–social media customer). Then develop a content strategy to achieve those goals(remember that content drives social). Focus on one or two social channels where your target audience hangs out and gradually scale as your audience and your resources grow! Soon you’ll be counted among the 34% who are seeing ROI on their social media efforts.

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How to Use Social Media Listening to Build Brand Loyalty

Acquiring customer feedback and understanding their wants and needs is an integral part of running nearly any business. Not only is it important for delivering the right products and services, but it plays a big role in establishing a loyal customer base and repeat sales.

Ever since the birth of social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, it's been unprecedentedly easier for businesses to connect with their customers and gain valuable information about them. In turn, this has resulted in the rise of social media listening. According to SearchCRM, social media listening is "the process of identifying and assessing what is being said about a company, individual, product or brand on the Internet." Let's discuss how this technique can be utilized by your business to improve brand loyalty, trust, and sales.

Learn What Consumers are Saying

In the pre-Internet world, companies were somewhat limited when it came to learning how consumers felt about their products or services. Feedback was available, but not like it is today. In modern times, social media has made it possible for just about anyone to publicize their opinion. Whether it's a comment on a Facebook business page, a hashtag on Twitter, or any other medium, consumers can voice their pleasure or displeasure in an instant. Consequently, this can be incredibly valuable for businesses when it comes to gaining a more thorough perspective.

If you recently launched a new product, social media listening is an effective way to determine what consumers are saying about it and what their overall experience has been. While there will probably be some people who absolutely love it and others who dislike it, observing social media feedback is a great way to make an initial assessment.

This data can help you pinpoint what you're doing right and what mistakes you're making. Knowing your business's strengths and weaknesses is critical for building brand equity and sticking around for the long haul.

"Listening to my audience helps me write content that they want to read," says Brittney Brombacher, founder & CEO of the video game blog BlondeNerd.com. "And that results in more targeted website traffic, social shares, and followers on my social media accounts."

Product or Service Improvement

Regardless of how great your products or services are, there's almost always room for improvement. Absorbing feedback and making key adjustments to keep customers coming back and spreading the word is what's made companies like Apple and Google so successful.

To grow a solid brand that stands the test of time, it's important to earn a reputation for quality and responsiveness. Social media listening helps achieve this because it offers a firsthand look at what actual consumers think about a product or service and their overall view of a brand. Basically, the feedback you receive through this technique is like getting input straight from the source. Once you spot issues, you can resolve them before bigger problems arise.

Stronger Customer Relationships

One benefit of gaining feedback is that it puts your business in a better position to keep customers happy. Whenever a customer has a major complaint, they may voice that complaint on social media channels. If you're listening, you can address the issue and seize the opportunity to show the world how great your customer service is, while also humanizing your brand.

In some cases, you can even turn a negative experience into a positive one. Regardless of the situation, most consumers will appreciate it when a company puts forth the effort to implement their feedback, which improves brand loyalty.

Reputation Management

Due to the speed at which information can be shared over the Internet, reputation management has become a serious concern for many businesses. Even if negative accusations aren't entirely true, a smear campaign from a few disgruntled customers or a rival competitor can quickly tarnish a company's image. Fortunately, social media listening can help you stay apprised of both positive and negative perceptions, and address them accordingly.

In terms of positive perceptions, be sure to reward and thank people who step up and say favorable things about your brand. This will encourage other customers to voice their positive support as well. When it comes to negative ones, social media listening allows you to identify and appropriately address concerns in a timely manner, allowing you to take actions to avert or minimize it.

Competition Analysis

Besides knowing what consumers are saying about your brand, social media listening is perfect for gaining intel on your competitors. If a competitor has implemented a new marketing technique that's proven successful, you can use this knowledge in your future marketing efforts. On the other hand, consistent complaints about their business practices can prevent your company from making the same mistakes.

Social Media Listening Software

Now that you understand the benefits of social media listening, let's talk about some popular software products that streamline the process. According to David Johnson, VP Agency Sales & Service at Marketwired, "Companies need to look beyond what they need today and select solutions that grow as they mature. Too often clients are focused on a single channel like Facebook. They need to choose a solution that has the depth, breadth and commitment to innovation so that they can capitalize on the markets where their clients/prospects will be."

HootSuite

This is one of the most well-known products on the market, and is trusted by many business owners.

Sendible

This tool is less well-known, but my personal favorite for social media listening because it includes more than just social media channels in its monitoring reports; it includes mentions anywhere across the Web.

SproutSocial

This is another option that has gained popularity quickly, and is currently used by major companies like Nokia, Fender and Hyatt Regency. Some data that this software displays includes:

• Brand mentions

• Unique visitors

• Impressions

• New Facebook fans

• New Twitter followers

• Keyword tracking

One feature that's particularly interesting is the "Assign Tasks" feature. Whenever your business receives a customer inquiry, this will assign messages to the correct team member to ensure a fast response. This can be helpful for keeping customers happy and building rapport.

Conclusion

There are more ways than ever to monitor your business, and social media listening is becoming more important as the rise of social media continues to blossom. Whether it's the performance of a product or service or a brand's reputation, staying in touch with consumers is important to building brand equity, loyalty, and revenue.

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3 Simple Ways to Measure Your Social Media Results

#1: Quantify Your Social Media Listening

“What you’re doing [on social media] needs to have impact. It needs to actually have revenue. And often times we try to make it fuzzy about that.” – Frank Eliason, Citi’s Director, Global Social Media (@FrankEliason)

Listening is one of the most often overlooked uses of social media, yet it’s probably the most important. If you’re not listening to your customers, you’re missing the point of social media.

But how do you measure listening and how does it impact your revenue?

In this example, we’re going to look at using Twitter to answer that question.

• In Twitter’s search field, enter your business name.
  

  Twitter’s search field.
• You can then select whether you want to view Twitter’s “top” tweets about your business, “all” tweets containing your business name or tweets that contain your business name from only those people you follow.
  

  Twitter search.
• As you filter the tweets, look through them and decide whom you’d like to follow. These are likely either potential customers or your current customers.
• Monitor their tweets on a daily basis. Engage with them, answering their questions, adding value and helping them whenever possible.

Twitter’s Advanced Search is powerful too, especially if you’re a local business. You can use it to search specific terms related to your business that people who are near your location are talking about.

Twitter is an amazing tool for providing real-time customer service. You can learn things like:

• Exactly how many people you’re helping
• If you’re growing that number of people
• The issues customers are experiencing with your business
• What’s broken in your business

At the end of the measurement period, prioritize the problems you identify and use that intelligence to implement fixes and improvements within your business. You canmeasure the direct impact on your business by looking at the additional revenue or cost savings that these new fixes give you.

#2: Create a Rating System for Your Social Engagement

“Put a [tiered point system] in place rather than looking at how many likes you have.” – Scott Monty, Ford’s global head of social media (@scottmonty)

This is a simple yet effective strategy to use when you’re trying to generate awareness and buzz. It’s a smart way to measure the response to your efforts on Facebook, Twitter or any other social channel you’re using.

Here’s how it works.

Say you’re launching a product or service and want to build buzz about it on Facebook. You post an update to your Page about your launch and you get a bunch of likes on it. The next day, you post a different type of update. You get some likes on it, but you also see that people are engaging more with the second update by sharing the post and commenting on it.

Likes show support and comments indicate a deeper interest but shares are most valuable because they move the update beyond your page.

At the beginning of the campaign, translate your objective to a numeric goal. Then,use a tiered point system to weight different types of engagement according to which is most valuable to you.

Here’s an example of a tiered point system for Facebook:

• Likes: 1 point each
• Comments: 5 points each
• Shares: 10 points each

During the campaign, a quick sum of values will help you determine if your efforts on Facebook are moving you closer towards your goal or not.

Assign a point system to likes, shares and comments.

You can create similar point systems on any of the social channels you use. For example, on Twitter, 5 points for a reply and 10 points for a retweet.

#3: Add Tons of Value, Then Sell and Measure

“Jab, jab, jab, right hook.” – Gary Vaynerchuk (@garyvee)

This strategy is the concept behind Gary V.’s upcoming book and it’s based on providing great content that adds tons of value for your customers before asking for the sale.

The Corcoran Group, a NYC real estate firm, adds value via their social media outlets.

For example, say your restaurant is rolling out a new healthy menu. Your goal is to get 300 customers into your restaurant to try the new menu over an upcoming weekend.

Since your food is visually appealing, you develop a Facebook or Instagram strategy. You post pictures of your food, create content around the importance of healthy eating and curate information on your Facebook Page about farmers’ markets in your area.

Offer this valuable content to build trust with people.

Then offer a coupon for your restaurant on your Facebook Page. The number of people who claim and redeem your coupon is a result you can quantify.

Here’s how to measure your efforts when using this strategy:

• Use the tiered point system described in strategy #2 to determine if your content is moving you closer to your goal.
• Use coupons that are specific to your social media campaign, thus making the return on your investment easy to track and measure.
• Create unique landing pages for each of your campaigns where your customers can download or purchase what you are promoting. Since the landing page is used for one specific campaign, this will allow you to clearly see how successful your campaign is.

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