It’s the most wonderful time of the year – the time when marketers are finalizing their 2015 strategies for their clients. Recently, I had the pleasure of attending the SMX Conference in Las Vegas, where I gained some first-hand insight into which social platforms we should all be using, or continuing to build out for our clients in the upcoming year. Before you put the finishing touches on those 2015 plans, make sure you aren’t sleeping on the following social media powerhouses:
Tumblr
Tumblr is 2014’s fastest-growing social network, with an active user growth of 120% in the second half of the year alone. With more than 200 million blogs and 90 million posts per day, 94 percent of which are re-blogs, Tumblr ranks first for time spent among all top social platforms. It gets better – those who are spendin
g time on Tumblr are spending an average of 14 minutes on the network per visit, longer than any other major social network! Additionally, one third of consumers aged 18 to 34 use Tumblr. At this point you may be asking yourself, why aren’t all brands on Tumblr? The network has a specific tone and a very nuanced language, so if brands aren’t doing it right, they’re going to flop. But, put in the time, and you will reap the rewards. Get this – 95% of users who follow a brand on Tumblr recommend them to others. That means that if you do your research and put together a killer strategy for this channel, 95% of your followers become brand evangelists. With an audience nearly identical to Instagram, why isn’t Tumblr just as much as a no-brainer for brands? Make 2015 the year you include this channel in your brand strategy.
Amazing Tumblr insight courtesy of Kevin Shively.
If anything, 2014 solidified the upward direction of visual content. On top of the fact th
at 40% of people respond better to visual info than plain test, 80% of what we see is retained – visuals are processed 60,000x faster than text. These are just a few reasons among many why Pinterest continues to emerge as an incredibly important social network for brands – particularly CPG. Pinterest’s “Pin It” button has now overtaken Facebook’s “Like” button and Twitter’s “Tweet” button on brand product pages. There are 6 billion images uploaded to Pinterest each month, and these photos get 50% more interaction than other content. To ensure that your clients are staying innovative, keep up with the following features in 2015:
- Suggested Pins
- When you pin something, Pinterest suggests related pins from people you follow, and those you don’t, which is where you brand comes into play. Additionally, marketers should be paying attention to suggested pins they’re seeing, and taking note of how their competitors are utilizing this feature.
- Location Pins
- By pinning to geographical locations, this feature makes it easier for marketers to advertise to a local audience or for local businesses. Marketers should use this feature, which is a particularly great fit for hotels, real estate companies, travel-based businesses, festivals, and events, to target a more niche audience on Pinterest.
To ensure maximum reach, keep the following tips in mind:
- Find the balance
- Don’t only pin your own products. Keep your content fresh by incorporating imagery that represents the personality of your brand or might pique the interests of your audience.
- Keep up
- Find other pinners in your niche who have a lot of followers. Engage with them by following them or repinning their content. This increases your chances of getting on their radar, and as a result, their communities’ radar.
- Take it further
- Comments on pins of popular pinners in your niche. Not only can you engage with their community members, but your logo also shows up in the comments of their pins, putting you top of mind for everyone who sees that pin, whether they comment or not.
- Engage
- Make sure you’re keeping up with those who comment on your Pins!
- Do your job
- Pinterest recently revamped its analytics dashboard, providing those with business accounts a much more in-depth look into their page activity. Take the time and study these analytics – get a sense of what’s working, what isn’t, and the interests of your community. Shape your content around these insights.
Shout out to Matt Siltala and his beard for these awesome tips and tricks!
On Dec. 11, Tech Crunch announced that Instagram finally surpassed Twitter as the most active social media channel, with 300 million active monthly users. Engagement on Instagram is roughly 60x higher than Facebook, which explains why 86% of top brands incorporated this channel into their marketing strategies during the third quarter of 2014. And if you’re a CPG brand, Instagram is a particularly smart move. Millennials spend more than five hours a day on social media viewing user-generated content (UGC). This form of content is 20% more influential when it comes to purchasing and 35% more memorable than other types of media. On top of incorporating UGC into your content strategy for Instagram, use the following tips to maximize your reach and influence on this channel:
- Encourage participation from your community
- Ask them to share their content with you, and then repost to your followers.
- Engage influencers to post on your behalf
- They’ll be excited to work with brands, and you gain access to an entirely new, highly engaged community.
- Include user handles
- Get 56% higher engagement with posts that include another user handle in the caption.
- Up your hashtag game
- Capture new audience members by using popular hashtags that are relevant to your post, your brand, or your community.
Giving credit where credit is due – thanks to Danielle Wiley of Sway Group!