Insights from the 2017 Social Media Marketing Industry Report [Content Marketing Podcast 228]

May 2017

It’s that time of year again: Social Media Examiner has released its annual Social Media Marketing Industry Report, and we’re sharing the key insights for 2017.

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Welcome to Episode 228 of the Content Marketing Podcast!

If you joined us for last week’s podcast, you’ll recall we tackled the question of whether content marketing is “too expensive.” (Need to get caught up?)

Today we’re sharing key insights from Social Media Examiner’s 2017 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.

Give today’s episode a listen to hear:

How to grab your copy of our complimentary audio “5 Things You Must Know About Content Marketing”

Our latest News Feed segment:

Facebook is cracking down on misuse of Live Video (learn more here)

Content Hit of the Week: “4 Content Marketing Lessons to Learn from Netflix,” by Dennis Williams on the Entrepreneur website

My top seven insights from the 2017 Social Media Marketing Industry Report about

Find out what this year’s respondents had to say about

Effectiveness of Facebook marketing

How much time they spend on social media

Top social networks for marketing

Most popular network for B2B marketing (it’s not what you think)

How often they post on social media

Types of content they’re using

Which activities they plan to increase over the next 12 months

Tip of the Week: The biggest opportunity that’s hiding in this year’s research.

Please remember that this podcast is about you — your questions, your frustrations, your hopes and dreams for your content marketing program. So please take a moment to send me your feedback, questions, or comments via email, on our Facebook Page, or via Twitter.

Today’s Podcast Transcript

Content Marketing Podcast 228: Insights from the 2017 Social Media Marketing Industry Report

May 25, 2017

This is the Content Marketing Podcast, episode number 228: Insights from the 2017 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.

Hello, and welcome to the Content Marketing Podcast. This is the show where we help you grow your tribe and your bottom line through insanely good content. I am your host, Rachel Parker of Resonance Content Marketing, and today is May 25th, 2017.

Hello, hello, or as we say in Texas, “howdy,” and thank you for joining us for today’s episode of the Content Marketing Podcast.

Just a reminder: This podcast is available on iTunes, SoundCloud, and Google Play Music, so if you like what you hear, please click on over and subscribe. I also invite you to download our complimentary audio, “5 Things You Must Know About Content Marketing.” Download today to learn the 5 things you must know to reap the benefits of a solid content marketing program. To snag your free copy, go to contentmarketinggift.com.

Last week we were talking money — moolah, cash, dinero — and we tackled the question of whether content marketing is just too expensive. If you happened to miss that episode, feel free to check it out on iTunes or via the RSS feed.

Today we’re looking at insights from the 2017 Social Media Marketing Industry Report, which was released just a couple of days ago by Social Media Examiner.

But first, it’s time to check in with our News Feed for this week’s rundown of news you can use.

News You Can Use-

Pretty quiet week in the content marketing universe, I know here in the States we are gearing up for Memorial Day weekend, a lot of people are taking off and we also have graduations and proms and all that going on, so not surprising that it’s kind of quiet.

But an interesting story out of Facebook — it’s happening again folks. Something cool came along that people really liked, and then the hackers and the spammers try to ruin it.

Apparently there’s been a problem with people misusing and abusing Facebook’s live video feature and what they’ve been doing is using live video to broadcast either looping images or using live video as polls. So just putting up images, and having people react to them.

According to TechCrunch, Facebook has added a clause to its Live API Facebook Platform Policy that reads “Don’t use the API to publish only images (ex: don’t publish static, animated, or looping images), or to live-stream polls associated with unmoving or ambient broadcasts.”

Apparently TechCrunch itself had a hand in this update, because they had pointed out the problem to Facebook after they, TechCrunch had announced the top 10 Live videos of 2016 —and they found that half of them weren’t really Live videos but rather polls or countdowns that were done on a static background.

I had not been aware of this problem, but never fear, Facebook is on it and they are threatening reduced reach for those who misuse live video and are threatening to take away pages from those who continue to abuse it.

My take on this: C’mon folks, can’t we just use the tools available to us as they were intended? That lets steer clear of any problems, so that is my advice to you today.

Content Hit of the Week:

Our Content Hit of the Week is an article called “4 Content Marketing Lessons to Learn from Netflix,” by Dennis Williams on the Entrepreneur website.

Netflix is a fascinating story but did you know they’ve been around since 1997. Long time, right? They started as a mail-based DVD rental service, so you would order DVDs to rent and then everyone would send them back in envelopes that came along with their DVD and they entered streaming content in 2007.

So they have actually been streaming their content since 2007, so they’ve been around for a while, but here’s the kicker: Netflix did not become a superstar brand until it started producing original content. Until it started coming out with shows like “Orange is the New Black,” like “House of Cards” — that is when people really started to stand up and take notice of Netflix.

We content marketers can learn a lot from Netflix, and in this article Dennis shows us what 4 of those lessons are. It is an excellent read, and I will of course include a link in the blog post for this episode over at resonancecontent.com/podcast. (https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/294050)

That’s it for this week’s update — if you stumble across something you think might be of interest to your fellow content marketers, please tweet it to me at @rachparker so that we can share.

Now it’s time for this week’s spotlight segment: Insights from the 2017 Social Media Marketing Industry Report.

Spotlight:

Every year there are two annual reports that I always look forward to being released and being able to dig into. One is of course The Content Marketing Institute’s Benchmarks, Budgets, and Trends reports, or series of reports actually, and the other is Social Media Examiner’s Social Media Marketing Industry Report.

This is an annual report that focuses on, just like the title says, social media marketing. This year’s report just came out a couple of days ago, and if you want to snag your own copy, it’s available for free download at socialmediaexaminer.com. Just go to their home page, you’ll see a big promo right there on the front page.

For this year’s report, they surveyed more than 5,700 marketers, and I don’t have the geographic breakdown in front of me, but I believe it was Unites States, U.K., Australia and I think India was in there as well, a pretty broad array of geographic representations. I pulled a few key insights that I found really compelling and I think you will find interesting as well.

Insight #1

The first one I want to share is when they asked respondents if they agreed with the statement “My Facebook marketing is effective.”

Only 42% of marketers responded either “agree” or “strongly agree,” and that is down from 46% in last year’s survey in 2016. However, the majority of the marketers either don’t know or indicated that their Facebook marketing is NOT working.

Also, to get into a B2B/B2C breakdown, B2C marketers were far more likely to “agree” or “strongly agree” with that statement 45% on the other hand the B2B side only 37% responded that yes, their Facebook marketing is effective.

Keep that in mind because that B2B, Facebook connection is going to become really important here in just a few minutes. But it’s so interesting Facebook is the 800 pound gorilla of the social media sphere. Most brands are on it, but only a minority agree that their marketing is effective. It’s kind of a head scratcher there: it’s like we are all doing it, but whether it’s effective — not sure, or sure that it’s not effective, but doing it anyway. Go figure!

Insight #2

The second insight I want to share is the amount of time that marketers are spending on their social media marketing. This was interesting: 64% of the respondents said they spend 6 hours or more each week on social media. So if you think about a 5-day work week, they are spending more than an hour a day on their social media. 41%, which is a sizable chunk, spend more than 11 hours weekly, and 20% spend more than 20 hours weekly. So 1/5 of those respondents, if you think about a 5-day work week, they are spending 4 hours a day on their social media marketing. So it’s not something that you can do for 10 minutes a day and be effective at it, or that’s what these results are telling us.

The companies are more willing to devote more time, more attention to their social media marketing. Now I don’t know how that compared with last year, if they are spending more time or less time. I’d be willing to bet that they are spending more time, but that’s just my guess, the bottom line on that insight: marketers are spending a whole lot of time on their social media marketing.

Insight #3

The next insight I want to share is the top social networks that marketers are involved in, that they are participating in rather.

No surprise that big papa Facebook is right there ahead of the pack. 94% of marketers said they are active on Facebook. That is actually up slightly from 93% last year. Marketers are bought in big to Facebook, even though as we saw in our previous insight they are not quite sure if their efforts are working, or certain that their efforts are not working, but they still feel the need to be there.

Twitter decreased from 76% to 68% in 2017. That’s a pretty big drop. Twitter — we’ve talked about it several times on this podcast — they’re kind of twisting in the wind right now. They haven’t really done anything innovative since they purchased Periscope, and Facebook Live has blown that out of the water. I don’t know if anyone uses Periscope anymore, so I don’t know what’s going on at Twitter, or how they’re going to rebound from this, but we shall see.

LinkedIn also decreased significantly — check this out — from 67% to 56% in 2017. That surprised me, because LinkedIn for a long time has been my go-to for “How to Run a Social Network Well.” I’m not sure why the decrease, actually I have an idea, and I’ll talk about B2B brands on LinkedIn here in a few minutes (And Sophie is having an episode here, so we’re just going to close this door.)

The big mover and shaker on the list was Instagram, no surprises there, increased from 44% to 54% in 2017. So it jumped 10 percentage points between 2016 and 2017. Instagram is the new golden child, folks, of the social media world and if you have not looked into getting your brand on Instagram, look into it. And it’s not just for B2C companies anymore; many, many B2B companies are having tremendous success on Instagram, so time to get on board, look at it, think about how your brand can fit into the Instagram community.

Insight #4

This is the B2B comment I made earlier. If you are a B2B marketer, this might just blow your mind — I know that’s not just clickbait, it certainly caused me to sit up and take notice. One of the questions involved asking marketers what their most important social network was?”, so these are the ones you’re involved in, what is your number one go-to? What is the most important social network to your strategy? And they broke out responses between B2B and B2C marketers.

For the first time in the history of the report, Facebook surpassed LinkedIn as the most important platform for B2B marketers. I’m going to say that again, Facebook surpassed LinkedIn as the most important platform for B2B marketers. Between 2016 and 2017, LinkedIn dropped from 40% to 37% and Facebook rose from 37% to 43% among B2B marketers who say this is our number one social network.

My take on this: I’d be curious to know the reasoning why? And they do not offer any insights. There was no kind of free form where people respond why they gave these answers. But my sense is, the report did not specify paid versus organic. They just said what is your number 1 social network? Period, didn’t specify.

If you have looked into promoted posts or advertising on LinkedIn, it is extremely expensive, compared to Facebook, and I wonder if LinkedIn is pricing itself out of competitiveness, in terms of those paid posts and that paid advertising. I think many B2B brands are not willing to pay the price, they are not seeing the results from that very expensive promoted post and that very expensive campaign and they are switching over to Facebook.

I saw a separate statistic this week — and I apologize that I can’t quote it directly — but it’s said that on the social network consumer side a lot more people are turning to Facebook for their business to get their business information, to stay current on what’s going on in their businesses. I think those two factors are what are what’s causing more B2B marketers to rely on Facebook, rather than LinkedIn. LinkedIn, if you’re listening to this, you’ve got some work to do, buddy — you can’t just sit back and be the go-to for B2Bs anymore, because Facebook is catching up with you. It will be interesting to see how this trend plays out.

Insight #5

The next insight I want to share with you has to do with frequency of posting, and this surprised me, the average marketer posts to Facebook how many times a day? How many times a day, do you think the average marketer post to Facebook, just guess? Ballpark guess.

8 times a day — that is the number of times an average marketer posts on Facebook. I had to read that over and over again. Oh my gosh, 8 times a day, I would never have thought to recommend to a client that they post on Facebook 8 times a day.

I would have said no way, you’re going to be bothering people, they’re going to un-follow you, but low and behold that’s where people are, and I wonder if reachpocalypse has something to do with it. I wonder if they figured out that posting more frequently stands them a better chance of getting seen. I don’t know, though — it’s fascinating.

An average marketer posts to Instagram 4 times a day, to Twitter 6 times a day, and to LinkedIn 4 times a day. That’s surprising because I’ve always told my clients Facebook maybe once or twice a day, and then Twitter you can just hit it hard, I mean 10 times a day is not unusual, but actually they are posting more often on Facebook than they are on Twitter.

Again interesting, I would love to know the reasoning behind that, and then of course as your mother used to say, “If your brother jumped off the bridge, it doesn’t mean you have to.” Just because marketers are doing this, it doesn’t mean it’s the right thing to do, but it just really caused me to sit up and take notice that they are posting on Facebook 8 times a day, and even Instagram 4 times a day it’s like Wow – they come up with visuals 4 times a day, that’s interesting.

Insight #6

Interesting development there, they asked marketers to identify the types of content they use in their social media marketing.

85% said they use visuals, up from 74% in 2016 so 11% jump for using those visuals. I think that has a lot to do with using Instagram. Of course Instagram is visual only, so it makes sense that if people are using Instagram more they are creating more visuals and sharing more visuals.

66% use blogging — yay blogging, love blogging! 57% use video, 28% use live video, now that is up from just 14% in 2016, so big, big jump in the use of live video.

And get this, only 8% use podcasting. 8% of marketers said they use podcasting as part of their social media marketing plan. That surprised me.

Also let’s look at the B2B/B2C breakdown: B2B marketers are much more likely to use blogging, that was 75%, when compared to B2C marketers 61%. B2C marketers are more likely to use live video, that is 30%, compared to B2B marketers where live video came in at 24%.

Surprised that podcasting is so low, but you know if I think about it, if I look at the podcasts that are out there, I’m not seeing a whole lot of brands embracing podcasting, and again I would love to know; I would love to dig into these folks brain and wonder why they haven’t even given it a shot?

Insight #7

Speaking of podcasting, that factors into the future plans that respondents were asked about.

75% plan to increase their use of video over the next 12 months. 73% plan to increase their use of visuals, so video and visuals are definitely leading the pack. 65% plan to increase their blogging activities (yay blogging, love blogging). 61% plan to increase their use of live video.

Now here we go to podcasting again, only 26% plan to increase podcasting activities and 60% have no plans to get involved in podcasting at all. So 60% say “No not going to go there, no interest, not going to even try it out,” and to me that represents an opportunity folks, and I’m going to talk about that more here in a bit, but the demand for podcast content is there and 60% of brands have no plans of getting involved in it, no interest. So we’re going to talk about that opportunity here, when we come up to our Tip of the Week.

So that’s my quick overview of the key insights from Social Media Examiner’s 2017 Social Media Marketing Industry Report. If you want to download a free copy, go to SocialMediaExaminer.com, and you will see the download link right there on the front page.

If you have any questions or want to add to the conversation, feel free to tweet me at @rachparker. I would love to hear your thoughts on the results from this survey. Now it’s time for our Content Marketing Tip of the Week.

Tip of the Week

At the same time this podcast episode is releasing, I will be presenting at the MarTech Houston conference about, guess what? Podcasting! As I mentioned, I was surprised to see the low numbers around podcasting from the Social Media Examiner Report. 8% are using it and 60% have no interest in it whatsoever.

On the demand side, I want to share with you a statistic from my MarTech Houston presentation. According to Edison Research, 21% of Americans ages 12 and up have listened to a podcast in the past month. That’s one fifth of the American population have listened to a podcast over the last 30 days. That is not insignificant folks, that’s a big chunk of people, and lo and behold, 60% of marketers have no interest in this medium whatsoever.

This is what we call a “blue ocean” opportunity. If you read the; there was a famous book a few years ago called “Blue Ocean Sales”, or “Blue Ocean Marketing.” We don’t want to be in the red ocean, the red ocean is where all the sharks are already feeding, right? That’s where the demand is high, but competition to get in on that demand is absolutely cutthroat.

Whereas we want to be in the blue ocean, where there is demand but there is far less competition, and that’s where I see podcasting right now. The demand is there but the competition is, off elsewhere doing videos I guess.

My message to you is, if you have ever been curious or felt compelled to give podcasting a try for your brand, I would say now is the time. It is a commitment, it’s something that you can’t just do lightly or casually, but if you have an interest in it, get moving, get your resources together, and go for it, because hey, the water is fine!

Outro

OK, campers, that’s it for me today — I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode of The Content Marketing Podcast.

If you like what you’ve heard today, please feel free to subscribe on iTunes or Stitcher or Google Play Music or via our RSS feed. And if you REALLY like what you’ve heard, please leave us a quick review on iTunes. Always appreciate those reviews.

Also, if you want to learn more about content marketing, you’ll want to grab a copy of my book, The Content Marketing Coach: Everything You Need to Get in the Game … and Win, it is available in book and Kindle format on Amazon. To learn more about the book and to download a free chapter of your very own, visit contentmarketingcoachbook.com.

As you know, I always like to leave you with a quote, and today’s comes from one of my favorite playwrights, George Bernard Shaw. He once said, “Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.”

Again, this is Rachel Parker with Resonance Content Marketing. I want to wish all my buddies in the States a very relaxing and enjoyable Memorial Day weekend. Thank you again for listening and we will see you again next week. Take care!

Remember to snag your copy of The Content Marketing Coach: Everything You Need to Get in the Game … and WIN! — now available on Amazon!

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About the Author

A self-described geek who can recite entire episodes of South Park by heart, Rachel Parker has had a passion for content ever since she was old enough to hold a crayon (purple, please).

As Founder and CEO of Resonance, Rachel helps businesses publish content that connects with their audience … and converts those followers into customers. She’s also the host of the Content Marketing Podcast and author of the book The Content Marketing Coach: Everything You Need to Get in the Game … and WIN!

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