Mediaboss Marketing

I dont think I need to tell you how big social media is.

Social media isthe fastest growing trend in the history of the world.

This sector has grown faster than the Internet itself.

Within the first ten years of being publicly available, the Internet managed to gather roughly 1 billion users.

If you think reaching nearly one in six people on the planet within ten years is fast, then I agree with you.

But, how about reaching one in five within nine years?

Since opening up for everyone to sign up on September 26, 2006, Facebook just crossed 2 billionmonthly active users as of quarter two of 2017.

Even though the world population has grown to over 7.5billion, by now, one out of every fourhumans on this planet has a Facebook account.

Facebook, quite literally, is beginning to take over the world. 62% of people in North Americause the platform, and the percentages for similar countries are equally staggering.

In some ways, Facebook is a country of its own. Its larger than any other country in the world, and one could even argue that its more connected.

And thats just Facebook.

We havent even taken into account the usership on all the other platforms.

By the end of that analysis, wed likely have trouble keeping count.

But dont mistakenly believe that people are only using these platforms once a month just because thats how most people go about measuring the stats.

In reality, people are using these platforms every single day. And they use them not just once per day, but multiple times.

People check, check, and check again.

In fact, were so addicted to our mobile phones and the social media apps on them that theres now a word for our obsession.

Nomophobia is the fear of not being near your mobile phone.

With such widespread use, social media presents an incredible marketing opportunity.

If youre not using social media marketing already, youll either have to learn it now or lose in the long run.

In this social media marketing guide, Im going to walk you through the 12most popular platforms.

Ill give you an overview of each one, show you how to build a successful social media strategy for them, and point you to some of the best places to learn even more.

Below is a table of contents, so you can quickly jump to whichever platform interests you the most.

But first, lets go over some definitions.

As usual, Wikipedia is a disappointment when trying to define social media marketing.It simply says, Social media marketing is the process of gaining website traffic or attention through social media sites.

Wow, who wouldve thought, right?

Id like to take a swing at defining social media marketing myself:

Social media marketing is the process of creating content that you have tailored to the context of each individual social media platform in order to drive user engagement and sharing.

You gaining traffic is only the result of social media marketing. What do you do to get that result? Create content that works well on each platform.

Naturally, however, each platform is different. On one, blog content is the master. On another, video dominates. And on another still, pictures win the day.

Thats why Im going to show you the differences between the top 12 platformsand how you can leverage each.

As youll see, each platform requires a slightly different strategy.

Because heres the thing: Everyone wants their content to go viral.

But, to do that, the content must be engaging so that people want to share it. Your content must be so good that it makes the user want to tell all of his or her friends about it.

Otherwise, your social media strategy will fail.

Youll have no shares, no viral content, and no traffic back to your site.

Even though you hear about the same few social networks all of the time, that doesnt mean there arent any others out there.

Wikipedia alone lists over 200 of them.

This great graphic called The Conversation Prismgives a good overview.

While this list is fairly up to date, it may come as a surprise to you that its entirely different from the first version of this graphic from 2008.

All versions aggregate around 200 services, but from version to version (which they usually update every 2-3 years), the creators remove over 100 social media platforms and add another 100.

The world of social media is changing incredibly fast. So when youre just starting out, start with the ones that have been around for years.

Betting on the next big thing can pay off if youre right. But, if youre just getting started on a social media strategy, you cant afford to not have a Facebook page or a Twitter account since weve already seen how effective they are.

Lets look at some key social media terms.

Content: Content is whatever you are posting. It can be a Facebook status update, a photo on Instagram, a tweet, something to pin on a board on Pinterest, and so on.

The graphic already showed you that content comes in many different forms and that you need to custom-tailor it to each platform. Whats even more important than content, though, is context.

Context: Gary Vaynerchuk said that if content is king, then context is god. You can have a great joke, but if you place it somewhere inside a 3,000-word blog post, very few people will see it. On Twitter, however, that same joke as a tweet might crush it.

And, the opposite is also true. Packaging your entire blog post into one tweet is hardly possible, so try a good call to action with some relevant hashtags instead. And that brings us to hashtags.

Hashtags: By now, theyre a very common form that people use to add meta information on almost all social media channels. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest all use hashtagsto let you describe the topic of your content or mark it as part of current trends.

They make your content easy for users to discover and therefore more likely that theyll share it.

Shares: Shares are the currency of the social media world. Shares are all that matters on social media.

People will keep talking to you about impressions, click-through rates, and potential reach. But none of these tell you whether people actually pass on what you have to say.

When people engage and interact with your content, thats good. But, when they share it, that is the time when you celebrate.

A great tool to measure shares and the overall impact of content is BuzzSumo:

The more shares, the more people love your content. Its the best form of engagement that people can have with it.

Engagement: This is ageneral term that means that people interact with the content that you produce. It can be a like, a recommend, a comment, or a share. All of these are good, but the shares are where its at.

Now that weve covered some definitions, lets take a look at some social media marketing trends for 2018.

The social media world changes faster than any other online space.

And keeping up with it isnt an easy task.

So here are a few trends youll want to keep in mind. Most likely, these trends will impact not just 2018, but also the future years to come.

Heres what they are.

Organic reach is down

Once upon a time, a social media user could post compelling content and easily grow their social media following.

After a few months, theyd receive loads of friend requests, comments, shares, and likes, all because of their amazing content.

But today, thats not so much the case.

In fact, most social media platforms are making it increasingly difficult to build an organic following.

And its not unintentional.

Heres why. As the ability for organic superstars to shine goes down, something else goes up.

You guessed it: ad spend.

Of course, thats just Facebook. But the truth is that its the same for every social media platform. They make it more difficult for users to grow their own organic platform so that businesses spend more money on advertisements.

In fact, one change that Facebook made caused a 52% drop in organic reachper post in just a few months.

Remember: Social media platforms are businesses.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and every single other social media space wants to make money.

And they do that by connecting you with paying customers. Ideally, they do that well. But ultimately, they are each in it for the money. So you have to watch out and measure your own efforts to see what works and what doesnt.

Social is becoming more pay to play

As organic reach becomes more difficult, businesses have to pay to play.

They can no longer trust savvy content marketing efforts to build a following.

The more that social media algorithms prioritize advertisements, the more that businesses are willing to pay.

This is why social media ad spend is on the way up. Advertising budgets for social media doubled from 2014 to 2016.

Thats not very surprising, really.

It makes sense when you find out that social media companies make practically all of their money from advertisements.

In other words, social media is only free for users because advertisers are paying loads of money to reach those users.

The user is the product.

But to reach them, you have to pay.

Fortunately, if you choose the right social media platform for your business to invest money into, that wont be too big of a problem.

Most social media sites still have very reasonable advertising costs, particularly if you have thought through your advertisements well.

After all, the better your ads, the less youll spend.

Channels are merging

As entrepreneurs create social media websites, the possibilities become increasingly endless.

And that trend isnt slowing down. As new ways of communicating, reaching customers, and pulling leads develop, so do strategies that are equally innovative.

Take, for instance, cart abandonment emails.

More here:
Social Media Marketing Made Simple: A Step-by-Step Guide