Social Media Marketing Industry Report

2013 Social Media Marketing Industry ReportSocial Media Examiner recently released their 2013 industry report. It surveyed 3,000 marketers regarding their social media marketing efforts. It contains some interesting data about how much time they’re spending and their strategies and tactics. I didn’t find anything particularly surprising, compelling or eyebrow-raising but there is definitely something for everyone.

In this week’s newsletter, I wanted to focus on the major findings mentioned at the beginning of the report. I have some thoughts and observations on each of them.

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[ismember]The Value of Social Media

86% of the marketers surveyed indicate that social media is important to their business. When looking at this number, we need to think about survey bias here. In fact, I’m surprised it’s that low. If you’re a marketer that doesn’t think social media is valuable to your business, why are you bothering to fill out a social media marketing survey?

Tactics and Engagement

At least 88% of marketers said that they wanted to know the most effective tactics for driving engagement. My sense is that this is problematic. I think that one of the biggest problems with social media is that companies are too focused on tactics rather than strategy. They start looking at minutia like what time they should Tweet and what words they should use. In most cases, they’d probably be better served by developing stronger content and promotion strategies.

YouTube

69% of marketers said that they planned to increase their use of YouTube. This sounds right, as most are still underutilizing this valuable channel (including yours truly).

Blogging

While 58% of marketers are blogging, 62% want to learn more about it and 66% plan on increasing blogging activities in 2013. Thank goodness, because I don’t see many quality blogs out there are all. This is why I’m running aBlogging for Business workshop on Tuesday and will have some related announcements soon (stay tuned!).

Podcasting

Only 5% of marketers are podcasting but 24% planned to increase their activities in that area. One of the key aspects of content consumption is that it is becoming increasingly asynchronous. That’s why podcasting and other publishing techniques are so valuable.

Facebook and LinkedIn

When forced to only select one platform, 49% of marketers selected Facebook, followed by LinkedIn at 16%. This is interesting to me. If I had to choose one, it would be Twitter. And this is particularly perplexing when you consider…

Ineffective Facebook

Only 37% of marketers think that their Facebook efforts are effective. I must be missing something. Two thirds of marketers say that their Facebook efforts are ineffective yet it’s the one social network they can’t live without. Someone’s going to have to explain that one to me.

Exposure? Seriously?

89% of marketers stated that increased exposure was the number one benefit of social media marketing. This a pretty common rant of mine. Exposure is a lazy goal for two reasons. First, it’s easily obtained. Any boob can collect thousands of followers or buy likes on Facebook. Second, it’s hard to quantify the benefit and marketers like it that way since it means they aren’t held accountable.

Overall, this data tells me that we still have a ways to go as marketers. Some of us still need to “get it” while others need to “do it.” We may know what needs to be done but that’s not worth much if we don’t follow through.[/ismember]

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