As of September 2013, 73% of online adults used social network sites. Although sites such as Pinterest and Instagram have been growing in popularity, Facebook is still the most dominant social network platform, with 71% of online adults using it, an increase of 4% from late 2012.
With people spending so much time on social media it makes sense that small businesses are utilizing it to market their products and services. However, it is important to approach social media the right way in order to prevent your strategy from failing. Here we look at 5 eye opening stats that may make you rethink your social media marketing strategy.
1. 42% of online adults now use 2 or more social networking sites (Source: Pew Research).
With more people using different social networking sites, it’s more important than ever to tailor your content specifically for each channel. The reason for this is that although the same customer may visit Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, they are likely to be looking for different types of information when on these networks. As Instagram and Pinterest are very visual, the content posted to these networks should be tailored for them. The same goes with Twitter, where the information shared should be more concise, or link to longer content you want to share. Facebook, on the other hand, has very high engagement rates, where 40% of users visit multiple times throughout the day. Businesses can capitalize on these high engagement rates and take this as an opportunity to create content that is focused on starting conversations with customers. We’ll detail more on the later.
2. Photos get 53% more Likes, 104% more comments, and 84% more click-throughs (Source: Kissmetrics).
Likes, comments and click-throughs are all great ways to measure the success of your social media updates. In recent research, it’s been shown that photos get more engagement than links or text-based updates. However, this doesn’t mean that any photo posted will be a success. The pictures that have the most engagement are those that are self-explanatory, and that can be understood without having to read the text next to it.
3. “Question” posts get 100% more comments (Source: Kissmetrics).
Social media is a great way to strike up a two way conversation with your customers. Although promoting your business, products and services is probably the primary reason for having a social media presence, it is important not to continually advertise to your audience about them. “Questions” are a great way to start the two-way communication flow and increase engagement. They are also a good way to get feedback that may help future decision making, and also about what information your audience would like to know more about, helping you to focus your efforts better.
4. Posting 1-2 times a day gets 40% more engagement and posting 1-4 times a week gets 71% more engagement (Source: Kissmetrics).
If you’re thinking about promoting your business on social media, consistently sharing interesting and engaging content will help you be successful. As this stat shows, the more often content is shared, the more engagement you’ll see. If you are thinking about starting social media marketing, this is an important point to consider as it will require a time investment in order to get maximum returns. How often you should post and when is dependent on your audience – this is something that should be tested in order for optimal results.
5. 42% of consumers complaining via social media expect a response within 60 minutes (Source: Convince and Convert).
Social Media is increasingly becoming used by consumers as a way to contact a business if they have any support issues. Not only are people expecting a response to queries on social media, they are expecting replies quickly, with 42% expecting a reply within an hour of posting and 32% within 30 minutes. This is something to consider if you are thinking about creating a presence on social media. Even if the main motivation for setting up a social media presence isn’t for customer services purposes, the chances are customers will contact you with support issues, and will expect a response. There are ways to minimize the number of queries you receive, so the volume you have to respond to is lower though. For example, creating FAQs or making online tutorials or help videos readily available could go along way to helping many customer issues.
Responding to customer support queries on social media also presents a huge opportunity to showcase your customer service skills. Customers will look at the way other customers issues have been dealt with and the transparent way social media has been approached is likely to instill confidence in potential new customers.