Social Media Status and Future – Part 3

No trend report can ever be classed as complete without a review of past activities and thus to end our social media 2013 series, here is some insight into the existing state of social media and highlight who were the winners and losers.

In the year 2012, social media continued to grow rapidly offering brands new ways to engage with their potential customers. Majority of consumers are now spending far greater time on social networking sites rather than any specific brand/product site. Increase in the numbers of people using smart phones and tablets for accessing social networks has also fuelled the growth of social media sites.

Based on analysis by our digital agency and work in the field of social media here are some of the facts for 2012:

Trend #1

Most of the marketers agreed that they needed to increase their customer engagement and drive higher revenues through social media channels but still most of them were unable to plan out what to do and where to invest. Majority of social media marketers spent maximum time on growing fan base and followers for their brand, only a few actually were able to integrate social media marketing with rest of the organisation.

Trend #2

Over 50% of the marketers believed and agreed upon the fact that there is a need of tighter integration between social marketing and rest of their company marketing strategy.

Trend #3

While social usage increased substantially, the report by Nielsen highlighted some interesting facts about social marketing and advertising. Of the people polled, 17% felt more connected to brands seen on social networking sites. Social ads proved to be more powerful than search ads. Performance wise, almost 14% of users purchased products through social ads. Demographics wise, Asians have highest adoption of social ads.

Trend #4

Nielson report also mentioned that Coupons were the most purchased item from social ads (18%), followed by internet purchases (10%) and in-store purchases (8%.)

Trend #5

Mobile apps saw a huge increase of almost 85%.

Trend #6

Top social platforms to engage consumers remained Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Youtube and Google+.

Trend #7

Year 2012 saw a new leader emerging in the form of Pinterest which has gained a huge popularity and looks to be a promising leader for 2013 as well.

Conclusion:

2012 was a big big year for social media and it has proved that social media is the new age marketing and will stay that way for the foreseeable future. Only time will tell what new innovations will come in this sphere for web agencies and digital marketers.