Does your social media marketing need to get smarter?

z189Social media marketing is here to stay. Those businesses that are adapting to it and formulating successful strategies are those that will remain competitive and growth oriented. A recent study released by the Social Media Examiner highlights just how effectively companies are adapting. Also, the report zooms in on some huge gaps and flaws that many businesses are still stumbling on.

  •  The magazine spoke with 2800 marketing professionals and nearly 90% stated that they have a firmly entrenched social media marketing strategy and 92% of them have seen substantial growth in revenues due to their strategies.
  • Nearly 60% of those surveyed stressed the importance of content marketing and that new and SEO laden content was critical to their growth strategies. In addition, Google+ is quickly becoming a serious player and social media marketing strategies are trying to figure out ways to leverage Google+.
  • Around 70% of them revealed that they were actively measuring their ROI with regard to their social media marketing strategies. Many have gone so far as using A/B sites to compare various approaches.
  • Smaller businesses continue to place most, if not all, of their emphasis at Facebook. You must diversify your social media marketing approach to encompass those sites that will be of greater value to you. Larger companies, those with more than a thousand employees, were finding better success at Facebook than the smaller companies who seem to struggle there unless they have hired a professional SEO firm to handle that site for them.
  • Time is everything with your social media marketing strategies. The more time you put into it, the stronger ROI you will realize. Most of the surveyed professionals stated that they were spending 6 hours or so on it over the course of the week. However, nearly 40% of them said they spent 11 hours or more.
  • Those that are having the most success have integrated mobile into their social media marketing strategy. Cell phones and tablets continue to gain share with regard to how people are accessing the web in general and social media in particular. If you are not optimized for mobile, you had best drop everything and do so.

As more small businesses move toward a greater integration of their social media marketing, the more they are realizing that it is an investment. It is an investment in both time and money. Those that cannot dedicate the time to it, or those businesses that simply don’t have the tech savvy, are hiring professionals to put together an actionable social media marketing strategy. They know that the eventual ROI ont heir social media marketing strategy will be worth the time and the effort.