Social Media Industry Report Recap

Back in May, our friends at SocialMediaExaminer.com delivered a report on Social Media findings from a survey conducted through 2,800 marketeers.  (To access the entire report click here)  Worhty of a share….

Here’s a quick summary of SocialMediaExaminer’s primary findings and a few comment/notes of our own.

• Marketers place very high value on social media: A significant 92% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business, up from 86% in 2013.

• Tactics and engagement are top areas marketers want to master: At least 89% of marketers want to know the most effective social tactics and the best ways to engage their audience with social media.

….change is inevidable with social media, in fact with Facebook’s changes these last 6 months all marketeers have had to shift to a paid program over an organic effort.

• Blogging holds the top spot for future plans: A significant 68% of marketers plan on increasing their use of blogging, making it the top area marketers will invest in for 2014.

…and keywords within those blogs and talking about what people want to know about is going to be key to the success of efforts!

• Marketers want to learn most about Google+: While 54% of marketers are using Google+, 65% want to learn more about it and 61% plan on increasing Google+ activities in 2014.

….we should all be using Google + and including Google Author Tag too! (Don’t have an Author Tag on this blog because it is a repeat of what SocialMediaExaminer provided….don’t want to take credit for something we didn’t originally write!)

• Podcasting on growth trajectory: Only 6% of marketers are involved with podcasting, yet 21% plan on increasing their podcasting activities in 2014—a more than three-fold increase—and 28% of marketers want to learn more about it.

• Facebook and LinkedIn are the two most important social networks for marketers. When forced to only select one platform, 54% of marketers selected Facebook, followed by LinkedIn at 17%.

• Most marketers aren’t sure their Facebook marketing is effective: Only 34% of marketers (slightly more than one in three) think that their Facebook efforts are effective.

• Original written content is most important for social media marketing: A significant 58% of marketers stated that original written content is the single most important form of content, followed by original visual assets (19%).

The above summary is merely a taste of what’s in this report. On the following pages, you’ll find more than 70 charts that visually convey some fascinating findings.