Social BOOM!: How To Master Business Social Med...

This breakthrough book is everyone's guide to catching, riding, and mastering the tidal wave of business social media that is sweeping across the globe and changing the face of business forever. Your step-by-step plan to attract, engage, and connect worldwide through Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.

Social BOOM!: How to Master Business Social Med...

Weblogs, or blogs, another early form of digital social communication, began to gain popularity with the 1999 launch of the LiveJournal publishing site. This coincided with the launch of the Blogger publishing platform by the tech company Pyra Labs, which was purchased by Google in 2003.

In 2002, LinkedIn was founded as a networking site for career-minded professionals. By 2020, it had grown to more than 675 million users worldwide. It remains the social media site of choice for job seekers as well as human resources managers searching for qualified candidates.

At first, social media existed to help end users connect digitally with friends, colleagues, family members, and like-minded individuals they might never have met in person. Desktop access to bulletin board services such as CompuServe and Prodigy made it easier to grow free online communities without ever leaving the house.

As social media companies grew their user bases into the hundreds of millions, the business applications of Facebook, Twitter, and other social platforms began to take shape. Social media companies had access to some of the richest trackable user data ever conceived.

In addition to placing ads on social media platforms, companies discovered the potential utility of cultivating an active, engaged social media presence. Whereas social media advertising must be paid for, the act of creating and sharing informative or entertaining content on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and other platforms is an attempt by brands to grow an audience organically, in other words, without paying for it directly.

While influencers provide companies a layer of built-in consumer trust, social media platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn provide in-depth analytics that allow digital marketers to target specific demographic groups with ads. This can be useful for building brand awareness among potential long-term customers, as well as for generating leads for specific products or services.

Social media engagement consists of the various ways users respond to a post. This can include comments, follows, shares (retweets on Twitter), and clicks on a shared link. All of these actions are measurable thanks to analytics provided by the social media platforms (Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, LinkedIn Page Analytics, etc.).

This could mean a movement toward paid subscription services on social media, according to Entrepreneur. The challenge for marketing professionals will be to meet the shifting demands of social media users while maintaining an authentic brand voice.

Another growing point of emphasis for social media in the future, according to Entrepreneur, will be video content. Video marketing already has a substantial presence in the U.S., where it is a $135 billion industry in 2020, according to Social Media Today.

Will Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other major platforms go the way of Google+ and MySpace? Will the entrepreneurial heirs of Twitter creator Biz Stone and Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg build on the success of their predecessors? Can social media maintain its relevance as technology evolves?

One of the worst mistakes to make on social media is coming off as the faceless corporation with zero personality. In the modern age of transparency, people want to get to know your company on a more personal level.

For example, mass auto-replying has gone the way of the dinosaur as it typically comes across as insincere. This now-classic tweet from Bank of America is a good example of how to turn your social followers off via improper automation.

This is why brands rely on social tools to help curate pieces of content already approved by marketing leaders. Employee Advocacy by Sprout Social is, in fact, just that piece of software needed to turn your employees into brand advocates. Tap into your workforce to help build your presence!

The health and wellness industry is experiencing a "healthy" boom that is shaping the ever-growing industry like never before. There are companies disrupting the marketplace with staggering fast growth and massive media coverage. Part of this boom is due to the fact that consumers want to adopt healthier habits with products that are actually good for them. They are reading labels, and they are diving in and digging for any research they can find on products labeled healthy, all-natural or plant-based. Millions have even taken to social media to share their love for slathering on and ingesting products with fewer toxins.

Being honest about the contents of your product and sharing products with social media influencers can help build and create trust with the customer. Think about it: If you share your product with a social media influencer who has an issue with inflammation and your product reduces inflammation, then the social media influencer has the ability to document the results and influence their audience. If this one person posts about your product and has an engaged audience, the simple act of sharing the product with the social media influencer can have a ripple effect on millions.

For businesses wondering when to start making greater investments in social, the time is now. The sooner you start embracing social media as a critical business function, the farther the strong social current will take you. Companies that fail to do so risk being left behind.

While traditional marketing and advertising methods are one-way media, where brands rely on their monologue to win over a consumer, social media empowers dialogue and gives consumers unique opportunities to engage.

As more people embrace a social-first customer journey, businesses need to prepare forward-looking strategies that place their products and services front and center. Social commerce, another business venture executives are eagerly investing in, does just that, while making it seamless for consumers to go from discovery mode to purchase mode in one place.

Never underestimate the impact of a positive experience with your brand or company on social. Whether that experience is driven by responsive, top-tier customer service, relevant content or just demonstrating an understanding of your customers on an individual level, the business benefits are indisputable.

In addition to having inbox management tools, marketers need a solid strategy to deliver top-tier, responsive customer service. Download this checklist designed to help businesses meet the needs of their customers on Instagram. Then, apply what you learn to customer service strategies for your other social networks.

Social can make big brands feel welcoming and accessible. On the other side of the spectrum, small businesses can use social to reach larger audiences while also engaging local, loyal followers. But without the right tools and resources to enhance your social presence, explore new creative content and efficiently communicate with audiences at scale, businesses risk falling behind.

Start fueling up and investing in resources now so you can get a head start on competitors who have yet to recognize social as a business growth engine. Request a free, personalized demo of Sprout Social to gain insight into how our tools can take your business to the next level.

According to 72% of executives surveyed, social data is already the top data source used to inform business decisions, even more so than market research. And going forward, 85% agree that social data will be a primary source of business intelligence.

On the surface, the social space may appear crowded and noisy, but when marketers are able to cut through that noise with analytics and social listening tools, they can discover a wealth of rich insights that the smartest brands use to differentiate their strategies.

As other departments across your business begin leveraging social data, your social team will become a go-to resource for guidance. Social marketers are already masters in turning social data into strategic business recommendations, targeted content and more. Start proactively showcasing that expertise to influence other elements of your business.

Prepare your business to catch the next wave of digital transformation. Download The State of Social Media Investment Report for more data and insights that highlight why using social media for business will position you on a path toward growth.

We'll keep this post updated during 2023 as the latest statistics are published drawing on our recommended top 10 digital marketing statistics sources. We'll be pointing to new data on the popularity of social media from Global Web Index (worldwide), Pew Internet Surveys (US) and OfCom (UK), and most recently the Datareportal January 2023 global overview.

Now more than ever, marketers need to make smart decisions when planning their digital distribution channels. So reviewing the latest social media diffusion and usage stats is a crucial part of any company's digital marketing strategy.

Datareportal regularly updates its massive global compendium of social media statistics, which gives some great insights into the world of social media. It's a great download for including slides for your presentations.

The full report from Datareportal contains a huge amount of insight collated from different data providers across 200+ slides. It provides country-specific data for the vast majority of the world, so you might want to check out the slides of the countries in your core markets to get a better idea of the current state of social in the areas you operate. In this post, we focus on the social media data which starts at slide 160 in the report.

In addition to business as usual, a special report by Datareportal in July 2020, examines changes in social media usage during the beginning of the COVID-19 lockdown period. Notably a monumental increase in online and digital activities. 041b061a72