Social Media Marketing: Why more and more Brands are Investing in Efficient Social Media Strategies
With more than half of the world’s population using social media nowadays (2 hours and 27 minutes daily usage on average), it is becoming undeniable that these platforms are growing in size and in influence on a daily basis. What first emerged as a means to interconnect with friends rapidly became what connects brands with their target audience.
Which is why this blogpost is going to focus on social media’s ever-growing influence in advertising, marketing, and e-commerce. Relying on the latest statistics, our aim is to prove why brands need to focus and invest more in social media marketing strategies, in order to grow their business in this increasingly competitive arena.
The focus is going to revolve around 4 of the largest digital platforms in terms of users, engagement, and profit: TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Youtube.
1. Tik Tok
The year 2021 witnessed the boom of Tik Tok when it took the social media landscape by storm., with what surpasses 1 billion active users per month. Since the global pandemic broke, it has been the most downloaded application worldwide.
To understand how this boom happened, we need to distinguish what differentiates Tik Tok from all the other platforms: Short Videos, the main reason behind its popularity. Precise and concise videos of between 15 seconds to 1 minute are way more popular than Youtube’s longer videos. It is indeed easier to capture and keep the user’s attention with engaging short videos containing little to no speech and trendy background music.
A wide misconception about the platform is that it is directed mainly at the younger generation. As a matter of fact, 46.5% of users in the United States are 18 or older, which encompasses the largest age groups targeted by businesses on social media.
In addition to its highly beneficial paid ads, you can even further benefit from the application by getting a Pro account, through which marketers use the analytics feature to access data on their brand’s account. This is used to check on its performance like engagement rates, and understand how to alter their strategy to better fit their audience, ensuring both parties’ gain.
2. Instagram
Despite the large boom Tik Tok went through last year, Instagram still has a strong foothold in the digital landscape as the most loved platform of all time.
The overwhelming success and influence of short videos led Instagram creators to add the Reels option to the platform, hopping along on the trend and creating the most engaging form of content on the application.
Brands have been using the platform for a long time in marketing their business. But Reels came and made it even easier. Added to the already easy shopping (item stickers on stories and posts, live streams displaying products and services, the easily accessible “Shop” menu, and the paid ads targeting specific audiences), Instagram remains e-commerce's dominant platform. These easy and accessible features allow users to shop without even leaving the application.
Instagram’s ads have proven to be very efficient in reaching the desired target, whether it is reach, likes, comments, shopping, or else. Each and every ad is directed towards the specific group the brand is aiming at. The following statistics prove why the platform stands strong when it comes to Social Media marketing:
Marketers in the US are increasingly giving Instagram the interest it deserves given its benefits for business, especially when it holds the biggest share of US brands content interactions with a percentage as high as 67%.
3. Facebook
It is no exaggeration when we state that Facebook is the world’s top1social media platform with 2.936 billion monthly active users in April 2022, which equates to 37.0% of all the people on Earth today. To further understand these numbers, “Facebook’s active user base is now larger than the total populations of China and India combined.” The United States alone accounts for 190 million active monthly Facebook users.
This, by itself, makes Facebook the ultimate marketing advertisement tool for brands aiming to reach as many users as possible.
“You can micro-target the audiences that are best for your business. Facebook has a meticulous level of detail that lets you narrow down the demographic for every ad you run. Businesses can create ads to narrow down their target audiences for segments under gender, age, location, spoken languages, interests (expressed interests, likes, and hobbies from their Facebook profile), education level or history, job title, income, political affiliation, interests, behaviors and recent purchases, major life events…"¹
Facebook ads are a game changer indeed. They can help businesses lower marketing expenses while getting the best marketing strategies the platform has to offer. With the data it gathers from your activities and the users’ interaction with the brand, you can improve your plans, alter your target, and ultimately reach your final goal.
4. Youtube
The video platform has long dominated the social media landscape before it was overthrown by the rapidly growing other applications. It is still, however, the first most visited website on the Internet. The idea of the video ads before, during and after the platform’s video content (long videos skippable after 5 seconds, short unskippable videos) is in fact a genius way to get the user’s attention and hook it to the video’s content long enough to raise their curiosity and make them click on the brand’s website. With an advertising reach in Northern America of 280.3 million users, social media marketers are investing more and more in the platform.
As of 2022 data, YouTube hosts over 694 hours of video, across over 800 million videos among 37 million channels on the platform. 1 billion videos are watched per day on YouTube by its over 2 billion users², which makes Youtube a very beneficial digital platform when it comes to making ads reach the brand’s target.
While it is undeniable that this fast-paced world is relying on social media on a daily basis, social media marketers understand that what makes a difference in their marketing strategies is how to choose the best fit for each and every business, relying on original content and making the brand’s content stand out in any digital platform. Hopping on trends is a necessity these days, but being original, creative, and engaging is what has the biggest impact of all.
All statistics used in the post are from Kepios and StatusBrew.
¹https://raddinteractive.com/16-benefits-of-advertising-on-facebook-for-your-business/