New Report: Marketers’ Tastes In Social Media Are Changing
This post originally appeared on Forbes.com
While some aspects of social media are shifting, over the past 24 months other strategies remain largely the same, according to the newest Leadtail Social Insights Report.
In the newest March 2015 study of 1,434 CMOs, created in conjunction with Neustar, the social media research and strategy firm notes the following trends:
Marketers’ interest in location-based check-in apps appears to be over. Only 5% of marketing leaders share check-in information from sites like Foursquare in the current survey as compared to 28% just 24 months ago.
Meanwhile, their interest in LinkedIn as a source of sharable content is growing. Cross posting of LinkedIn content to Twitter is up 200% over the past 24 months.
Visualize This: CMOs’ appetite for visual content is growing, along with their desire for materials that can shift between desktop and mobile environments with ease.
CMOs get the majority of their material from a relatively small number of sources. As has been the case for all of the prior two years, mainstream media accounts for nearly half of all sharing, with Forbes continuing to hold the Number 1 position, followed by the New York Times (paid), Fast Company, WSJ and Inc. For industry reports (which account for 38% of all sharing) the leaders are once again Business Insider, Tech Crunch, Mashable, Adweek, Advertising Age, Venture Beat and Re/Code as in prior reports. Surprisingly, however, the Top 10 industry reports finish out with Mediapost, The Business Journals and Hubspot Blog, proving that it is possible for upstart brands to reach top of mind among CMO thought leaders.
Social media influence is shifting. In one of the most promising developments since 2012, CMOs have moved strongly away from the goal of simply having a large audience to the more meaningful effort of obtaining a highly valuable audience, of whatever size it may be.
In short, social media sharing is more valuable and prominent than ever as an audience engagement, branding and content management trend. But for maximum success, forget the “here’s where I’m eating lunch today” Tweets and stick to compelling content from mainstream publications and industry reports. Or how about developing some interesting and useful posts of your own?
For optimal marketing success in 2015, visual content is more valuable than ever, CMOs say, and quality over quantity of audience is finally ruling the day. For a copy of the complete report, readers can register to receive the full results via Leadtail here.