2018 is going to be an interesting year in social media. We could see the demise of SnapChat. Twitter? That remains to be seen if 280 characters can bring in new users to the platform. We will see the rise of social ad spend. And we will most likely see a decline in organic impressions. But there will also be an opportunity for those businesses that put in the time and energy into their social media efforts. These are some of the trends that we feel businesses should be focusing on starting now and moving through 2018.

 

1.UGC- Utilizing User Generated Content

 

First off, what is user generated content? It is defined as any type of content that has been created and put out there by unpaid contributors or, using a better term, fans.  It can refer to pictures, videos, testimonials, tweets, blog posts and everything in between and is the act of users promoting a brand rather than the brand itself.

 

This is not necessarily a new concept or even a new trend, but adoption of companies utilizing user generated content has been slow to take off from what we are seeing. UGC can be more powerful than the content that a brand puts out because word-of-mouth referrals are the best kind of referrals. When people are excited about your brand or product, they feel compelled to talk about it, and post about it. A great example of the power of UGC was Coke’s “Share a Coke” campaign with personalized Coke bottles with a variety of names attached to the label.

 

Coke’s customers took over social media posting photos of their Coke bottles, essentially taking on the role as company spokesperson and advertiser. It resulted in millions of additional impressions of the Coke bottles, but what makes UGC content different is the authenticity of real people posting non-stagy and non-corporate looking photos across the globe. Essentially, free advertising for Coke. And how do you develop brand ambassadors like everyday people? You ask for it. But also, ask to make the photos trackable by using a custom branded hashtag in the post, tagging Coke in the post, or even run a contest with people’s photos they post. Just remember, people generally trust their friends and family long before they will trust a brand. Unless, your Coke of course.

 

2. Tailored Content to your Audience, using Audience Insights

 

Audience Insights can be used in different ways, on different platforms, to either reach a specific audience, or understand your own audience better and those people interacting with your brand. Call it a buyer persona if you want, but the idea here is that knowing what interests your follows and fans so that you can better tailor the content you develop to match those interests.

 

A very simple, hypothetical example would be if you were a Running Magazine. What type of content would your audience be interested in seeing or interacting with? Either by looking at your Facebook Audience Insights and your followers, Google Analytics within your Audience Reports, or if you utilized a social listening tool, you would be able to tell that your fan base likes running, but they also like running shoes. Therefore, you would start creating content around running shoes such as videos, demos, reviews and maybe a Top 10 list.

 

Below is an example of a cross promotion between Red Robin and the Wolverine movie, and it’s doubtful this relationship was on accident. It was most likely based on audience insights.

 

 

A more complicated example would be a sports team, pro or college. You might discover that your fan base and followers overwhelmingly like the music of George Straight. Why might that matter? He would be an outstanding candidate for an influencer program to cross promote your team and brand with, or you might consider using the music of George Straight in a video, commercial, or maybe over the sound system at a game during a halftime break. But the idea here is to use the interests of your fans to your advantage to create a stronger bond and more engaging content. And you might just sell more product win the process too.

 

3. More Video Content, including Live Video

 

This is also not a new concept, but still has been slow to be adopted by many brands for a variety of reasons. There are many reasons why video is a powerful social media and marketing tool. Here are just a few of the mind-boggling stats and the role video plays in people’s lives:

 

• Nearly 75% of all internet traffic in 2017 was video
• Your website is 53% more likely to experience high search rankings if you have a video on the homepage.
• 64% of all consumers are more likely to buy a product after watching a video about it.
• Social video generates 1200% more Shares than text and images combined.
• People will retain nearly 95% of the information in a video as opposed to about 10% of written text

 

 

The list goes on and on as to why video should be a major part of your content strategy in 2018. And video can and should be utilized on all social platforms from Facebook to Instagram Stories, and everything in between. Another reason why video is such good content on social networks like Facebook lies within the social media algorithms themselves. Facebook and the others want to reward those business pages that keep people on their site or platform longer, a term known as dwell time. A video is the easiest way to improve dwell time, or even Time on Site for a website. And the longer you keep people around, the more likely they are to take action you want them to do. Make video creation a priority in 2018.

 

4. Social Listening and Social Media Monitoring

 

First off, what exactly is social listening? You’ve probably heard the term, but what is it and what can it do. The answer is A LOT.  In simple terms, Social listening is the process of tracking conversations around specific phrases, words or brands, and then leveraging them to discover opportunities or create content for those audiences.

 

You can:

• Track overall brand health
• Create content your audience craves
• Generate ideas for marketing campaigns
• Improve your customer experience
• Drive strategic product decisions

 

Social Media Monitoring collects every social mention and action. To put it simply, “monitoring sees the trees; listening sees the forest.”

 

You generally need specific software or an agency to handle this part for your business because no one wants to sift through 25 million tweets or 12 million Instagram hashtags each day to find the data they are after. But with listening you don’t necessarily have to look at each tweet your brand or product is mentioned in, but you can. Listening is about looking at the aggregate of your mentions, and make a business decision based on that large sample. With that, you can uncover good and bad things about your company, but the idea behind listening is that you can act on those things based on a common theme. Like if you were a large IT company and people were complaining about downtime. People take to social media and the web to stage these complaints in many cases. If your company didn’t have social listening in play, you might not be able to uncover the threat to your business, or least not quick enough.

 

 

But you can use listening to track what your competitors are up to, what’s working for them, and maybe even what’s not working for them. You can use this data to guide your own content strategy. And you can also see how you stack up against your competitors in terms of branding, or what is referred to as Share of Voice. There’s a lot of your business can learn, but also put into play if you utilize a social media listening company to harvest this data. It can take you out of the dark, and develop valuable insights about your business.

 

5. Ephemeral Content

 

Ephemeral content is simply any content that is posted and shared that is NOT permanent. But this form of content is no longer just a SnapChat mainstay, it has infiltrated Instagram with huge success behind Instagram Stories. You might think, “What is so incredible about content I make that disappears in 24 hours, what’s the purpose?” Well, a lot in fact. Because of the way that Stories are created, by using content that is no more than 24 hours old, and stays live for no more than 24 hours people and your followers know your content is real and authentic. Which, at the end of the day, is really what social content is supposed to be…real and authentic. How? By creating “stories” of where you are at any given time, behind the scenes footage, and every day activities become somewhat interesting.

 

But by doing this as a brand, and doing it regularly or even daily, you start to become part of the daily routine of your fans and even prospective fans. Even slightly voyeuristic.

 

 

For marketing purposes, ephemeral content has a way of tapping into that holiest of all grails…customer attention. And because many people have developed a certain mistrust of ads, being real or “native” in your content can build stronger bonds with your audience, but can also be a way to create a new voice within your brand. But don’t forget to speak to your audience.

 

6. Influencer Marketing

 

This again is not a new trend or concept, but it is evolving rapidly. Influencer marketing is way for brands to reach their target audience by way of using someone else to promote their product or brand. Many celebrities can charge upwards of $100K to make an Instagram post holding a product in their image. But many businesses have failed doing this because they didn’t research the influencers fan base or audience insights, or if even their follower was even real, and not purchased.

 

The wild west days of companies picking any Instagram “star” because they have 100,000,000 followers are, or should be mostly over. But what will be trending in 2018 is identifying the correct influencer, and measuring the ROI of those campaigns. In other words, it doesn’t make sense for a brand that sells purses to use an influencer whose audience is mostly big game hunters. That will fall flat.

 

 

 

But, as in our previous example above, it would make sense for a Running Magazine to utilize an influencer who talks about running shoes. It’s not always that cut and dry. But now we are seeing a new addition to influencer marketing, and that is the use of what is referred to as micro influencers, or those with around 10,000-50,000 followers. The ROI is generally higher, and engagement rates are usually significantly higher with a smaller follower base. It is also significantly cheaper to hire a micro influencer, maybe even $50-250 per post in many cases. Or even a cut of the sales of a campaign. As we look back at the benefits of social listening, it can help identify those people who are influencers in your industry and remove some of the guesswork if they will be successful for your brand.

 

So, while influencer marketing is not new, it will become even bigger in 2018 as a valid marketing channel for many businesses, but what will be new is targeting influencers and being more strategic in who you use. But, also the rise of the micro influencer.

 

These are just a few of the major trends we see coming in 2018 that nearly any business of any size can capitalize on in their marketing and social media efforts. The key is to start planning today, and pick 2-3 you feel you can execute, and move from there. And if you need help executing any of these trends, you can always hire someone to do it for you who has more experience in these areas, or has the time that you and your staff might not have. Whatever the case, start doing your research and planning now, and make 2018 your best social media year ever.

Wouldn’t it be nice to know how your customers really feel about the product/service you are providing them? Do you wonder if they are recommending you to other people or are they bashing you on Twitter to thousands? How many complaints have gone unanswered? Why didn’t your radio commercial bring in new business? How come your competitor’s Facebook (call-to-action) post brought in 50 new customers last week? And why didn’t anyone tell you that a waiter (at your restaurant) was unfriendly, your facilities were dirty and nobody responded to a customer’s complaint?

 

Not knowing the answers to these questions can expedite the trip to Chapter 7 or 13. Many business owners think they know how to market their business, but they are fooling themselves. If every business owner knew how to market their business, there would be no tangible phone books,no direct mail and certainly a lot less of the street corner sign flippers. Areas of focus in 2017 and beyond should be knowing what consumers are saying about your brand in real-time.

 

Could you imagine if your customers were saying this about your product or service on Facebook and your organization didn’t know about it?

 

 

But first, a chronology ……

 

Old School

 

Traditional methods of Listening are not in the present and are almost too late once the brand receives the information. Traditional methods included mailing out a survey in the actual mail (this could take months depending on how long it took to get a valid sample). Then hoping to get a 5-10% response rate and a valid sample (usually 5% +/- margin of error). Several steps had to take place before finally getting the data ready for a deliverable. Such steps included, hand coding the surveys once the data was received, running a statistical analysis, handing off reams of data to the analyst, cross-tabulating, putting those numbers into workable English and ultimately presenting the data in a way which makes sense to mid-management or C-Suite individuals.

 

 

 

Alexander Bell

 

We then graduated into telephone surveys using call centers and IVR(interactive voice response) systems based on POS (point of service) information (let’s not forget how long that took to implement and become active). Survey fields could also take months to receive the necessary amount of data to conduct statistically valid analysis. Questions were similar to tangible surveys. The key point was the amount of time it took from consumer input to brand action.

 

 

Al Gore – Internet

 

Online surveys were the next wave of market research technological advances. Again, the wait time to get enough information was not real time. Sure, there’s always going to be the 800 number, contact us forms via the brand’s contact us webpage, long-form writing, etc.; but again, it’s just not quick enough to act upon.

 

 

But if a brand really wants to be current with its former, existing and potential customers, it needs to be socially aware of what is being said about them in real-time. Speed to action is vital to extend a consumer’s loyalty, impress, excite and any other variation which leads to a monetized transaction and a likelihood to recommend and return.

 

 

So What is Social Media Listening?

 

Twenty years ago, this industry didn’t exist. Now, it’s an absolute requisite for a company to succeed in market-share expansion, crisis monitoring, customer service, sales, strategy, public relations, marketing and beyond.

 

Social Media Listening is simply defined as the following:

 

“Observing, interpreting and acting upon active conversation in real time. Any time a former, existing or potential consumer mentions your brand’s name on publicly available social media channels; there’s always someone observing, interpreting and acting upon that person’s quote.”

 

 

Dynamic

 

Social Media is about as dynamic as it gets. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. continue to change their algorithms to increase usage which in turn provides more money into these Tech Giants. All the while, Social Media firms continue to comprehend the dynamics so they too, can increase their client- base; which in turn, that client base can go advertise on those giant social sites. It’s all cyclical, but the orbit is never the same.

 

Another item to consider when reading this, and it’s the same for any vertical; consumer sentiment can change within seconds. A brand’s image can be positively engaged in one minute and in the next minute, its stock price has plummeted by 5% or more. And there are plenty of examples out there which reflect this:

 

• Angry/Offensive tweet from C-Suite or Celebrity
• Product recall
• Health Concerns
• Political Views
• Accusations
• Imagery

 

These are just a few areas where organizations need to be ready in case a forced or unforced error comes across the Public Relation’s Monitor.

 

Sentiment is happening in real-time and organizations need to have the ability to understand where it’s coming from, how it happened, why it happened and what to do next. Not to mention, consumers demand a response in 30 seconds or less.

 

GenX, Millennials, Boomers ……

 

The lovers of Direct Mail are wasting their money. When you live in an apartment complex at the age of 25, do you want an ad about a Garage Door Company? How about a Plumber? Air Conditioning? Yet, on an individual’s Facebook Page, there’s targeted advertising based on that individual’s demographic and a few other “clandestine” (yet legal) metrics.

 

If there’s a topic on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. which falls into your industry, wouldn’t you want to know who’s talking about it, how old, is it Global, is it National, what gender?

 

 

Welcome to the Jungle

 

It’s the 21st Century folks. If you are relying upon 20th century tactics, you are missing the train. Social Listening is becoming more and more dynamic in terms of data availability. We’re unearthing metrics which are not available to just any organization. It’s paramount for an organization to take its temperature, implement a recourse if need-be and track the success of that campaign all within 60 seconds. If you don’t, your competitors will and they will GLADLY take your customers with them.

 

We Live in a Connected World!

 

By all accounts (from a digital perspective), it appears that the 2016 Rio Olympics were a huge success.

Although TV ratings were down from previous years, NBCUniversal said that audience levels promised to advertisers were met. NBCUniversal acquired more than 1.2 billion in advertising sales for its 17 days of coverage across its broadcast network. From a social media standpoint, Facebook saw 1.5 billion interactions for its Rio Olympics coverage, which includes likes, posts, comments and shares related to the Olympics throughout the games. For the two-week span of the games, 277 million people participated in the conversation around the globe on Facebook alone, explicating just how connected the world is during these ceremonial games.
Additionally, Twitter suggested that there were 187 million tweets about the Olympics, which produced 75 billion impressions both on Twitter and around the web. On Instagram, 131 million users made 916 million likes and comments on photos and videos of the games.
Using our social listening analytics and research capabilities at Zunesis, we examined a 10% sample of mentions between August 1^th and 26^th. In this sample selection, there were over 98 million mentions about the Rio Olympics from across the web. This included over 84 million posts, establishing a potential impression count of over 1.4 billion.

Demographic Analysis

 

Our data shows that the male audience was slightly more engaged (mentioning the Rio Olympics over social channels) than females by 10% (55% male to 45% female). However, our data showed very similar engagement activity across age groups. This was led by 25-34 year olds accounting for 19% of the conversation followed by 18-24 year olds with 16%. Those over 65 years old accounted for 8% of total conversation.
Also included in our demographic analysis was ethnicity. Interestingly, we discovered that the Hispanic population drove 19% of the conversation and was over indexed by 2.19% compared to the general Twitter population. Compare this to the Caucasian audience which accounted for 58% of the conversation but under indexed (0.88) compared to the general Twitter population. Indexing allows us to see how much more frequently terms and hashtags are used in a conversation stream or, as in this case, how active specific demographic segments are compared to a controlled audience. In this instance we compared the Olympic Audience to the General Twitter Population.

 

From a geography standpoint, the United States led all countries with 37% of all mentions followed by Brazil with 10% and then the United Kingdom with 7 %. Within the United States, California accounted for 14% of the conversation, followed by Texas (11%), New York (10%) and then Florida (7%).

Looking at the Conversation

When you look deeper into the conversation several athletes stood out, including Michael Phelps, Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky and Ryan Lochte. Gender conversation drivers were similar between males compared to females. Both men and women commonly used #USA, #Gold and other topics with similar frequency. Looking at conversation sentiment beyond neutral sentiment, positive conversation was significantly higher than negative sentiment (82.1% positive vs. 17.9%).

 

 

There were many influential authors contributing to the overall Rio Olympic conversation. Noteworthy influencers involved in the discussion included Ellen DeGeneres, Zac Efron, Katy Perry, and Lady Gaga. Another influencer to note was the Prime Minister of India (Narendra Modi), when he congratulated one of India’s athletes through Twitter.

Popular content included:

 

 

So What Does This All Mean?

Social media analytics represents a shift in the way market research can be conducted on brands. Social media analytics enables brands to make sense of high volumes of data from across the public web. With this knowledge, organizations can better understand brand performance, brand reputation, engagement, affinities, influencers and so on. The ability to make sense of the sometimes senseless and sporadic patterns social media provides us with at first glance is incredible, especially during a time when the world is so fixated on one thing, such as the Olympic games. We can truly hear what everyone is saying, even if that conversation spans an ocean or a continent.
This data reveals that the modern world is more connected than ever before. An event like the Olympics highlights the massive amount of data that’s generated from consumers, influencers and personalities. For brands – the data is available for the taking. This data can be mined to understand a specific demographic, a target audience or market. Take for example; we know that 35% of the conversation came from 18-34 year olds. With this, a brand can create a campaign or generate a conversation amongst this specific age group to not only involve their brand but drive the conversation. What did Nike do during these games? Adidas? Puma? The United Nations? How did they drive the conversation? What did your brand do to get involved?
With social media analytics, brands can better understand a target market, segment or demographic and create specific campaigns to meet the needs of that audience. For example, if only 9% of the conversation came from 65+, can a brand better understand that demographic to better engage with them in the next Olympics? Furthermore, what drove Hispanics to chime in on Twitter at 2.19 over-index (compared to the general Twitter population)? Was it simply a matter of geography since the games were held in a Hispanic nation and continent? Is there insight a business can learn if they are eager to reach a particular demographic?
Yes! Brands now have access to this massive dataset – the questions is how can they leverage this data to their advantage? Much more, consumers also win because brands can now tailor their products to meet the specific needs of the consumer based on data.
This is the bottom line, we live in a connected world and this offers brands incredible opportunity. We found that those in on the conversation were not afraid to express their opinion during the Rio Olympics. If no one is listening to the raw opinions, then no one knows what can be done to cater to specific demographic or even improve the lives of a generation.  The good news is, according to the International Olympic Committee’s own definition, success is measured by media audience engagement- and so we would easily agree that the 2016 Rio Olympics were a huge success!

 

 

The ability to form closer customer relationships, stay at the forefront of market trends, and create competitive differentiation comes at a critical time for marketing organizations across all industries. In today’s competitive world, there are too many companies competing in an environment where there are not enough customers. This is especially true for high-tech and information technology companies where technology advancement occurs at a rapid pace. Now, more than ever, marketing organizations must create clear differentiation by tapping into new streams of customer, market, and competitive data made available from external sources like the public web. We’ve proven that when this is done with some discipline, exceptional results can be achieved.
We’ve seen how a large marketing organization’s ability to discover, synthesize, and act upon public web data can have a direct and tangible impact on their marketing strategy. I’ve had the good fortune to work with HP and other large brands in my career, and they all grapple with the same issue: they are drowning in a sea of data, all made possible by the public web and social media. I’ve realized that in order to see tangible results from social media listening (read: glean actionable insight), technology alone only gets you so far. When combining technology with human analysis, however, quantifiable value can be realized.
The problem with using social media listening technology as a standalone solution is its inability to automatically provide the in-depth analysis that a human is capable of providing. For example, we worked with a major sports team who wanted to increase social media engagement amongst women. A listening platform may provide data about what content women are engaging online, but it will not offer the strategy needed to glean more engagement. Human analysis needs to be conducted in order to understand and digest certain demographic data trends, interpret the underlying reason for engagement, and develop specific social media strategies that will better target and engage female audiences. In other words, the platform only gets you so far. The interpretation and analysis that takes a market research approach to understanding the data combined with the tool (technology) is necessary to glean insight.
We often forget that business, like life, is merely a series of decisions. The success of a company can be directly related to the worth of the decisions made by its employees; this is particularly true for marketing teams. By combining social media listening technology with human analysis, it is possible to take a complex data set now available online and categorize and synthesize it to identify key themes, influential voices, and conversation share. Companies now have access to a vast data set provided by the public web. The opportunity, then, is to convert this data into actionable insight that is directly linked to marketing processes to drive business outcomes.

One of the most unfathomable things about the internet is how much data is being created, sent, and stored every moment. On Youtube alone, more content is created in two months than was created by the three largest U.S. television networks in sixty years.  And every month, users spend a whopping 2.9 billion hours (or 325,000 years) on the site. That’s longer than recorded human history. And as mind blowing as this stat is, it barely scratches the surface of the latest social media statistics that are floating around the web today.
 

We decided it would be fun to create a little infographic to help illustrate just how prolific social media has become, and to illustrate how Zunesis Social Business can help your brand cut through online noise. We can only imagine that in the coming years this noise will increase exponentially as more people become connected online, and it’s going to take some planning to make sure your company comes out on top.
 
 

Enjoy!