Integrate Communication Channels For More Influence
Keeping up with the development and evolution of digital media channels is challenging for marketers and advocates. Just about the time you master the game, they change the landscape. Is Facebook hot or not? Is Twitter losing momentum? What’s the big deal with content marketing and video? Here’s A Quick Checklist To Audit Your Communication Plan:
1. User-generated content. Consumers aren’t just consuming more content. They’re also creating more. There’s a huge opportunity here for marketers to capitalize on. For example, Snapchat’s Live Stories aggregates user videos and photos from events. Its live Coachella story attracted 40 million viewers.
2. Mobile video. People are relying on their mobile devices to consume content in their down time. In fact, 29 percent of video viewing in the U.S. occurs on mobile devices.
3. Blogs. Blogs are nothing new, but they are growing in importance to marketers as a platform for content marketing.
Nearly half of digital marketers (45 percent) rank blogs as the most important content that they create, ahead of visuals (34 percent), videos (19 percent), and podcasts (2 percent). B2B marketers see their blogs as an especially important channel, with 57 percent ranking them as the most important content.
4. Millennial-targeted marketing. Millennials are now now a huge part of the workforce (35 percent); they’re also getting married and having kids.
There are 80 million Millennials in the United States. They spend $600 billion per year.
5. Facebook for video. Consumers are increasingly turning to Facebook to consume video content. In the first quarter of 2015, Facebook averaged 4 billion views per day. Half of the platform’s daily active users watch at least one video per day.
6. Social commerce. Social networks such as Twitter, for example, now include the “buy now” button in advertising. A whopping 64 percent of marketers see social as a critical enabler of products and services.
7. Messaging apps. Messaging apps are another trend marketers should keep an eye on. Six out of 10 apps most used globally are messaging apps.
8. Mobile advertising. Mobile advertising might soon get a fair share of the advertising budget. After all, Americans spend 24 percent of their media time using mobile devices.
9. Marketers spend on Facebook. People might be convinced that Facebook had its day in the spotlight and that the younger generations are leaving the platform, but 53 percent of marketers say they want to increase their Facebook advertising spend in the coming year–the biggest number for any digital channel.
10. Social media. Social media will get more of the marketing budget. In fact, 70 percent of marketers plan to increase their budgets on social media marketing.
11. The rise of digital strategy. It’s not going to get easier in digital. As a matter of fact, 27 percent of marketers said remaining up to date with current technology and trends is one of their most pressing business challenges. More and more are hiring individuals to act as “digital prophets” and help forecast future trends.
12. Vertical video. Marketers should consider video that is optimized for the vertical mobile screen. Full-screen, vertically oriented video ads on Snapchat have a 9x higher click-through rate compared with regular horizontal video ads.
13. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are social media’s big three. Almost all marketers (93 percent) are using Facebook as a marketing tool, the most of any social media network; Twitter is second (79 percent), followed by LinkedIn (71 percent).
14. Pinterest’s growing diversity: Pinterest is not just for women anymore. In fact, the number of car and motorcycle pins is up 118 percent year over year, and the number of men’s fashion pins is up 96 percent.
15. Video for content marketing: As marketers continue their obsession with content marketing, video is emerging as a favorite tactic. That’s why 65.79 percent of marketers said they plan to increase their use of YouTube.
