Social media marketing is coming of age, but we need a common sense shake up for the medium to truly deliver for brands next year
• Brands on social media in 2014
Social media marketing came of age in 2014 with Facebook named advertising medium of the year and big brands doubling down on their paid media investment. Marketers have begun realising that these channels have huge potential to drive results when done right. It’s a good time to take stock and think about what brands could be doing even better going forward and here are five suggestions I think should shake up the industry a little in 2015.
1) Deprioritise some Of that data
You’ll hear a lot about big data, but while statistics can be revelatory they’re more commonly the scourge of social media marketing. Just because you can follow every like, comment and retweet doesn’t mean you should – in fact the kinds of activities which pander to driving these digital actions tend to be the worst kind of digital marketing. So-called engagement metrics are at best measuring the tip of an iceberg and give only the slightest indications of whether your content is truly driving actual business results, offering surprisingly little correlation with actual return on investments (ROIs). The data that matters shows if you’ve truly affected the hearts and minds of your consumers, or ultimately driven them to purchase, and today any businesses can use simple online survey tools to monitor their ongoing brand metrics.
Five things great brands will do differently on social media in 2015
