By Liam Dowd - March 5th, 2014

Including measuring Facebook engagement, social media marketing, and what is the best social media management tool?

Measuring Facebook engagement rates

For all marketers Facebook has become a foundation onto which all other marketing activity is often built. However, gaining an insight into how successful these activities have been can be somewhat of an art rather than a science. Simply Measured have offered their take on how accurate Facebook engagement rates can be calculated.

They say: “Facebook engagement rate…If you’re a social marketer, just reading that term might make you cringe. It’s a tough metric to understand, with a lot of nuances and opinions on how it should be calculated.”

The blog is essential reading, as it asks a number of key questions and offers some practical solutions to understanding engagement rates. Based on their knowledge and work with major brands, Simply Measured could have the solution your corporation is looking for.

Facebook Engagement

U.S. Social Ad Revenues to Reach $11 billion in 2017

The latest piece of research to come out of BIA/Kelsey makes for interesting reading if your corporation is focusing on the US market with its social media activity. BIA/Kelsey expects social advertising’s local penetration to steadily increase as social networks continually improve the ease of on-boarding, local targeting and campaign management for both brands and SMBs. Locally targeted social ad revenues will grow at a 26.4% CAGR, from $1.1 billion in 2012 to $3.6 billion in 2017.

“Social networks are evolving their ad products and features to improve performance,” said Jed Williams, director of consulting and senior analyst, BIA/Kelsey. “Native social formats, including video, and mobile-social advertising will be the principal market growth drivers.”

According to the forecast, display remains the dominant social ad unit, although native ad formats such as Facebook’s Sponsored Stories and Twitter’s Promoted Tweets require re-thinking of traditional display to optimize social campaigns, especially on mobile platforms. BIA/Kelsey forecasts U.S. native social advertising revenues to grow from $1.6 billion in 2012 to $4.6 billion in 2017 (CAGR: 22.9%).

Also driven by Facebook and Twitter, U.S. social mobile ad revenues approached $600 million in 2012, and are expected to grow to $2.2 billion by 2017 (CAGR: 29.9%).

The research clearly indicates that the social space will be dominated by more video content, brand partnerships and of course a massive shift to mobile platforms. Together these areas provide the trinity of growth that all corporations should be paying close attention to.

US Social Display vs Native Ad Spend

Social media marketing spend continues to rise

According to the latest survey results from Duke University, social media spending is expected to reach nearly 20% of overall marketing budgets in five years. This equates to 144% rise on current levels, and illustrates the importance that CMOs are placing in social media marketing.

The survey also reveals that although marketing spend is on the rise, there is still an issue around how this spend can be quantified. Nearly 50% of the respondents to the survey admitted they still can’t demonstrate value across the social media networks they use.

One clear result from this research is that more analytical work needs to be done. Buying ad space or leveraging engagement is all well and good, but this needs to be quantified in some way. At the moment CMOs are not using analytics to show the value of their campaigns, which could illustrate a lack of confidence in the currently available analytical platforms, which are in many ways still in their development stages.

 

What is the best social media management tool?

This is a question that many corporations have been asking, as the market has exploded with tools over the last few years. In an attempt to make some form of sense, and compare the tools that are available, G2 Crowd have a new report that could offer a level of understanding and help your business choose the right tools.

G2 Crowd concluded: “With a social media management tool, marketing departments, organizations and individual users can publish to various social media platforms; users can manage multiple accounts across multiple channels. Many social media products now offer monitoring and analytics features in addition to publishing capabilities. Overall, reviewers reported an 81% rate of satisfaction with the social marketing features of their social media platform; users were most satisfied with the tools' social sharing features (88% rate of satisfaction) and least satisfied with the social advertising capabilities (70% rate of satisfaction).”

G2 Social Media Management Tools

Until next time….

The Useful Social Media team.

The Corporate Social Media Summit New York 2014

June 2014, New York

Become a social business: For superior marketing response, sharper corporate decision-making, enhanced innovation and a happier, more loyal customer

Brochure Programme
comments powered by Disqus