By Nick Johnson - July 30th, 2013
UK hospitality and social media, B2B embraces social networks, and how photos are the most engaging content.
87% of B2B organisations use social media
If your corporation operates in the B2B sector, a new infographic from the Clearpoint Agency will make interesting reading, especially if your business has yet to develop a comprehensive social media marketing plan. The infographic reveals that raising brand awareness is the key goal of social media activity within the B2B sector with not surprisingly, LinkedIn being the network of choice to achieve that goal.
The B2B sector has been slow to get off the mark with social media, as many businesses in this sector have struggled to understand how social media fits into their brand management and customer engagement. Today though, B2B is just as proactive as corporations in the B2C sector – it’s just a matter of understanding the differences between B2B and B2C when it comes to leveraging campaign messages, and how to forge closer links with businesses in the supply chain.
UK beats US at hospitality social media support
According to the latest Adobe Digital Index, the hospitality sector is leveraging social media effectively with this sector gaining a social sentiment score of 5.37 across the first half of this year. The scoring system is built into Adobe’s tool and enables its users to rank sentiment on a scale of one to ten. The analysis was based on 1.4 billion social mentions across all of the leading social media sites, with the UK averaging significantly higher ratings that the US or Australia.
“As more and more consumers are choosing social networks to interact with their favourite products, brands, and companies, it is becoming an increasingly important part of every business’ marketing and customer support, explained Adobe. “Social listening is an important tool marketers can use to measure response to their marketing campaigns, respond to troubled customers, and identify and reach new potential segments.
“Companies and brands have a lot to lose (or gain) from social as negative social mentions can have significant influence in consumer purchasing behaviour. Companies in the travel industry especially have an opportunity to create positive social buzz having so many social touch-points with their customers, including before, during, and after their trip or stay. By providing great experiences for customers—even when problems occur—they will be able to generate more positive buzz about their company and service.”
Photos are the most engaging content on Facebook
Businesses are realising that visual media is far more engaging than anything else they can create for their social media networks. A new piece of research from Social Bakers has revealed that 93% of engagement across Facebook is via the humble snapshot. This latest research updates their last report that put the figure at 85% from August last year.
USM reported a couple of weeks ago that if your business improves the quality of its Pinterest images, higher sales will result. Social Bakers is reinforcing the power of images, with links only gaining 2% of engagement with status updates just 3%. It seems the propensity to gravitate towards visual content is as strong as ever.
Social Bakers also took a look at video content. Not surprisingly YouTube has the lead. “Of course, YouTube had a running start thanks to its inception in 2006 and it’s brand notoriety through Google,” Social Bakers point out. “Not to mention the fact that 1 billion unique users that visit YouTube each month. The 100 million+ Vine user base takes second place after YouTube and Instagram will seemingly reach that fan base with Facebook´s 1 billion+ user audience.”
Corporations trying to identify what kind of content to create for which of their social media networks, should use these insights to create a holistic approach. The campaign message is important to define, and then support with the appropriate collateral.
Until next time….
The Useful Social Media team.