Social media & The big players
Social Media & Blog marketing has become relevant platforms to reach, engage and captivate the audience & drive inbound traffic towards the business website.
From the million dollar organisation to garage start-ups, from Fortune 500s to the local deli around the corner, companies using social media marketing to reach out to a wider audience is a trend that is picking up full steam!
According to recent research conducted by Nora Ganim Barnes and Shannen Pavao at The Center for Marketing Research, Fortune 500 companies are understanding the benefits of social media for business and increasingly using & optimising their digital presence on social networking sites.
Let’s have a look at the graph below to understand the most common platforms being used by Fortune 500 companies for social media marketing for business –
LinkedIn is a clear front runners for the Fortune 500s. A staggering 498 firms on the list (98%) have accounts on the platform. Twitter comes in second just ahead of Facebook. The use of photo-based Instagram, that is very popular amongst the youth, and has grown from 9% since 2013, to 53% today! Snapchat, Google+, Pinterest are all used by only a handful of firms. Blogs, however, are used by just a little less than half the Fortune 500s, becoming a very relevant platform for focused communication to an interested audience.
Blogs have come a very long way since its first introduction in the 90’s. Initially used as an electronic substitute to the ‘dear diary’ concept, blogging serves an array of benefits for organisations. Improving a website’s SEO, increasing inbound traffic to the website and even using the blog to prove/stronghold an entity’s position as a thought leader or an expert!
Between 2013 – 2015, the use of blogs had dropped drastically. The growth of new platforms and the social media paradigm shift to cash in on the ‘latest platform’ could have damaged this ‘old-school tool’. Shortly after this dip, the benefits of the blog had become very prominent and the use of blogs has doubled since 2015.
Another platform picking up immense steam is Instagram. Free from clutter (for now!), Instagram has become an incredible platform for engagement. This photo-based platform is what everyone wants to capitalise on! Seeing a 5x surge since 2013, this platform is ‘hot property’ for those using social media marketing for business.
Social Media is a convenient, yet tricky way, of reaching out to the ideal audience. One can easily reach out to a social media marketing agency for quick solutions on how to make the most of the social media movement! Something that most of us have always done is looking at those we aspire to be like and emulate them.
And if all the big boys are using these social platforms to engage and captivate their audience, there has to be a certain degree of relevance to it! Social media and blog marketing for companies need not require millions of dollars. Sometimes, all you need is the right help and a little creativity. Get Social!
