Because of how important messaging is to consumers now, some participants felt that they will be investing more time in messaging apps in 2017. 3) Consumer / customer data Everyone agreed that relevancy is the key to success of social media marketing, but many participants felt that it was difficult to know what content will be engaging for their audience. Some are using consumer data from social media platforms and create content based on their audiences' interests and demographics. For those brands that pay to promote their content, audiences created from first and third-party data were very useful for targeting content as well, one attendee noted. Others felt that because the impact of hashtags is difficult to measure, there is little reason to use them at all. 2) Channels in decline Brand presence on a social media channel requires significant effort even if it is not popular, according to attendees. For that reason, they were investing less time and effort on them. Another pointed out that working on a channel in decline is demoralising for marketers and so tough decisions will be made in 2017 regarding which channels will be part of their social media efforts. 3) Facebook algorithm changes One social network which is clearly not in decline is Facebook. What marketers did not like, though, is how difficult it is to keep up with the changes in the Facebook algorithm.
According to the experts, social media in 2017 will be all about live video, chatbots, and perhaps even virtual reality.
While this is the case for some brands, many social media marketers have different priorities for the new year.
Econsultancy recently held roundtable discussions with dozens of brand managers in Singapore to discuss the future of social media marketing including issues they face, trends, and best practices.
Although many were interested in new technologies and platforms, especially chatbots, brand marketers were mostly concerned about what they needed to do to adapt to the changing media landscape and how to add value to the business.
Their main interests are summarised below in a list of things which participants ‘like’ about social media – and things which they ‘dislike’.
Likes
1) Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Nearly all attendees on the day had moved away from social media ‘vanity metrics‘ and had adopted social media KPIs. Some of the KPIs were just to gauge individual performance, but others they reported upwards to the business.
Social media KPIs which marketers use include:
- Increase in followers.
- Social media credited conversions.
- Social content quality score.
- Clicks from social media, along with time on site.
KPIs are important, marketers said, because they give the team direction and helps them ‘sell’ social media to the business.
While everyone agreed that there wasn’t a single set of KPIs which would suit every organisation, participants felt that marketers should try to have a mix of qualitative and quantitative metrics.
For example, marketers may have a goal of a certain number of posts per week, but ensure that the number of clicks per post stays constant. Otherwise, one attendee noted, the increase in the quantity of social media posts will result in a decrease in their quality.
2) Messaging apps
Delegates reported that they are spending less effort on investigating new social platforms and more time researching messaging apps.
The research is necessary, according to participants, because each country in the region has its preferred messaging app, and each app has its own interface for brand and fan management.
Regardless of which app they were using, marketers said that messaging apps are a great way to:
- deliver information about exclusive events,
- answer pre-purchase questions, and
- provide ongoing customer service.
Because of how important messaging is to consumers now, some participants felt that they will be investing more time in messaging apps in 2017. Others said that they were holding off due to the lack of tools to help them manage the channels (see below in ‘dislikes’).
3) Consumer / customer data
Everyone agreed that relevancy is the key to success of social media marketing, but many participants felt that it was difficult to know what content will be engaging for their audience. In order to help them improve their posts, participants indicated that they are using data to understand their social media audiences better.
Some are using consumer data from social media platforms and create content based on their audiences’ interests and demographics. Others were also using their internal customer data to get a clearer picture of their audience.
They felt that combining first-party and third-party data gave marketers the ‘best bang for their buck’.
For those brands that pay to promote their content, audiences created from first and third-party data were very useful for targeting content as well, one attendee noted.
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