Social media is changing at a rapid pace. Here's our comprehensive social media trends report to help you succeed on social media in 2018.

In this epic, expert-level Strategy Guide…
We’ll cover the basics of a successful social media marketing strategy, including which content types serve what purposes (with examples and templates of course), and how a good social media plan can work for you across the marketing funnel.

You see, most businesses miss out on massive opportunities because their vision for social media is limited.

As a result, they’re posting regularly on Facebook and Instagram, but not getting great results. That’s because doing what we call Posting and Praying doesn’t work.  It doesn’t drive sales or traffic, and it usually only gets you in front of people that already know about you.

It’s 2018. You’ve got to try harder than that.

1. Double Down on One (or Two) Channels That Work For You– And Share Videos
2. Use Thoughtful, Conversion-Oriented Social Sharing Buttons
3. Participate in Social Forum Sites and Add Value
4. Test the Life Out of Social Ads
5. Consider Exactly How Your Audience Buys on Social Media
6. Use Emotional Cues to Spruce Up Your Headlines
7. Play Nice With Others
8. Use Social Media as a Primary Support Channel

1. Augmented reality

2. Instagram Stories

3. Voice assistants

4. Facebook Spaces

5. Chatbots

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• Define The Change You Want To See
• Create A Spectrum of Allies
• Identify The Pillars of Power: While it is crucial to recruit a spectrum of allies, it is also important to identify the institutions that have the power to implement the change you seek. These “Pillars of Power,” can be the police, the media, the education system, government agencies and other organizations. As important as popular support is to a movement, without institutional support, little is likely to change.
• Seek To Attract, Rather To Overpower
• Build A Plan To Survive Victory"

Should you share the same social media content multiple times? We're here to settle this debate once and for all with real data and actionable advice.

Sex sells, it's true—but not every business needs sex to be a superstar. Discover how decidedly non-sexy businesses still manage to rock social media.

• "B2B social has evolved, but outdated viewpoints are holding it back. Marketers often see social as a table-stakes tactic for promotional content that lacks a way to quantify a connection to revenue. 
• The metrics social offers are more than “vanity.” 
• Social success stems from listening more and selling less. B2B marketers need to invest the time to actively listen to what buyers are telling you — about themselves and their companies. Only then can you hope to engage with the empathy and authenticity they demand."

Are you using your marketing automation platform to its fullest capabilities and potential? If you're not including data from social media channels, you're missing out on leads - and sales.

B2B and B2C marketers say Facebook is the social network they use—and value most—to market their business. Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram are not so close behind. See detailed study findings.

First, social intelligence and the consumer insights drawn from social data can inform marketing content, brand positioning, and even your product and company value propositions. How?

A useful approach to lead generation on social is through highly specific and targeted audience segmentation. Social audience analytics can give you a fantastic way to identify and collect those online leads.

This third and crucial last element is all about relationship building and nurturing. Social demand generation is great for building and addressing market demand — and for increasing leads in a highly targeted manner. Yet, at the end of the day, it all comes down to taking that vital next step: engaging with prospects.

Chart of the Day: B2B buyers are 26% more likely to use Twitter Social Media can have a strong impact on B2B Buyers, as they are influenced by information. Marketing topic(s):Social media marketing, Social media strategy. Advice by Jessica Wade.

Marketers, in general, tend to have the impression that B2Cs have all the fun on social media, while B2Bs continue to struggle with social media results (lead generation and ROI) as well as creating content that resonates. Are B2Bs missing something and more importantly missing out on the potential benefits of a good social strategy? I’m going to explore the B2B social media space from a B2B marketers POV to put together a piece that’s practical and functional for B2B Marketers struggling to make sense of the relevance of social media, enabling technology and the latest social buzzword – artificial intelligence

Social Platform Cheat Sheet Q4 2016 - Free download as PDF File (.pdf), Text File (.txt) or read online for free. Social Platform Cheat Sheet Q4 2016

See how the fastest-growing privately owned US companies use social media per this UMASS marketing study. From LinkedIn to Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and more, check out the data.

Unlike shareable content, linkable content is something people will post/link back to on their website. Infographics, resource guides, heavily researched articles, demonstrations, and tutorials can all be different forms of linkable content. By creating shareable content, you bolster brand engagement and put yourself on the map with users by existing among users. You also drive shares and engagements up, with means better exposure and more publicity.


Ideally, linkable content is evergreen, catered to a specific audience, and thorough. For example, a highly researched and informational infographic about the life cycle of clothing items before they end up in landfills is something that an environmental or sanitation department website will likely link to. By creating linkable content, you assert yourself as an authority and reputable resource worth referencing. As a result, having linkable content results in links, and a strong, high quality link profile is never a bad thing in Google’s eyes.

LinkedIn

SnapChat

Twitter

Instagram

Facebook

Google+

Slideshare

Summing up, social media managers should focus on these things in 2017

• Decide what goals you want to achieve using social media content
• Tailor your content to serve these goals
• Monitor your social media performance to optimize volume, timing and content types
• Support your content with promotion to get better reach

"A curious thing has happened as companies’ ability to reach users organically on social media has tanked: the power of social media to influence buying decisions has surged. In one of the most comprehensive studies to date, McKinsey recently surveyed 20,000 consumers in Europe and found that social recommendations are behind more than a quarter of all purchases made. This is well above the 10 to 15 percent that’s been estimated in earlier research. And in the majority of cases, the McKinsey report found, these social updates had a direct impact on buying decisions.

For companies, this presents a thorny challenge. Social media has never been more influential, but getting updates in front of users has never been more challenging. To shun Facebook and other networks altogether is to ignore the more than 2 billion users around the globe who rely on social media for news and updates. But to embrace them requires jumping over ever-higher hurdles in the hopes of connecting with customers.

But there are some viable solutions. Not surprisingly, paying for social media ads is a big part of the equation—just as Facebook, for one, has intended. There’s more to the story than bowing to the social network’s business model, though. Some of the most innovative companies are increasingly taking a three-pronged approach—blending paid social media ads with strategies that tap customers and even their own employees to spread content further and more effectively than before."

As a general rule, LinkedIn and Twitter remain far more effective for B2B marketers than Facebook, but that doesn’t necessarily mean your brand should abandon the platform entirely. Even if Facebook doesn’t work for you as a social network, its powerful advertising options can be extremely effective at generating leads: Lead ads, instant articles, Facebook Live, and Native video content.