Dive Brief:
- Ascend2’s latest research on social media marketing found the top objective to be increasing engagement and video as the primary type of social media content.
- Half of surveyed marketers reported an inability to track ROI as the biggest obstacle to social media success.
- Ascend2’s research involved 294 marketing, sales and business professionals worldwide.
Dive Insight:
Ascend2 just released its latest research in a report titled, “Social Media Marketing Trends.” The key question from the survey asked 294 professionals from around the globe what they considered the most important social media objective. Increasing audience engagement led the list at 64%, followed by increasing brand awareness at 54%, and increasing lead generation at 41%. Increasing sales revenue came in toward the bottom at only 25%.
Todd Lebo, partner and CMO at Ascend2, told Marketing Dive, “To increase awareness of your brand on social media, your audience needs to be engaged more frequently and more effectively. Achieving these outcomes are the most important objectives of a social media marketing strategy.”
In terms of types of content effective on social media, the top two by a wide margin were both visual in nature – video was cited by 69% of respondents as the most effective, and infographics by 50%. Coming in between 35% and 14% were written content including blog posts, articles, case studies, research reports and white papers. Podcasts were cited by only 6% at the most effective social media content.
“Video and infographics have become the most effective types of content used for social media marketing purposes. Humans are hardwired to want things – now. It’s called instant gratification, and it’s a powerful force driving the popularity of content like videos and infographics,” Lebo said.
