Published on: 08 March 2018
Last Updated on: 24 February 2020
As the New Year begins, brands are focused on developing their marketing strategy. Marketers should know that it’s time to “Go social or go home.” Social media is another most famous marketing trend which needs to be followed by all the brands. Already so many brands are investing in social media marketing campaigns to keep up with the competitors and to expand reach to the customers. We can see that the number of people using these platforms is creating such a hype that brands cannot resist but to invest in social media marketing campaigns and be reaching customers, creating brand awareness.
If you’re looking for the trends to keep your eyes on here are six trends in social media marketing:
Brands going Life (Live-Streaming):
People buy the latest phones with upgraded hardware and software version every year, but for what possible reasons? The answer is to get quick access to social media platforms for not missing out on videos, pictures, and live streaming videos. Following this live streaming trend will prove to be more helpful for the brands, as it will reveal the organic reach. Because the most significant thing about live streaming is that it not only makes the brand popular instead it makes them reach the real targeted audience.
Also, people want to feel valued and loved, so live streaming sums up this factor, and it doesn’t attain the attention of maximum potential customers. Facebook and Instagram are providing brands with the facility of live streaming.
According to the research it’s found that more than 80% of people would prefer watching live videos rather than reading a blog post.
Rule of Social media influencers & Micro-Influencer:
Social media influencers are ruling all over the social media platforms and a smart marketer can use their help to reach their targeted audience and create hype for the brands in this year as well. Although the trend should be swift a little forward and be more authentic rather than working with social media influencers or hiring celebrities. Brands should work with those influencers who have their best interest in the products by heart this will prove to be more beneficial for the brand instead of working with those who lack interest in their products.
No Organic reach?
As marketers are facing a massive decline in organic reach on social media platforms, brands are very much concerned and are focusing on finding other approaches to fight that decline of organic reach on social media and to do so they should be very careful about posting their ads on social media platforms and have invest large amount of money for those ads to improve the number of organic reach.
Are you investing in social media advertisements? If the answer is no, then it’s time to do it and add it to your marketing campaigns budget list to get organic reach before it goes in vain.
Tell your story:
Social media is a platform seems to be the best choice for telling your story to the public to create brand publicity and awareness, marketing can use this platform a tool for getting quick access to the public which is easy and can also calculate the response of the audience. Facebook and Instagram and Snapchat are helping brands engage their customers from their feature of “Stories”. So many brands are still not using this feature should adopt it and bring creative and interesting videos and content for these stories this will surely bring a better customer response than usual.
Create Chatbots:
If you’ve ever visited a website where the moment you go you suddenly get a message from the person asking if you need help? You might think that must be some person sitting on their websites and sending this text, but it’s a chatbot program which is designed to interact with you.
So, in this year use of chatbots and messenger apps will become another trend on social media platforms followed by the brands. This show that robots are taking over, but people will look for the voice of the person behind this message and will try to exploit it, better make sure your content is ready for voice search!! If you’ve planned yet make sure to be on it. You might need one at some stage this year.
Content Rally wrapped around an online publication where you can publish your own intellectuals. It is a publishing platform designed to make great stories by content creators. This is your era, your place to be online. So come forward share your views, thoughts and ideas via Content Rally.
Podcasting is a trending concept, although not a new one. However, 2020 gave a surge to the international podcasting industry. Podcast statistics state that from 2019 to 2020, about 100 million Americans have listened to at least one podcast per month. It is thus evident that the popularity of podcasts has been increasing over recent years.
With the expansion of internet services and changes in tastes and preferences, the number of loyal podcast listeners is growing steadily. The people from the 18-24 age group listen to podcasts more than any other age category.
It is thus crucial to understand how to stay ahead of your competitors in terms of podcast topics. Therefore, this guide would focus on the ways of finding the best podcast topics in 2021.
What Are Podcast Topics, And Why Are They Important?
A podcast is a section-wise series of digital audio files. It consists of spoken words as well. Furthermore, users can download it to their devices for ease of listening. Podcasting services and streaming platforms provide collaborative waves to regulate usage traffic across different sources.
Podcasts are cost-effective and time-efficient mediums of communication. They have utter social importance as the listeners dive into trendy, insightful, and message-oriented topics. Some podcasts offer articles also in smaller bytes, perfect to listen to in busy daily schedules. ,
Mostly, podcasts are themed around a specific topic. Then, the hosts talk about the issues in different episodes. Nonetheless, the discussion is limited to the central topic only and considers several related or sub-topics.
Podcast topics are essential to keep the discussion relevant. Moreover, the host may ignore the time limitation if there is no specific theme. Therefore, to make the discussion strategic, time-bound, and logical, the hosts must follow a particular topic from their niche.
How To Find Best Podcast Topics in 2021?
Creating fresh podcast ideas daily or weekly is tedious. This gives nothing to the podcast creators but stress. Here are some tools and tips through which you can create unique and good podcast topics regularly.
1. Examine The Question That Your Audiences Are Asking
Observe the question answers and discussions minutely from several forums. In addition, collect the frequently asked questions from multiple E-Commerce sites. Now you can tally those with your available relevant podcast topics to choose yours.
For instance, you can check the related themes tab to explore the wide range of associated questions. It will help you to think independently, thereby enhancing your creative podcast ideas.
2. Know The Engaging Content Pieces
In its actual terms, social engagement indicates the success of content. To optimize your content ideas, you can deep dive into leading content based on trending topics. Ensure that the contents that you are exploring are within your niche.
Different content analyzer tools in the market offer a wide range of features. These include:
Identifying the most engaging content within a certain period
Spot the most popular shades of content in various sub-sectors
Filter content by infographics, videos, content methodology, etc.
Filter contents prepared by leading marketers
3. Understand The Trends In Twitter
Twitter is an excellent tool for keeping up with current events. Whenever I'm communicating with followers on Twitter, I prefer using Tweetdeck to keep popular hashtags and trends handy.
All the Twitter trends appearing in your feed are customized as per your search pattern and interests. Hence, there are high probabilities that you would discover the important things there. If you wish to add a trending column, tap the ‘+’ icon on the left-hand side and choose ‘Trending.’
4. Analyse The Google Trends
Emerging podcasters often feel lost or anxious due to a lack of creative podcast ideas. An ideal option for them is to check Google Trends to get new ideas. One of the best sections is ‘Related Queries’ that many people are not aware of.
This section lists all the trending podcast content ideas arranged in increasing order in terms of the search frequencies over a specific time. You will gain immense podcast topics by surfing these, which would optimize your overall confidence.
5. Have A Look At Quora
Quora is an incredible platform to look for trending podcast topics adhering to the choices of your audiences. By exploring the ‘Related Questions’ column at Quora, you will be able to discover a wide range of creative content ideas that remain unexplored to date.
In addition to this, it is possible to keep track of the active contributors in Quora. Thus, you can take a look at the answers posted by them to get a broad idea of topics in your niche.
Apart from these, it is a brilliant way to come across more professionals to invite to your upcoming podcast shows or interviews. Such experts are mainly the storehouse of ideas. With extensive experience in this field, they have a heap of tricks to find creative podcast topics every time.
Quora will bring you closer to them, and you can learn some more worthy hacks of developing crispy podcast content ideas. In this way, you can increase your connections, therefore, boosting more value to your podcast.
The Bottom Line
Creating the best topics for a podcast is not as easy as it seems. First, you need to invest quality time to find out which topic is best suitable to engage your audience in an innovative way.
To make the entire process smooth, conduct virtual or face-to-face meetings with your co-stage partners, friends, or other podcast professionals. You may receive many podcast topics, popular podcast topics, and podcast content ideas from them.
Lastly, remember that dedication and practice together bring perfection. Search for new creative podcast ideas and podcast topics every day until you develop a spreadsheet of the best ideas. To be very honest, it will take months to happen, but with experience and perseverance, you will achieve success.
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Social media has been the cornerstone of B2C marketing for a long time. However, when it comes to B2B marketing and sales, it is only fairly recently that social media channels have started to dominate.
And while most B2B marketers now realize the enormous potential of this type of marketing, only true experts have figured out that simple presence on social media is far from enough. To raise awareness of your business, you need to be social on social media, which is, after all, very logical.
In other words, you need to initiate relationships, interact with people in a personal way and absorb your customer’s feedback. But apart from this, you also have to showcase your expertise in a humble way, listen to the voices and trends in your industry and keep an eye on competitors.
Marketing your business on social media can help you generate leads, improve website traffic, increase sales and create a brand identity with your target audience.
That being said, the sooner you realize that investing time and money in social media is necessary, the better results you will get. However, this type of marketing, just like crafting a Sales Enablement Strategy, takes time and skills.
Let this article be the first step on your journey to improving your B2B social media marketing. In it, you will find out the reasons why social media is essential for B2B sales and the tips on how to improve your sales through social media channels.
Why is social media so important?
Have you heard of social validation? Social validation is a basic human necessity and its presence has but skyrocketed thanks to social media.
According to the Content Marketing Institute’s report from 2017, as much as 83% of B2B marketers use social media as their preferred marketing channel. And even though increased brand awareness is one of the main goals of social media campaigns, it is far from being the only impact of this type of marketing.
As the matter of fact, social media is right at the top when it comes to the factors making the biggest impact on purchasing decisions, closely following industry analysts and web search. Therefore, it is obvious that social media is essential for B2B sales.
If you want to increase your B2B sales, you need to use the following social media platforms:
Facebook
Without a shadow of a doubt, Facebook is the number one platform. It is important for creating a community, marketing, and advertising, as well as influencing decision makers.
LinkedIn
As a platform originally intended for business purposes, LinkedIn is as influential as Facebook in some segments.
Twitter
Twitter is the final element of the social media triad, but slightly less important than Facebook and LinkedIn.
You may be wondering why Instagram and Snapchat are not on this list. And indeed, these two platforms, especially Instagram, are great for marketing. However, they are more effective for B2C marketers.
Benefits of social media marketing for B2B sales
To give you a clear picture of how social media can increase B2B sales, we will list some of the main benefits of social media marketing.
- Firstly, it builds brand awareness and visibility.
- It serves as an effective distribution channel for your business’ ideas, content and offers.
- You can create PR opportunities, brand loyalty, SEO, as well as positive web mentions by building brand advocates.
- Social media marketing drives new leads into the funnel when combined with whitepapers, fact sheets, eBooks and other content offers.
- Have you tried to use social media to increase the number of email subscribers? If you want to add more people to your mailing list, this will do wonders for your business.
- Moreover, this type of marketing is great for B2B customer feedback program and understanding the needs of your leads, customers, prospects, and advocates.
- Social media marketing can greatly improve your SEO results through third-party links, mentions, and interest in your content.
- You can build trust with your buyers by educating them and helping them understand the major factors that influence their purchasing decisions.
- Social media is perfect for B2B loyalty rewards programs and customer care.
Challenges of B2B social media marketing
There are always two sides of a coin. In spite of the numerous benefits of B2B social marketing, there are also certain challenges that B2B marketers face on a daily basis when it comes to social media.
When in Rome…
If consumers use social media for connection and entertainment, your message needs to address these requirements.
In other words, you shouldn’t slip into business jargon on Facebook or post silly memes on LinkedIn. Apart from that, you should try to establish a deeper connection with your customers by finding out what they read, what they comment on and who they follow.
This will help you better understand your prospects and existing customers, and tell them what they want to hear and how they want to hear it.
Being present 24/7
When your audience needs guidance or asks a question, you should be there for them. It is all about responding when they reach out for help.
The challenge here is to anticipate such moments and be ready to shine. Create a list of tips, reviews, product demonstrations, and video tutorials, and promote them through paid search and social advertising.
For this and similar reasons, you should constantly use social media for real-time marketing, an increasingly popular method which allows you to engage with your customers instantly.
Cherishing your influencers
Finding your perfect influencer and starting a conversation with them is one of the keys to a successful social media campaign.
To choose the right influencer for your brand, you need to study their audience, understand why they engage, what is their reach, style, and many additional aspects.
Getting serious about selling on social media
Once you have put in a lot of effort toward entertainment and connection, you need to sell. After all, that is the main goal of each business.
To grow your website traffic and nurture leads, you need to match your marketing efforts and sales goals. When you engage with the knowledgeable, empowered and well-connected customers, you practically close the gap between the social world and the business world.
The elusive ROI
Oh, the infamous ROI… This is definitely among the top challenges for all marketers, not only in the B2B field.
To get a satisfactory return on investment, you always need to give your customers new and fresh content on social media, as well as attend to their needs and join conversations with influencers. Then, when everybody starts listening to what you have to say, seize the moment and make the final move.
It is all about timing. With the right timing, you can sell everything, even ice to Eskimos.
The future of B2B sales
Everybody is wondering what the future of B2B sales will look like. So far, we can identify three main trends.
The buying process will become easier
In essence, a more open approach to purchasing is obviously emerging, as well as a multi-channel unified experience closely resembling the B2C experience.
Moreover, along with those two, the need for highly personalized interactions will result in increasing buyer trust and lead to more data becoming available.
The focus will shift to long-term customer value
Businesses will have to focus on customer needs and customize their selling approaches, Also, adding value to products and services will be an indispensable part of every sales process.
In addition, selling will become more intelligent. In other words, sales teams will need to educate customers about their needs and engage with stakeholders and decision makers to discover and highlight those needs.
Data and analytics will play a major role in creating customer value
The days of guessing in sales have long gone. To create value for customers and interact with them effectively, social media marketers will have to use data and analytics through:
- science and sales
- AI and the virtual experience
- sales and the social business
In many of these strategies, social media will play an important role. From the multi-channel approach and market intelligence to education and connection, B2B sales will be impossible without social media platforms.
Finally, from a technical point of view, it is evident that outsourcing social media is becoming increasingly popular. This is a strategy that can be very effective, especially for small businesses. However, if you decide to do this, we advise you to be careful and avoid the most common social media outsourcing mistakes.
How to Sell More on Social Media
Now that you have learned why social media is so important for the B2B sales process, you probably want to know how to use social media to increase sales.
Here are the five useful tips on how to sell more and better on social media.
Choose the right social network(s)
Not all the platforms will work for all businesses. When choosing the best social media channels for your business, you need to consider several factors:
- your niche
- your audience
- your goals
For example, according to a study by Google and Millward Brown Digital published in 2015, the number of decision makers aged between 18 and 34 years increased by 19% in only two years (from 27% in 2012 to 46% in 2014).
This is why you need to find out the favorite platform of your customers and tailor your message to them, the network and your brand.
Remember – no business jargon on Facebook or crazy memes on LinkedIn.
Be active on LinkedIn
Whatever other networks you choose, keep in mind that LinkedIn is a must. When it comes to B2B marketing, this platform is essential and you can’t risk not using it.
To shine on LinkedIn, you will have to be very active. This means that you should:
- use LinkedIn’s Saved Search feature in order to create a search based on your ideal customer profile and be notified each time such a person signs up
- join and participate in LinkedIn groups to build your network and referrals
- connect with potential customers to start conversations
Contribute to existing conversations
This goes for all the social media networks you are active on. When you contribute to conversations about your brand and interesting topics in your industry, customers see this as adding value.
The best way to do this is Twitter and its search function, but you can use other networks too.
Share relevant content
More and more B2B buyers search for information on services and products on social media. Your answer to this should be simple ‒ sharing relevant content.
This is another way to add value, and you can do it by providing white papers, product sheets, case studies, webinars, comparison worksheets and so on.
In addition, you can share useful blog posts, infographics, tutorials and other types of content. In a nutshell, you can share anything that you think could help your customers.
Use the right tools
Finally, using social media for marketing purposes without different kinds of tools is practically impossible. There are so many aspects software tools can improve and so many ways they can help you rock your campaigns that not using them is a real waste of time.
Using effective social media marketing tools will help you find more relevant content, schedule your posts, measure and analyze the effectiveness of your campaigns, as well as use that data to improve your future campaigns.
Wrapping up :
Social media networks are becoming an essential part of every B2B sales process. However, in order to sell more on social media, you need to understand all the benefits and challenges of this process.
This is definitely not a one-time activity. Rather, think of it as of a long journey that includes a lot of small steps. It’s a long way to the top if you want to rock your B2B social media campaigns.
But if you take all the steps that we listed, you will find that the results will follow. This is one of those journeys that you have to enjoy if you want to reach your destination.
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The impact of social media usage on all our lives is immense these days! There is hardly anyone who doesn't use social media today and thus, the number of users keeps increasing every day on these social platforms. Sites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, WhatsApp, etc. have seen a massive surge in the number of users in the past few years and with the ongoing digital revolution, it is surely going to see more such upfront.
But is this good for the common people? Are people benefitting or losing more in this social media revolution? What are the advantages and disadvantages of using such social platforms? Well, we shall discuss this in detail below as to what are the pros and cons of social media usage. Read on
Pros
The major benefits of these social media sites lie in the vast reach it has around the world. It is a mode of communication and connection that is formed between people sitting in any corner of the world. You can use social sites to get in touch with them anytime you want.
Apart from that, these days the social platforms are used for marketing and advertising purposes which target the concerned audiences and reach out to them without having to invest much in the promotions of products and services.
These sites are easy to handle and thus needs no help from anyone to be handled. The social sites have saved people a lot of time and money in such promotional events which otherwise needed a lot of it to be invested. These are some of the advantages of social media that must be taken into consideration.
Cons
Though there are not many disadvantages of using social media, there are some which you need to know. Like there are many fraud people who fake their identities to con you personally and professionally in these social sites. Apart from that, the need for an active internet connection all the time to get social media services is also an issue at times when you don't have a connection.
Also, the idea of over-indulgence and exposure in these social sites also call for a “no personal space” issue for many of us. There are some of the advantages of using social sites that people must have knowledge about!
The closure
If we go by the online facts collection site, the number of active users on social media sites have already crossed a billion and more. There are various usages of social media in terms of knowledge, entertainment, skills, tech and many more and thus we cannot say that social media is useless.
Unlike before, when these social sites are only used for chatting and communication, today these platforms are used for various purposes which is one good sign. But we can also not ignore the dark side of these social sites wherein cases of fraud, bullying, using identities, etc. have been reported. Thus, it can be concluded that there is both the good and bad side of social media usage which needs to be taken care of by the ones who use it for any purpose.
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