REPOST: Marketers Are Putting Their Money and Confidence in Social Media

This article from Mashable shows in graphic details the ever growing number businesses realizing the potential of the social media to help propagate their brands.

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Business to business (B2B) marketers are utilizing content marketing strategies more and more in the digital age to promote their brands. They're becoming confident in creating content supported by the brand, such as magazines, books, articles, how-to guides and more.

Social media sites facilitate the spread of this content by allowing customers to share information with other potential customers.

This infographic from LinkedIn shows that 93% of surveyed marketers are using content marketing to some degree, and 58% plan to increase their content marketing budgets over the next year.

Furthermore, 87% of content marketers use social media platforms as part of their marketing tactics. Of those who use them as a strategy, 91% preferred LinkedIn to popular social networking sites such as Twitter or Facebook, which 85% and 81% of those surveyed used respectively.

The least used social platform was a three-way tie between Foursquare, Tumblr and Vine, at 14% each.

Mobile devices ranked low on the list of tactics used by marketers. Only 38% of those surveyed used mobile content, with 34% using e-books and 28% using mobile apps. Printed media was also in decline — only 35% of marketers used print magazines and 30% utilized printed books.

For more articles on social media marketing, head on to this John Bohan blog site.

Maximizing the use of digital marketing

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Currently, the benefits that digital marketing strategies bring to a company have become so numerous that it is almost impossible to deny the need for them. However, there are still many companies that are hesitant to build an online presence and include social media in their marketing campaigns.

There is a real risk for these companies to get left behind as most experts agree that technology is now central to marketing efforts. If a company has not yet bothered to make some changes in the way it promotes its brand, then its competitors may already have an undeniable advantage over it. Still, it may not be too late for companies to change its marketing strategy and help its employees improve on their skills.

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It is also recommended for companies to seek help from technology experts for their campaigns. It is better to bring in people who specialize in handling the new technology aspect of campaigns than to let employees who are used to old practices flounder with the use of new technology in marketing.

Companies are also advised to redefine how they evaluate their marketing campaigns in order to see the value of digital efforts. In digital marketing, companies cannot expect every interaction with the target market to instantly be converted to sales.

Ultimately, companies have to learn how to make use of all the data that users make available on the Internet to make the brand or service more relevant to their customers. Through digital efforts that add value to the product, companies can touch base with their customers and encourage more participation in brand building.

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John Bohan is the founder and general manager of SocialTyze, a social marketing company. For more news on digital marketing, visit this Twitter page.