Social media marketing can play an important part in many brands’ consumer purchase funnels. How can brands utilize data to direct and optimize their social media marketing efforts?
Social media marketing SaaS provider SocialFlow has released a definitive new report analyzing trends from a database of more that 1.6 million organic social posts from leading publishers, marketers, and agencies.
One of the key findings of the report has revealed that implementing a data-driven approach to social media marketing delivers 91 percent greater reach, and 25 percent greater engagement, than a schedule based approach.
The report represents one of the largest and most revealing social media studies in recent years, particularly from a brand marketing perspective. The 1.6 million posts, published through Facebook, Twitter, and Google+ between April and July of this year, reached more than 361 million unique users and generated nearly 1.5 billion social actions.
Key Findings
1. Data-Driven Posts Deliver 91% Greater Reach, 25% Greater Engagement Than Scheduled Posts
Implementing a data-driven approach to social has a hugely positive effect on return and engagement, according to the report. Being data-driven means utilizing predictive algorithms to accurately predict the optimum time and frequency to post content.
Often, as Guy Kawasaki has voiced, it can be beneficial to strategically post the same content on social media three or four times a day (why settle for 600 interactions, when you can have 2,400?).
Overall, it has two benefits for a brand’s social strategy. Brands are able to:
- Scale their efforts without negatively impacting available resources.
- Use the increased content to better inform teams of audience behavior and engagement levels, which allows them to optimize future campaigns.
2. 1% of Organic Social Posts Creates 99% of the Engagement
The data indicates a classic ‘long tail’ distribution for engagement levels. SocialFlow’s report indicates that the ‘head’, or leading 1 percent of posts, is dominated by Media and Entertainment companies.
Realistically it’s difficult or impossible for brand marketers to expect similar levels of engagement for their content as breaking news and entertainment stories, so a sound approach to social for brands should be based around building consistent, small wins, within the long tail.
3. Real-Time Posts Most Benefit Media and Entertainment Companies
The study also revealed that for Media and Entertainment companies (the main producers of real-time posts), while only 10 percent of real-time posts outperformed data-driven posts, that 10 percent of high performing posts generated 90 percent of all total engagement.
Real-time posts from technology, retail, and other verticals didn’t experience any such benefit to real-time posts. Instead, brand marketers experience a 55 percent greater level of engagement from data-driven posts.
Technology and retail companies accordingly have adopted data-driven strategies more so than other verticals, publishing data-driven posts 91.6 percent of the time.
Top 3 Takeaways
SocialFlow summarized three takeaways for brand marketers looking to improve social performance based on the insights in the study:
- Scheduling social posts is an ineffective use of your content.
- Unless you’re a media or entertainment company, real-time posting will likely be less effective than data-driven optimization.
- Organic social publishing should be as data-driven as the rest of your marketing.