The success of social media lies in the right mixture of fruitful strategies. The wrong combination will simply decrease the traffic from targeted customers instead of attract them. If you devise your social media marketing strategies such as social media optimization based on current trends, it is possible to increase profits and use social networking sites effectively for marketing. Here are the recent trends highlighted in an article published by Forbes using the 2013 SOCIAL MEDIA Industry Report.

Low Usage of SOCIAL BOOKMARK CREATING Sites

According to the research reports, the utilization of social bookmark creating sites has decreased to ten percent from 26 percent in 2011. This considerable drop of usage clearly indicates nov bookmarking sites. Even though the sites including Twitter, StumbleUpon, Reddit and Pinterest remain popular among marketers, most sites (e.g. DIGG, Friendfeed) are almost dying. Therefore, it isn’t a good practice to trust a bookmarking site blindly for marketing purposes in today’s scenario. Instead, check for the websites that are most popular and perform the bookmarking very cautiously.

Decline of Daily Deal Sites

Daily deal features or simply daily offerings of deals are regarded as a powerful way to attract numerous targeted customers at a time. Premium Vacation Packages says that around 80 percent of marketers aren’t interested in using the most popular daily deal sites including Groupon or Living Social for their campaigns soon.

Now people concentrate more on the significant amount of returns that they receive from their purchases over time. Hence, you should use social networking sites for long term marketing goals instead of daily goals.

Top Sites for SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING Campaigns

Marketers who use social media for marketing will obviously perform social media campaigns (using social networking sites for promotion) for their services or products to attract targeted customers. The campaigns will undoubtedly be successful only if the relevant site is popular among the customers.

The study report indicates that marketers who spend more than 40 hours a week for social media marketing perform their campaigns more intensely through Google+, You Tube, Pinterest and Instagram compared to those who spend six hours or less a week on social media. Also, around 92 percent of marketers who’ve five or more years of experience prefer LinkedIn than 70 percent of marketers having less than five years of experience. Forum marketing has also decreased to 16 percent this season from 24 percent in 2011.

Around 67 percent of marketers are preparing to increase campaigns through Twitter though it is really a slight decrease from 69 percent this past year. Young marketers, a lot more than older ones prefer photo sharing sites including Instagram for launching campaigns. 62% chose blogging because so many suitable platform to master, that is the highest one accompanied by Google + (61%) and Facebook (59%).

Trends of B2C and B2B Marketers

Business to Consumer (B2C) Marketers use Facebook at an increased rate of 67% than other platforms. In the case of Business to Business (B2B) marketers, both Facebook and LinkedIn have equal most 29% each. Given below is the pie chart showing usage statistics for each platform pertaining to B2C and B2B marketers.

B2B marketers work with a more diverse array of platforms compared to B2C marketers. Both of them do not completely utilize blogging and also have minimal You Tube usage.

If you are a B2B or B2C marketer, try to encourage blogs as they are regarded as the most used social media marketing platform. YouTube being the next largest search engine, you can enjoy the benefits it includes by posting low-cost videos. Orabrush (B2C Company) and Blentec (B2B Company) have grown to be strong brands by making use of low cost YouTube videos.

As B2B marketers increasingly use LinkedIn, they have a chance to utilize SlideShare (owned by LinkedIn). This social media entity can be used for generating leads for B2B organizations.

Fewer Check-ins Online

As per the research reports, there is a reduction in using geo-location services including Foursquare from 17% in 2011 to 11% this year. These services allow check-in to your locations automatically online. The decline in most of these services indicates that people are now concerned more about privacy and safety. Marketers can tackle this situation by introducing contests and rewards. This will encourage people to check-in more.

If you are still following the old strategy for social media, then it is the time to develop new strategies predicated on all these current trends. It is better to entrust this tedious task to a reputable social media marketing company that provides reliable social media marketing services instead of try implementing the strategies on your own.