The State of Social Media 2019: Stat from the Hat edition

EPISODE 48

THE STATE OF SOCIAL MEDIA 2019: STAT FROM THE HAT EDITION

With the recent release of Buffer's The State of Social 2019 survey findings, the team decided to put a spin on reading the results and delved into a game of Stat from the Hat to bring you further insights.

These are a selection of the stats we talked about on this episode, but you can read the rest over on the Buffer website and of course, watch the video or listen to the episode for the full discussion.

1. Which of the following channels does your business use currently?
2. If you use messaging apps for marketing, which have you used?
3. How often does your business publish video content?
4. What factors are holding you back from creating more video content currently?
5. How effective has paid social media advertising been for your business?

We also run through our recommendations for social media marketing in 2019.

Which of the following channels does your business use currently?

Last year, Facebook was the leading platform with 96% of survey participants using the channel, but it’s dropped down a little to 93.7%.

It’s possible that the algorithm changes have affected this very slight decrease, but even Twitter has seen a slight decrease from 89% in 2018 to 84.4%.

Meanwhile, Instagram is going from strength to strength with 63% of survey participants using it in 2017 to 70% in 2018.

If you use messaging apps for marketing, which have you used?

It seems that more marketers are going to be incorporating messaging apps to engage with their audience, with Facebook Messenger looking to dominate 2019.

Facebook Messenger is a great way to improve customer service by giving your customers a direct line to you. It’s easy to install the Facebook Messenger plugin on your website by following the instructions here.

How often does your business publish video content?

Last year, we noted that 85% of marketers wanted to increase their output of video content in 2018, but it’s interesting to see that this didn’t really seem to happen.

With a majority of survey respondents stating that they publish video content monthly, it’s still not enough.

Our recommendation then and now has been that video content should be published daily.

What factors are holding you back from creating more video content currently?

The reason why a lot of marketers don’t create enough video content is due to lack of time and no budget. However, a stories platform on any social platform that uses the feature is a great way to create and publish video content quickly and with no cost.

23.7% of survey respondents noted that they struggle to create content because they’re not sure what to create which is a common problem.

In summary: don't be fancy and start now.

How effective has paid social media advertising been for your business?

This was an interesting question because the overwhelming answer was ambiguous - how exactly are we to know what a somewhat effective paid social media advertising campaign is, and how is that measured?

What was incredibly questionable, was how the next answer was so overwhelming: 25.2% stated that they were uncertain if paid social media advertising had been effective for their business.

Money is a great way to measure the success of a paid campaign, so if you find yourself noting that a campaign is “somewhat effective” or your “uncertain”, it’s time to understand the metrics you’re measuring and define how YOU define the success of a campaign. In other words, you need to understand how your money is working for you otherwise it’s a waste of budget.

Our recommendations for social media marketing in 2019

• Create and document your social media strategy and make sure to review it regularly to make the appropriate changes and ensure success 
• Understand how you measure the success of a campaign to make more effective budget decisions for future campaign
• Create more video content and create it now
• If you haven’t done so already, implement Facebook Messenger on your site to keep in touch with customers and create a process on how you will effectively communicate and manage this channel

Thanks for joining us for this edition of Stat from the Hat, and thanks to Buffer for creating yet another awesome State of Social report.

Here’s to an awesome 2019!