As Americans turn their attention to the web for both professional and social purposes, marketers will follow suit, as evidenced in Global Web Index’s “A Global Analysis of How Consumers Spend Their Media Time” report. The data found global digital marketing, including social media and mobile internet usage, accounts for 57 percent of daily media time. Overall, consumers spend 5.6 hours per day engaging with digital content. People dedicate 10.7 hours a day consuming all forms of media.
While the U.S. market is slightly behind emerging markets like Argentina and Thailand in digital consumption, American brands still see the future of advertising online. In fact, Ascend2 found that social media marketing remains a top priority for many organizations, as both B2Bs and B2Cs use web content to drive website traffic. A significant percentage of businesses also use social media content to improve search engine rankings, despite not fully understanding how social influences SEO. (Check out Brafton’s coverage of social search from SES NY here.)
The source wanted to glean insights from both B2Bs and B2Cs about the most successful social media marketing strategies, as well as the challenges they face in achieving their objectives. According to the report, creating custom content for social networks generates the highest return on investment, with 40 percent of B2Bs and 36 percent of B2Cs finding success through published media. Posting white paper content also accomplishes certain goals – 32 percent of B2Bs and 8 percent of B2Cs generate ROI from white papers. As for video marketing via social hubs, 29 percent of both B2Bs and B2Cs drive conversions from visual content.
These ROI-driving tactics also come with pressing challenges. Thirty-two percent of B2Bs and 29 percent of B2Cs cite video content creation as the most challenges task, and 32 percent of business-facing brands and 20 percent of consumer-facing companies say research content is hardest. Blogging remains a challenge, too.
Marketers struggling to produce enough quality blog, research and video content for their social hubs can find solace in content marketing agencies. Generating engaging media doesn’t have to be a challenge when the resources are available.
