Time Commitment of Successful Social Media Marketers

 

How much time do you spend on social media daily? Weekly?

Is there a correlation between time spent and results?

According to new data, the average user logs 1.72 hours per day on social platforms, which represents about 28 percent of all online activity.

GlobalWebIndex polled 170,000 internet users about their internet habits, and found that average usage times for social media sites rose from 1.66 hours per day in 2013 to 1.72 hours per day last year.

Micro-blogging, which includes Twitter, is also up slightly to 0.81 hours per day, and now accounts for about 13 percent of total time spent online.

WEEKLY TIME COMMITMENT FOR SOCIAL MEDIA

A significant 64% of marketers according to Social Media Marketing 2015 Industry Report are using social media for:

• 33% commit 1-5 hrs. per week.
• 25% 6-10 hrs. per week.
• 41% for 11 or more hours weekly.
• Nearly 19% of marketers spend more than 20 hours each week on social media.

Remember the day we started using email and the internet for business? We still had the same hours in the day to incorporate this new technology into the work day. Is social media any different?

In this fast paced tech world, can we afford the luxury of falling behind?

EXPERIENCE FACTOR

There’s a direct relationship between how long marketers have been using social media and their weekly time commitment.

For people just beginning with social media (less than 12 months of experience), 49% spend 5 or fewer
hours per week.
However, of folks who have been doing this for 2 years or longer, at least 68% spend 6 hours or more per week on social media activities.

TIME COMMITMENT BY BUSINESS SIZE

This chart shows how different-sized businesses invest their time with social media activities.

New research from LinkedIn found that the majority of small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are turning to social media for growth.

Roughly 81% of SMBs are using social media, according to a LinkedIn study, and of those that use social, 94% do so for marketing purposes.

Social media is even more important to “hyper growth” companies, or those that self-reported “significant” year over year revenue growth. Of the hyper growth companies surveyed (about 16% of the entire group), 91% said social media helped “increase awareness” of their brand, while 82% said it helped them generate “new leads.” Nearly three quarters of the hyper growth companies increased their social media budgets last year.

We know that for SMBs the greatest challenge is attracting and retaining customers.

AGE FACTOR

There’s a direct relationship between a marketer’s age and the time spent marketing with social media. The younger the marketer, the more time he or she spends on social media.

Notice the green and blue segments taking up a significant portion of the bar in the higher weekly hours below. Of those spending more than 40 hours per week doing social media marketing, 54% are younger than 40.

OPPORTUNITIES

Visuals

Visual content is the most powerful tool your brand can use to engage your fans on social media. It allows you to express ideas quickly and effectively, which is a valuable tactic to set your brand apart from the vast amount of written content published online every day.

So which kinds of visual content works best on social media?

The best answer: a variety. Finding clever and creative ways to mix up your visual content will boost your fan interaction and help your build your brand’s identity on social.

Your Fans and followers are 44% more likely to engage with content on social media that contains pictures, so be sure you focus a chunk of your effort creating visual content like designs and photographs for these posts.

The use of visuals is a key part of most marketers’ plans in 2015, with 72% planning on increasing
their use of visual images.

VIDEO

Are you thinking about adding videos to your social media mix? Do you want to boost your awareness and increase engagement?

Social media networks provide a lot of video options.

From Google+ Hangouts to Twitter’s Vine and Facebook’s launch of Instagram Video, video is fast becoming an essential part of any business’s online marketing strategy.

Over the last few years, online video has proven to be the most engaging and compelling form of content for social media users who watch and share thousands of them every single minute. Every major social network, from Facebook to Pinterest, has recently developed their own native video services and/or promoted video ads.

Video is a large area of focus for marketers. Nearly 3 in 4 plan on increasing their use of videos.

SLIDESHARE

According to Jay Baer of Convince and Convert, the reason why more experienced social media marketers gravitate toward Slideshare is that they eventually recognize that social media is about actions, not eyeballs. The “reach” offered by the larger consumer-oriented platforms is seductive, but if only a tiny percentage of your fans are seeing your posts in those venues, is the reach really reliable?

Slideshare’s audience is bigger than you might think, is terrific for lead generation, and is populated by people actively seeking information and resources (not dissimilar from a search engine, in that regard).

• Owned by LinkedIn
• 60 million Slideshare users
• 89% use Slideshare mobile
• 159 million page views monthly
• 20% come directly from Google
• 45% of presentations have between 10-30 slides

And that audience is hungry for information. It’s not uncommon to generate significant views and downloads for Slideshare presentations.

Source: Social Media Examiner | Convince and Convert

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Tagged as: Blair Ball, Blair Evan Ball, Prepare1, Slideshare, Social Media, Social Media Coach, Social Media Coach Memphis, Social Media Marketing, Social Media Visuals, Time, Time Commitment