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Greetings, !

The longer you use social media the more likely you will increase sales and exposure for your business.

That’s just one of many findings in the 2024 Social Media Marketing Industry Report published by Michael Stelzner, founder of Social Media Examiner.

According to the report, nearly half of marketers who have used social media for two or more years said it helped them improve sales. And, by the way, Facebook and Instagram were the top dogs when it came to improving sales.

TikTok leads in exposure

More than 77 percent of marketers who’ve been using social media marketing for a year or more said it generates exposure for their businesses and clients. Although using almost any platform over time will help exposure, TikTok led the pack in terms of improving exposure.

Rather than surprising, these survey results confirm what many of us already know, at least intuitively – if you stick with something long enough, experiment, and study the results, you’ll have success.

The report, written with information gleaned from 1,915 marketers, has a ton of other information about how they use social media and what they expect to do differently in the coming year.

Same questions

I thought it was interesting that even though 57 percent of the respondents have more than five years of marketing experience, marketers said they have the same questions many of us have about social media.

They still want to know the best ways to generate leads (28 percent); the best ways to improve sales (23 percent); and the best ways to increase exposure (18 percent).

If you can answer those questions, there are a whole bunch of people who want to know you.

Jargon: Let’s talk engagement

In preparing to write about jargon, I sometimes go to the dictionary to remind myself of a word’s original or standard meanings.

Here’s some of what I found when I looked up “engage” on Merriam-Webster's online version:

How do these definitions fit when your friendly, neighborhood marketer talks to you about engagement?

The essence of marketing

The first definition is, I think, the essence of marketing – to attract attention and hold it. Attracting attention, of course, is just step one. Next, you need to get some kind of response by giving this person something to do.

In online marketing, that usually takes the form of a thumbs-up “like” or a similar emoji. It could also be shared with a friend. Likes and shares are OK, but they’re at the low end of the engagement spectrum.

Comments are better because they give you a chance to respond and keep the engagement going. The same applies to online reviews, yet another form of engagement.

Types of engagement

Other examples of engagement are signing up for an email; filling out a survey; exchanging an email address for a download or an ebook; and signing up for a webinar or a course.

Finally, the highest form of engagement is a purchase, which is often the result of a series of smaller engagements

But purchases should not be the final engagement. Instead, they give you the chance to engage even further with customers about who they are and their needs. You can feed that information into your “engagement” engine to attract the same type of customer.

Don’t think of engagement as just a way to get likes, shares and page views. Think of it as a process that creates meaningful conversations with your customers.

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Until next time

The next newsletter arrives June 4. Between now and then, of course, folks in the U.S. will celebrate Memorial Day. Enjoy the weekend picnics, pool openings, and warm-weather excursions, but also take a few minutes to remember the U.S. soldiers, sailors and aviators who have died protecting our freedom and the freedoms of others around the world.

Until next time, be grateful. Be generous. Be patient. Love.

Thanks for spending some of your time with me, . I appreciate you.

Mark

P.S. - This newsletter was 100 percent created by me, a human.

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