Think you have a handle on how social works? Sure, none of us (I hope) walk around with the all the current social media statistics at our finger-tips. But a general grasp? The importance of video, the overwhelming importance of mobile, roughly which demographics tend — very broadly speaking — to use which channels: and even why and how.
But there’s always room for surprise. Dreamgrow aggregates actionable information about social media and content marketing, and is a fruitful source of useful and often counter-intuitive titbits. They ingest data from a wide range of sources (see here), so credit to them for the heavy lifting. Here are a few items that made us look twice, and why.
1. The overwhelming majority of social platform users who discuss brands don’t bother to follow those brands
Just because the social wires are buzzing with positive or negative chatter about your brand, your reputation, or your products, it doesn’t mean that anyone in the conversation is actively tracking you, your marketing, or your messages. This really underlines the importance of reaching social audiences via strategies which fall outside traditional brand messaging.
2. On Twitter, don’t sweat the hashtags
I follow accounts on Twitter (and Instagram) which make a fine science of hashtags. Every update comes illustrated with a blizzard of them. But apparently, nobody cares. It’s not just that Twitter hashtags don’t increase engagement (per a recent study): Tweets without hashtags actually do better. If you must know, three — and only three — hashtags help posts on Instagram.
3. Twitter is all about links
Whether or not this is true of other social platforms, Twitter engagement comes about almost exclusively (over 90%) through clicks on links. So when you’re ready to schedule that series of Tweets with engaging top-level content, or a smart hot take on something relevant to the brand, just put a link in there. Liking and re-tweeting, let alone replying and following, just don’t happen that much.
Sure, follow your intuitions. Go ahead. But look at the data too.
