Guide to Social Media Marketing

Recent trends in social media usage have evolved more than ever and it is evident that social media will be a driving force for people. So, whether it’s for Business-to-Business (B2B) or Business-to-Customer (B2C) purposes, devising an effective social media marketing plan for 2022 is the key to success.

Prevailing business tipsters Oberlo and Hootsuite have gathered a range of important social media statistics to aid in predicting how businesses should be managing social media channels going into 2022.

For one, while there are 3.5 billion active daily users on social media, Facebook dominates with around 2.6 billion of those users, making it the market leader and one of your first targets for a widespread customer demographic.

At Milestone, we want to help you understand the ins and outs of devising and managing social media channels for an effective reach campaign in 2022. We’ll not only be sharing core statistics that will drive the direction of your campaign, but we’ll go through a range of relevant platforms and how to address them for your needs all before touching on the Frequently-Asked-Questions (FAQ) that aren’t normally answered.

So, with this definitive guide to social media marketing in 2022 for businesses, we’ll be telling you how to tailor your social media marketing to adapt to 2022 trends while giving the intricacies about converting them into social media success stories.

Have a look at what this guide entails:

1. What Does Social Media Marketing for 2022 Mean?
2. Key Social Media Stats that Can Drive Your 2022 Social Media Campaign
3. Social Media Marketing Strategy You Need to Follow
4. Scheduling the Workflow for Social Media Success
5. The Top Tips for Social Media Success
6. Social Media Platforms for Laser Sharp Targeting
7. How You Can Best Track and Report Social Media Success
8. Fitting an Omnichannel Solution for Social Media Management
9. Key Insights from Social Media Strategy of Thriving Brands
10. Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

Before we get started, there’s one thing you simply can’t neglect in your journey to creating effective social media synergy between you and your clientele: your website.

When it comes to driving a campaign, it’s not just your social platforms that need attention: your website needs to be tailored to link to your current campaign with up-to-date branding and a key drive into the campaign goals.

When you’re sure on your site, it’s time to branch out into the realm of social media marketing to reach your audiences and generate leads for conversions.

What does social media marketing for 2022 mean?

When a company refers to social media marketing (also seen as SMM), it doesn’t always mean you have to spend a lot with a major influencer.

In fact, social media marketing is much more of a tailored approach to access targeted audiences that are more likely to see adverts through social platforms than through regular channels such as banners, TV advertisements, posters, etc.

With said 4.48 billion daily active users across the globe, managing social media platforms is a potentially high-reach form of marketing to a modern world; 2022 is no exception.

According to the Hootsuite Resource Center, public feeds on social platforms are a hub for 52% of the world’s consumer brand discovery. Meaning, your brand is far more likely to be noticed by new consumers through online mediums.

Engaging in a social media marketing campaign uses various social media channels to reach a marketing goal like any other. These social media channels provide the space to share images, thoughts, products, communication, videos, blogs, news, and more.

Here’s a list of some of the achievable functions from social media success:

• Increased
  • Brand awareness
  • Website traffic
  • Ease of distribution
  • Content distribution
  • Speed of access
  • Interactivity for B2B and B2C deals
  • Knowledge of competitor performance
  • Community engagement
  • Valuable feedback
  • Customer retention and loyalty rates
  • Viable consumer demand trend knowledge
  • Sales and lead generation
  • Key performance indicators (KPIs)

Key Social Media Stats that Can Drive Your 2022 Social Media Campaign

As mentioned, online technology sourcing giants such as Oberlo, Hootsuite, and social bakers have been at work in recent months gathering relevant statistics regarding social media activity around the world and how they can benefit 2022 campaign release.

Take a look at the most important statistics to help you drive your 2022 social media marketing:

• The most active time of day for social media users worldwide is at 11 am.
• TikTok has risen to achieve over 2 billion app downloads as of November 2020, succeeding social leaders such as Facebook.
• 73% of businesses experience increased success in reaching campaign goals when Instagram Stories are incorporated.
• 64% of polled users in an Instagram study noted looking to the online social media market’s metaphorical streets to source their newest purchase rather than traditional avenues of catalogs or TV advertisements.
• 55% more people retain online adverts with captivating and snackable visuals from a video than without.
• Over 800 million consumers in over 70 countries use Facebook Marketplace.
• The average American spends around 2 hours each day scrolling through social media platforms. At a global rate, each individual spends an average of 3 hours on social media.
• 71% of consumers who have had a positive experience with a brand through their social media channels are more likely to buy and recommend the brand to others.
• 85% of companies who integrate social data into overall business operations have heightened confidence in understanding social media success Return-on-Investment (ROI).
• 68% of all adults in the US reportedly use Facebook everyday as of the third quarter of 2020, making it the market leader of social media platforms.
• 90.4% of Millennials use social media, 75% of Generation-X use social media, and 48.2% of Baby Boomers use social media.
• 49% of consumers depend on influencer ratings and recommendations when looking to buy new products either online or offline.
• Over the past two years, Instagram Stories’ user-base increased from 150 million to 500 million, making it a pivotal access point for new communication streams.
• 91% of social media users access their accounts through mobile devices, demonstrating the key notion of optimizing posts and content for cells.
• Using influencers within a marketing ploy to extend the accreditation of a service product is a growing trend year-on-year (YoY).
• Consumer spending through Facebook Marketplace has recently increased by 57% due to current events and competitor e-commerce sites.

Social Media Marketing Strategies You Need to Follow

Here at Milestone, we help businesses thrive through multi-channel media management while offering tailored Content Management Systems (CMSs) to help order, understand, and achieve. And, in our experiences, we understand that each business needs an altered approach to target their specific audiences through goals and objectives.

So, let’s take the hotel business as an example. If you own or run a hotel and are looking to increase conversions by mastering your 2022 social media marketing campaign, you should first identify your core objectives and plan for the seasons ahead, much like any other marketing campaign.

As we’ve already mentioned, social media is a key investment technique for advertising and reaching new audiences to fill your rooms and the hotel bar. Yet, understanding which channels of communications will help you attain a specific objective will speed the process and find more leads likely to convert.

Your first food for thought: goal. Are you wanting to reach out to potential customers, partnerships, stakeholders, investors, or simply aim to generate wider brand awareness?

Knowing whether you’re after B2B or B2C social media success will help guide your decision making for your choice of platform and the way you use the top three predicted trends for managing social media throughout 2022. For example: you may want to use emerging platforms such as TikTok to generate brand awareness for your hotel or you may want to increase and humanize your presence on LinkedIn when trying to reach other industry professionals.

Scheduling the Workflow for Social Media Success

Given the heightened activity of all social media channels in the dues of 2020 events, the demand for new content at a constant rate has also increased. Therefore, managing a content workflow through omnichannel distribution is more important than ever.

We’ll refer back to the meaning and methods behind omnichannel distribution later in this article, but, at this moment, it’s key to consider how using a systemic and pre-planned approach to social media will help your campaign thrive.

The first port of action would be to acknowledge your target audience and accumulate a social media content queue. Then, when you know what message you’ll be saying and when you can use queueing software such as Tweet Deck for Twitter to release your content at a specific time and date without needing to be on-hand to press the big red release button.

Other social media management software includes Hubspot, Sprout Social, and Hootsuite. They help you manage social media activities and help understand engagement, analyze content, and measure the ROI.

The Top Tips for Social Media Success in 2022

Social media is ever-changing, and tips to succeed will evolve alongside. However, for the 2022 online audience, our team at Milestone has isolated Six major targets for a prosperous social media campaign. These targets have not been a requirement in past years, but the popularity and trend of these actions have led them to become the strongest method to lead convergence.

1. Humanize your social media success

As more and more people find themselves glued to their screens with full autonomy of skipping adverts, it is important to grasp your audiences in a way that speaks to them.

For example, Instagram Stories: if we continue with the case of a hotelier, you would be able to upload snippets of behind-the-scenes ongoings, much like introducing the team and following a staff member around for the day, asking FAQs along the way. Inconspicuous advertising techniques such as introducing viewers to the tribe or engaging with popular trends or challenges will become increasingly popular in 2022.

This is because it allows viewers to get to know the staff, feel more comfortable and become more likely to book a room in a place that ambiances familiarity and friendliness. To achieve this, you’ll need to speak with your audience, expose an unseen part to your brand, and involve your viewers in your overall narrative with videos or pictures.

Instagram Stories have already proven to be a successful platform for businesses when managing social media content in this regard; however, it’s key to stay on-trend. For example, TikTok has grown to become the most downloaded app on the app store (ever), making it a viable location to promote your brand, services, and products.

2. Shift consumption methods to your social media platforms

It’s important to change the natural assumption of social media marketing from only being a place for increasing brand reach and recognition. In current times, it has become a space to engage audiences and create short channels of consumption.

The effects of shifting consumption to social media platforms reduce the B2C journey for each customer. An effect commonly utilized by charities such as UNICEF aims to allow potential spenders to spend without needing to click here and there or even losing their custom altogether. Either use the marketplace on the social media platform or have a link taking the viewer directly to a full cart on your site.

Knowing the increase of e-commerce through social media platforms from recent statistics atop understanding that videos are the most captivating form of content, you need to enable your social media marketing team to use current trends. For example: using Facebook Stories, Instagram Stories, Pinterest, Google News, and Yelp to upload video content that directly navigates viewers to a marketplace or your website’s checkout.

Humanize your content with videos through platforms like Instagram Stories and then enable a short consumer journey.

You’ll want to ensure customers can view your adverts and go directly to booking with a hotel business. Customers will feel happier knowing they’re ahead of the crowd when looking for the perfect booking dates.

Sticking to the analogy of the hotelier, you’ll need to exhibit at times where your target audience is active and ensure your social media success videos are ready and rearing to go for the holiday seasons such as: Spring Break, Thanksgiving, or New Year celebrations. Yet, with a Marketplace 5% commission fee, it’s important to strategically place your adverts for best-selling services, new services, or services relating to the seasonal trend.

3. Invite your digitally savvy audience to communicate

As we know, the average American spends 2+ hours each day dedicated to tactical enticers, like the infinite scroll, engaging with your audiences in their native environment is a key part to securing their loyalty.

Entering 2022, popular platforms such as TikTok, YouTube, and Facebook share a majority audience of users between the ages of 18 and 24. Atop this, platforms constantly adjust their algorithms to ensure users are only exposed to content they’ll engage with to lengthen the average screen time. The biggest contenders for this include Instagram, Google News, TikTok, and Medium.

But, it’s on businesses and content creators to generate such content that increases social interaction and positive experiences likely to create the goal ROI.

There are many ways to invite your audiences into the behind-the-scenes operations for a closer and more personal connection to your brand. Here are some examples most commonly used with Instagram Stories.

• Use an “Ask Me Anything”
• Ask “Yes/No” polls
• Include “Test Your Knowledge” games
• Invite viewers to an interview
• Take viewers on a live tour
• Involve “Share Your Opinion” blocks
• Use a “Rate Meter”
• Get on board with trends that forward the challenge onto the viewer

This type of content is used to generate brand loyalty likely to keep customer interaction and consumer purchasing on both the B2B and B2C level. Therefore, managing social media marketing in 2022 using this method will be a very hands-on profile requiring full-time staffing dedication and a content calendar or queue.

For example: For your hotel, you could generate a series of Instagram Stories where you quiz viewers about their knowledge of hotel secrets before giving hints to upgrade a room. At the end of the Instagram Story, you can offer a small consumer journey by linking directly to the best room deals you have on your website or through Instagram Marketplace.

4. Be flexible with your brand

You might have come across various viral brand moments in the past, right from Oscar Selfie to The 10 Year Challenge. All of them inspired a new marketing strategy that made brands huge broadcasters and helped increase their visibility on social media channels.

It proves that planning is important for brands but so is staying flexible to remain effective. If you are not in the position to launch a campaign, you can take advantage of the viral moments and create content out of it.

The best example is Chipotle’s Lid Flip Challenge that comes from the food industry, where the brand asked customers to share videos of themselves flipping a burrito bowl. Chipotle partnered with the popular content creator on TikTok named David Dobrik that helped them drive a huge amount of Chipotle app downloads and delivery orders.

You can also incorporate a similar social media marketing strategy and take advantage of viral moments.

97% of people share their travel pictures on social media. If you are a hotelier, you can offer discounted deals for people who share their images on their social media accounts. You can run a travel hashtag and encourage your audience to share their pictures that will help you increase your traffic and engagement.

5. Leverage the power of short-Form videos

Be it Instagram reels, YouTube shorts, or Triller, a universal 30-60 second video is not only an innovative way to share your brand message and content, but also a great way to engage your audience.

You would be surprised to know that people share short-form videos twice the rate of other content formats. However, the trend has changed a bit regarding videos as people want to be addressed rather than simply talked to. This way, it helps businesses like you to open a dialogue with the audience and build trust.

There are numerous ways you can incorporate short-form videos into your social media marketing strategy and gain a burst of traffic. Some of them include:

• Brand challenges
• User-generated content
• Influencer ads
• Product teasers
• Behind the brand videos
• Explainer videos

Considering the options mentioned above, you need to balance what’s in trend and what’s relevant to your business.

6. Develop a social audio strategy

After the launch of apps like Clubhouse, it has become easier for mid to large size companies to establish their thought leadership in the market. It enables businesses to speak to a large set of audience.

Whether it is spaces on Twitter or apps like Clubhouse; you need to work on social audio and include it in your marketing strategy. Begin with sorting ideas that could bring value to your audience and think of social media platforms that bring the best return. This return could be in terms of traffic, engagement, and potential buyers turning into actual customers.

There is a huge margin to bring in influencers by partnering with the popular ones and inviting them to your talk or even host a talk for your business. Also, you can hire a pro-moderator who will take care of trolls and negative comments.

Social Media Platforms for Laser Sharp Targeting

When looking at the Milestone diagram of social media platforms, there are 10 different types of platforms you could make use of. While it’s not necessary to make use of every single platform or even every platform type, as the saying goes: “don’t put all your eggs in one basket.”

Take a look at the differences between each platform trope and consider how they could benefit your brand identity and help reach your target audience, whether on a B2B or B2C capacity. We’ll also include examples of each platform type for you.

1. Social groups

These are the platforms that will have the most variety in the published content. In the case of hotel marketing, all of these can be very useful in the B2B sphere as they can be seen as more professional (especially in the case of LinkedIn). You can share press releases and other news at length with audiences.

• Reddit
• LinkedIn
• Slack
• Tumblr

• Image boards

Image boards are what they say on the tin. However, it’s important to know the difference between them. For example: with Flickr, 500px, and Pinterest, you’ll need accounts to upload images into relevant categories and tags sought-after by your target audience. On the other hand, Google Images is an automated system acquiring your images from your website and social media accounts.

• Google Images
• Pinterest
• Flickr
• 500px
• Social General
• Social media sites

These are the most common social media sites that are active contenders for the tailored approach to 2022 social media marketing. Audiences are daily users, and they provide a place for you to express your brand in the most humanized way. However, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter will be the best platforms for reaching unknown audiences, while Snapchat and WhatsApp are spaces to connect with pre-established followers, subscribers, audiences, and partners.

• Facebook
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Snapchat
• WhatsApp

• Video platforms

Again, these social media boards are designed to optimize and promote video content and their titles. While a necessity for the description and the pinned comment, the written content is not what viewers are searching for. When younger audiences demand ‘how-to’, informational content, or visual tours, these platforms should be in practice.

• YouTube
• Vimeo
• TikTok

• Ratings and review sites

These social sites provide your clientele space to take the floor and do the organic marketing for you with User Generated Content (UGC). You can create a business profile for each of the platforms, make a few news updates, and request clients review your hotel rooms and service. Though, it is up to the guests to tell future guests what they can expect when walking through your doors. These can be the most reliable form of organic marketing to new customers as there is non-liable trust involved.

• Google My Business
• Yelp
• G2 Crowd
• Trust Radius
• Clutch

• News communities

Using search engine news outlets can increase your own website’s Search Engine Optimization (SEO) as part of your content strategy to reach new audiences. These are best to portray positive news from reliable sources with press releases and newfound information before any negative news can be released.

However, knowing how to submit is an entirely new matter. For example: if your hotel wanted to spread the word of a new renovation on Yahoo! News, you’d have to submit through Yahoo! Channels such as Tumblr or the group of Yahoo Yodelers.

• Reddit
• Google News
• Medium
• Digg
• Yahoo! News

• Question communities

Question communities and FAQ boards are the epitome of SEO, whereby the search criteria are answered directly. To become authoritative and trusted in your field, you can begin to answer people’s questions. For example, choose Quora as a social media marketing tool. You can create a profile for your hotel and give direct answers to individuals asking about your hotel, hotels in general, and just about anything else relating to your brand.

• Quora
• Answerbag
• Yahoo! Answers

• Presentation decks

Thinking about a social media campaign as something that only revolves around spreading content directly through social platforms in the hopes that tags and SEO will gain the right target audience, it’s just as important to remember behind-the-scenes operations, too.

For instance: a hotel business can use SlideShare to present new campaign ideas that stakeholders might also find of interest. Then, these presentations and online decks can be directly embedded into other channels, such as your hotel’s website or LinkedIn profile.

• SlideShare
• Speaker Deck
• Issuu

• Audio only apps

With the increasing demand for audio content, audio apps are also one of the emerging social media platforms that have been making waves. You have enough room to interact with users with different interests. The best part is, your audience can listen to legends like Elon Musk, share their thoughts and chat with like-minded folks.

If you are a hotelier or own a hotel business, you can host your own event, invite your audience, and share your knowledge. This way, you can establish yourself as the thought leader in the hospitality industry and create brand awareness.

Here are a few examples of audio-only apps that you can use to promote your content and increase brand awareness.

• Spotify
• Clubhouse
• Angle
• Yoni
• Circle
• Quilt

Also, you can use Twitter Spaces and Facebook Live Audio Rooms to share your content.

1. Social shopping networks

Whether you are a business owner or a social media marketer, social shopping networks are another approach you can take to increase your reach and engagement. Here you get a ready-made audience for your brand, owing to which you have pretty good chances to convert them into your potential customers.

If you want consistent audience growth, you can take a step further by combining your product sales with consumer recommendations using social shopping networks. Social word of mouth would help increase traffic, engagement and ensure good branding. All you need to do is to be descriptive with your content.

A few social shopping networks other than Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok that can help you create your own community of individuals include:

• Etsy
• Faveable
• Amazon Live
• Taggbox Commerce
• Verint

How You Can Best Track and Report Social Media Success

Certain metrics can determine the level of synergy your campaign is having with your audiences besides looking directly at views or new profits.

The importance behind doing so is the freedom the results can give for being flexible within your campaign. When conducting mid-launch research into social media success, you can see which communication channels are performing well and which can be adapted for the circumstance and your specific audiences.

As a hotelier, you may find that campaigning with a certain platform is causing a non-ROI as impressions are not converting into rooms booked. Therefore, it may be best to change the platform and alter the content released to optimize your new platform choice. You may find sales increase with an audience more visually orientated on TikTok than when publishing written content through Facebook.

With this, the team here at Milestone want to share insights to help you understand exactly how a digital marketing firm would measure a social media campaign’s success upon release:

• Monitor ‘Hashtag’ engagement
• Look at the subscriber and follower volume
• Consider the number of ‘mentions’ you are receiving
• Google your business to determine the SEO rating
• Use CMS tools such as Milestone CMS
• Use SEO tools such as Ahrefs or SEM Rush
• Compare reach with paid content and organic content
• Conduct online surveys
• Measure engagement of comments, likes, shares, and saves
• Understand growth VS content publishing
• Track audience demographics to see is targets are being met
• Be active with reviews and replies
• Check competitor performance
• Compare impressions with click rates and lead conversions

Fitting an Omnichannel Solution for Social Media Management

Ever-evolving audiences will well receive a dynamic approach on social media. One way to ensure you feature an omnichannel solution to managing social media. Meaning you should be customer-driven through multiple channels of communication at once. A good idea would be to choose at least five different social media platforms mentioned above.

The social media platforms will be chosen depending on your target audience. For example, the statistics measured throughout the fourth quarter of 2020 showed a predominantly millennial culture on platforms such as TikTok. Yet, we are also aware that Facebook remains the most popular daily social media go-to globally, making it a highly relevant channel of choice when reaching a wide demographic as a hotelier.

Once you have chosen the social media channels, you can map out your social media strategy for content distribution. You can determine the type of content and the frequency to ensure consistency.

Using an omnichannel solution will ensure customer satisfaction is optimized. This is due to communication being held with audiences on the most comfortable platform. And, that’s how you create value at every point of interaction with your audience, make more connections, and stay consistent. This method is also perceived as a holistic marketing strategy of audience reach; however, it is not always a service of many digital marketing providers.

Key Insights from Social Media Marketing Strategy of Thriving Brands

In 2020, three brands stood out as social marketing winners after capitalizing on 2020 events while making the best use of social communication channels (and social communications, only).

The first is the Starbucks #WhatsYourName campaign, and then it’s the Pantone #BigGameColorCommentary, followed proudly by the Coors Light #CouldUseABeer campaign.

Before heading into the specifics of each brand campaign and what drove their success, we need to observe the campaign names; they all begin with a hashtag. This accounts for omnichannel reach; a hashtag is the universal language of online platforms. Algorithms use them to boost, find, and share content with new faces.: they are the memorable catchphrase remaining on people’s lips. So, as you begin creating the first groundbreaking campaign of 2022, remember to use the universal language of the online crowd.

Starbucks and the #WhatsYourName Campaign

At the debut of 2020, Starbucks partnered with Mermaids to campaign about the inclusivity of transgender people. They featured a new mermaid-shaped cookie and promoted the idea that your name is your identity rather than a label conforming to gender at birth. They used omnichannel reach through Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, and TV advertisements. While brands normally steer clear of political intricacies, Starbucks found an opportunity to celebrate people as they were, allowing their brand identity to thrive with positivity.

Pantone and the #BigGameColorCommentary Campaign

Another starter for 2020, Pantone, decided to launch their campaign tied to the emergence of the 2020 Superbowl. Inspired by a coincidence where two teams were dressed in the same color, Pantone released a campaign to demonstrate each team’s color in the Superbowl. The aim was to engage fans to share the color of their favorite team and increase brand recognition. While the company only used Twitter in their campaign, the use of the hashtag took to other platforms. The big takeaway being to experiment with the fun, the exciting, and the relevance to connect with your audience.

Coors Light and the #CouldUseABeer Campaign

While we don’t want to place too much of a focus on the topic, Coors Light certainly did. The infamous events of 2020 led to many feeling isolated and out of control. So, capitalizing on the scenario, Coors Light released a campaign giving away a full sixpack of beer to whoever used the #CouldUseABeer hashtag on Twitter. The limited campaign lasted between April 28^th and May 1^st, ultimately giving away over 500,000 beers. The campaign used the heightened number of social media users during the initial shut-ins using Twitter as their lead platform to generate increased brand recognition. The lesson is to use a speed-response to social media usage trends.

The biggest social media marketing mistake: what not to do in a social media campaign.

Companies can face two big mistakes when heading into social media marketing for the first time without a proper omnichannel solution or planning deck in place.

The first is spamming. When a company has too many accounts, it is classed as spamming audiences and can be seen as negative, needy, rude, confusing, and untrustworthy.

The second mistake is content inconsistency. From the first FAQ, it is very important to remain consistent in goals, tone, rhetoric, target audience, publishing, and content. Don’t platform hop unless you’re consistently using multiple platforms, and don’t post a considerable amount of content in a week only to neglect social media for the following month. Keep audiences captivated through the consistent attraction of content.

Knowing this, you can begin managing social media marketing strategies with a projection for an ROI success story in 2022.

Yet, the best approach to ensure effective social media marketing in 2022 would be to contact a specialist such as our team here at Milestone. We work with industries including hoteliers, banks, mortgage suppliers, software companies, healthcare providers, and more. The aim is to maximize the bearing of social media marketing and generate a positive business impact through conversions.

Discover your 2022 social media marketing plan with Milestone.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

As this is the definitive guide to social media marketing in 2022, the team here at Milestone also wanted to address some of the most common FAQs we come across as a performance marketing provider.