industry Archives - LiftMetrix Blog

As we find ourselves trying to find out what topics are hot and useful to our users we seem to keep coming back to the same websites. As we wrote in our “Content is King” blog post, having the right content for your users can make all the difference. So understanding what’s trending can be extremely helpful across any spectrum of your social media marketing. We thought we’d share our sources with you to save you some google time. Check out 5 places we go to see what’s trending:

Twitter: Obviously but we had to put it! And if you aren’t sure how to work it, you can change your trending topics to a city, entire country or even the world so you can get a bit more narrow for your target audience. Turn on or off your tailored trends in order to see the more common trends vs the ones that are skewed to what you tweet and who you follow. If you want to get really crazy, check out trends map for real time location trends.

Twitter Trends: May 13, 2015

Trends Map: May 13, 2015

Alltop: This site does a great job pulling all of the top and trending articles from a variety of sites including mashable, fast company, wired, cnn, and more. In addition you can create your own topics based on your tastes and customize the site for free. From tech to culture you are sure to find the topics you want to read and share with your audience. To make things easier, there is a home page with a general overview and a search box that allows you to type in anything that matters to you. Alltop will then suggest categories and tags that you can select one at a time to display the most popular posts from specific categories.

Alltop Homepage: May 13, 2015

Google Trends: Sometimes you have to go straight to the source. Taking a look at what’s being searched for frequently on google can give you some insight into what users care about today. You can narrow your search by country and see exactly how many times the trending topic was searched. Dig into trending searches to get more info on the searches trending with up to date links.

Google Trends: May 13, 2015

Medium: Started by the founders of Twitter it’s a blog publishing platform with a variety of topics and details covered. It’s a great place to go for inspiration on writing blogs from titles to post content. Top stories allows you to see the most read blog posts and can help inspire you when you narrow down to some of the tags and topics.The trick is to browse articles that are about specific topics such as tech, blogging, social media, entrepreneurship, or growth hacking. Whatever is most popular in those categories is usually exceptionally well written and inspires many bloggers to share similar experiences or adapt titles to their niche.

Medium Homepage: May 13, 2015

There are tons of sites out there and great content all around but these are our go to sites to see what’s the most popular among most users. Having content that is based on what’s already popular is one of the best ways to ensure traffic. Is there any other site you think we should include?

There are SO many social media networks out there and new ones seem to pop up everyday, just ask any teenager they are sure to know what’s new. With that said you don’t have to be on everyone of them. It’s important to understand them and find the right platform for your brand based on both industry and target audience. There are so many things to think about so we’ve broken them down for you and found some resources to get you started!

They say AGE is just a number but depending on your product or brand it can be extremely relevant to some ages and not all or vice versa. Don’t just think about “generations” as sometimes that isn’t a one size fits all either as someone in their 30s could have very different cares than someone at 25. Just an example of how different age groups feel about various platforms, check out this great overview, Social Media At Every Age. One thing I pulled from this post was that people like photos. We all know this but understanding which apps seem to be popular amongst all ages it is clear that people like easy and images. When it comes to thinking about your target audience, age can be one of the first things so take these great nuggets of Wisdom from Gabbi when thinking about the age you are targeting:

“Before launching your next campaign or creating your social media plan, take a step back. Go back to what your college professor told you to do (and how you proceeded to roll your eyes) and create an outline for your paper – with section A being audience analysis. Turns out, that professor was right.”

Does GENDER matter to your brand? It might, especially if we are talking toiletries or makeup! This one may not always matter but when it does consider these quick facts (based on report from Business Insider December 2014):

Facebook still skews slightly more Female
Twitter has begun to lean more towards a Male audience
Pinterest is made up of mostly females
LinkedIn is slightly more popular with Men

Now what type of CONTENT do you have to share? Are you a company with tons of stats? Too many photos? A little bit of everything? Of course you can do a mix across all social networks but don’t waste your time. If you have photos they can be more powerful on networks that users expect to see them such as Pinterest, Instagram and Facebook (maybe even Tumblr!). If you have more content focused around articles or words then Twitter and LinkedIn could be the place for you.

Finally, some INDUSTRY related stuff! We found this great rundown of what different industries are doing across social media platforms. Released recently, Hubspot does a great job with “Benchmarks for 9 Different Industries”. Of course Marketing Services Industry is posting the most per week but it’s interesting to learn how valuable social media is to other industries such as Real Estate. We think this breakdown is pretty spot on so have a read on the section specific to your industry and see how you compare against others.

With all that in mind and understanding there are tons of platforms out there, narrow down which ones make sense for you. We would encourage you to pick only one or two if you are just starting out or three if you are already up and running. Most brands can benefit from doing three platforms well instead of trying to do them all. Once you start don’t stop, Social only works if you continue to stay involved.

One last thing, want some of the latest and craziest stats about social media out there? Have a quick read of these 30 Crazy Stats We Heard at Social Media Marketing World #SMMW15. (Don’t be shocked that “10. You will only get a 1-6% organic reach on your posts in Facebook. So heart-wrenching.”)