PING — Top Digital Marketing Stories — H1 2019 – Part 1

As the busy schedules took over and all our time-related priority went towards our esteemed clients, we have not been able to keep up with orderly additions of newer content for Skilfinity’s Blog section.

Well, let’s just say, we have finally able to manage time better and returning to our regular writing stints.

To begin the exercise our team scoured the net for all possible search and social news and read through over 150 articles. Of which we shortlisted 72 to be featured as a consolidated H1 update of.

Keeping in mind the content length, we decided to break the article into 3 parts. This is one of three which covers all updated from Twitter & LinkedIN.

This article will be followed by two other covering Search, Facebook and all other updates in digital marketing.

So grab a cuppa and let’s get started with the latest digital marketing stories with our monthly…err half yearly news round-up – PING. Happy reading!

Social Media Updates

LinkedIN

1. Media Buyers takes affinity towards LinkedIN

LinkedIN is steadily gaining popularity. According to DATAREPORTAL In 2019 July, LinkedIN could reach 639 Million Audience through advertising which is a 4.0% increment of quarterly growth in total advertising audience in LinkedIN. In the light of these fantastic growth numbers, LinkedIN has been cashing in on the moolah’s from the marketers.

For example, although LinkedIN video ads, can be 6 to 8X more expensive than a video ad on Facebook, 42% of media buyers plan to increase their spend on LinkedIN.

The reason is its ability to target business professionals. LinkedIN ads are said to drive more quality leads, while ads on Facebook and Twitter are better for reach and awareness.

2. LinkedIN Engagement is up 60%

LinkedIN has not only assembled the right audience, its engagement is also “booming”. The company backs up that statement with the following data:

• LinkedIN now has 630 million registered members as on July 2019, 165+ Million of which are from the Asia Pacific
• Executives from all Fortune 500 companies are LinkedIN members
• 61 million LinkedIN users are senior-level influencers
• 40 million LinkedIN users are in decision-making positions
• About 45% of LinkedIN article readers are in upper-level positions (managers, VPs, Directors, C-level)
• 40% of LinkedIN users visit every day
• Comments, likes, and shares are up 60% year-over-year
• Views in the LinkedIN feed are up 60% from last year
• Mobile LinkedIN sessions are growing 57% year-over-year
• Over 130 thousand articles are created on LinkedIN every week

The numbers can be fantastic, but what about results you may ask? Okay, so let’s look at the “meaningful business results” that the platform delivers:

• 45% of all social media traffic to a company’s homepage comes from LinkedIN.
• 71% of people use information from LinkedIN to inform business decisions
• LinkedIN is the most trusted social platform globally, according to Business Insider’s Digital Trust report
• 50% of LinkedIN members are more likely to buy from companies when they have engaged in their social channels

3. LinkedIN Reactions

To keep up the engagement rates, LinkedIN further added “LinkedIN Reactions” in April this year, both on the web and the mobile app (Everything is mobile-first these days remember?!).

The following new reactions (Celebrate, Love, Insightful, and Curious) are available now:

LinkedIN explains how it arrived at these four reactions:

“We took a thoughtful approach to designing these reactions, centered around understanding which ones would be most valuable to the types of conversations members have on LinkedIN.

This process included looking at what people are already talking about to better understand what feedback they wanted to express and receive…

We also conducted global research with LinkedIN members to get feedback on the specific reactions to ensure they were universally understood and helpful.”

4. LinkedIN Algorithm to drive conversation and surface more personalized content

LinkedIN’s algorithm is in line with the company’s new framework: “People You Know, Talking About Things You Care About.”

LinkedIN Says “To summarize, your LinkedIN feed is made up of the conversations happening across your professional communities: among connections; in the groups you’ve joined; and the people, pages, and hashtags that you follow.”

Here are some tips to optimize posts for LinkedIN’s new algorithm:

• Post things that encourage a response.
• Use the best post type for the topic.
• Use @mentions to tag people who are likely to respond.
• Encourage conversation by responding to comments.
• Post about niche topics.
• Use hashtags, but no more than three.

5. New Way for Pages to Generate Leads by LinkedIn

LinkedIN says based on feedback from page admins, it is rolling out new tools to help pages drive leads and measure the results.

First is a custom call-to-action (CTA) buttons.

“As a Page Admin, we’ve heard that you want the ability to customize the way you engage with your Page followers and visitors. Beyond the primary “Follow” button, we’ve now added the ability to select a custom CTA button for your Page.”

Custom CTA buttons can be set up to drive leads in five different ways. Options include:

• Contact us
• Learn more
• Register
• Sign up
• Visit website

In order to measure results from the CTA buttons, page admins will also have access to new analytics dashboards.

In addition to the new CTA and analytics dashboard, it has also introduced:

1. Communities hashtags thus giving you the ability to engage directly with LinkedIN members through the hashtag content feed.
2. Mobile admin editing (Thanks for listening to this LinkedIN) where Admins can now update key page details and edit already published posts their your mobile device.

Twitter

1.Official Marketing Calendar for 2019

Beginning of the year, Twitter released a new, free resource – “2019 Twitter marketing calendar” to help guide marketers’ social media strategies for the year.

The calendar helps you to drive year-round campaign inspiration, with estimated data points of the number of Tweet impressions each of the events are expected to reach.

Available for US, UK and the Middle East, Marketers can use this information to capitalize on unique, once-a-year, opportunities to boost their reach.

For example, Fashion e-Commerce stores may be able to sell more throughout September, with the Fashion Week happening in New York, London, Milan & Paris, which is estimated to generate 224M tweet impressions.

To view the full calendar, download it here.

2. Timing is Everything

Although Twitter still advises users to publish content throughout the day, it launched a new insights tool in March “Timing is everything“ which Shows the Best Time to Publish Tweets based on user engagement.

It is important to note the data is focussed towards video tweets and it shows when people on Twitter are generally watching any video on Twitter, and is not particularly about your follower base.

This is how you can get started with Timing is Everything?

1. Go to the Analytics dropdown menu within Media Studio and select
2. Study the graph to understand when your audience is online.
3. Experiment with Tweets, or scheduled Tweets, during the times of day that have the highest engagement.

It’s a wrap for now, but stay tuned for updates on Facebook, Search (Google, Bing) etc.