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For the last few years, Facebook and Instagram have dominated advertisers media mix. But recently, media buyers say ad spend on social medias biggest platforms has started to deteriorate.

Its more of a slow leak than a mass exodus, with client ad spend dedicated to Facebook and Instagram recently declining by 5-10% over the last year, according to Hallie Wyckoff, group director of social media at Wunderman Thompson Commerce.

Its happening now because of the pandemic, in all honesty, Wyckoff said. There were so many changes in marketing budgets last year where a lot of brands pulled back for a bit or had to be more lean with what they were willing to spend.

For Wunderman Thompson, with clients including major marketers like Unilever and Coca-Cola, ad dollars that may have gone to Facebook and Instagram have recently shifted to alternative platforms like TikTok or to efforts to improve or build out social commerce opportunities, as well as working with influencers, Wyckoff said.

Given Facebook and Instagrams scale, targeting capabilities and range in ad unit offerings, advertisers and media buyers predict it wont lose its crown any time soon. In fact, the platforms ad business is holding up for now, per previous Digiday reporting. However, the platforms flaws like waning interest from younger audiences, rising cost per impression and mounting data privacy issues are giving way to challengers like TikTok, Snap and even Pinterest.The flaws have gotten worse because the pandemic has made for an uncertain future and constant shifts in peoples shopping habits, which has advertisers looking for alternatives.

When asked for comment, a Facebook spokesperson pointed to the platforms Q2 2021 earnings call, in which Facebook reported strong business growth and noting that total revenue for Q2 was $29.1 billion, which is a 56% year-over-year increase. According to chief financial officer David Wehner, speaking during Facebooks most recent earnings call on July 28, the growth was predominately driven by verticals that performed well over the course of the pandemic, like online commerce and consumer packaged goods.

At least one marketing agency, Tinuiti, which Facebook pointed to as an example of increasing investment on its platforms, hiked its year-over-year spending on Facebook and Instagram alongside increased ad spend for platforms like Snapchat, TikTok, and Pinterest.

Weve seen this increase 37% YoY on Facebook and 75% YoY on IG (24% growth in Q1 and 53% growth in Q1, respectively). And were on pace to spend 61% more on Facebook and Instagram than we did in all of 2019, said Avi Ben-Zvi, vp of paid social at Tinuiti.

But according to Pew Research, Facebook and other major social media platforms growth stalled over the past five years. Facebooks brand reputation suffered last year after advertisers boycotted the platform with the Stop Hate for Profit campaign. And new research from analytics and insight company Skai, shows that social media CPMs have been steadily increasing, up about 12% from 2019. According to Skai, CPMs hovered around $5.71 this time in 2019 and are now at $6.37.

Also buffeting the social giant is the fact that it is facing a serious challenge in Apples data privacy changes, noted Katya Constantine, CEO of performance marketing shop DigiShop Media via email.

The biggest cause has certainly been because iOS14 removed some of the most powerful targeting options, she said. Also, I imagine that some of the usage has also slipped as the world came out of the pandemic and that removed some inventory and drove up CPMs.

Elijah Schneider, CEO of social marketing agency Modifly, backs up Constantines claims.

Advertisers are starting to lose trust that consumers lost a long time ago, Schneider said.

And challenger brands have seen the writing on the wall. Modifly, with a client list that includes startups and direct to consumer brands like Super Coffee drink brand and Beam wellness brand, has seen clients press for serious ad dollar diversification since late last year, said Schneider who added that in 2019 and 2020 at least 80% of Modifly client spend was in Facebook products. At present, that ad spend now sits at 55% on Facebook and 45% on alternative social platforms, like TikTok and Snapchat.(Schneider didnt share what these breakdowns looked like in actual dollar figures.)

For brands that are really focused on Gen Z, Facebook is part of the mix. But theyre not necessarily the dominant part of the mix, said Noah Mallin, chief strategy officer at IMGN Media, where client ad spend on Facebook and Instagram has decreased from 95% of budget in prior years to 75% at present. Theyre much more evenly matched for established big brands where Gen Z is a segment among many, he added.

In a rush to diversify ad spend, advertisers have divided their digital dollars up amongst everything from alternative social media platforms to digital tools to support a brick-and-mortar presence. Theres no clear kingpin coming to dethrone Facebook and Instagram, although many marketers see promise in TikTok given the platforms scale and massive audience.

If nothing else, the decline continues to push along the industry-wide conversation around theneed to diversify media spend, making for healthy competition among the platforms and more viable options for media buyers, Mallin said.

I dont necessarily see [Facebook and Instagram] diminishing to nothing, Mallin said. But if you want to have a smart mix and youve got the budget for it, youd want to have Twitch in there and you want to have TikTok in there too.

Thats not to say Facebook couldnt make a few changes to delay its decline and this could just be the latest interaction of changes in the social media landscape, marketers say. When it comes to digital and social media, that landscape is always changing, meaning advertisers will always need to adapt. This pandemic made flexibility a priority, said Wunderman Thompsons Wyckoff.

If we start to see CPMs or CPCs go down, you might see an influx back to Facebook and Instagram, she said. Its an ever-evolving world and marketers are going to continue to pay attention and see whats best.

‘Advertisers are starting to lose trust’: Why media buyers say Facebook is losing its grip on social ad spend

Excerpt from:
Advertisers are starting to lose trust: Why media buyers say Facebook is losing its grip on social ad spend - Digiday

Theres a lot of advice out there on how to grab peoples attention, but theres one aspect of marketing that Robert Katai thinks isnt talked about as often: maintaining their attention. The solution, he says, is a combination of content strategy and positioning.

Based in Romania, Katai is known for his podcasts and speeches covering the gamut of content marketing. A product manager at online graphic design platform Creatopy, he also works with clients as a freelance content strategist, and it is in this capacity that he was recommended to TechCrunch via our growth marketer survey. (If you have growth marketers to recommend, please fill out the survey!)

Katai was recommended by multiple Romanian clients and contacts who vouched for his content strategy prowess, so we were curious to know more. Who is he? And is his advice applicable beyond borders?

The short answer is yes. In a freewheeling interview, Katai spoke about how content marketing should integrate with users daily lives, and how content can be repurposed across multiple formats. He also shared some insights on the booming Romanian startup ecosystem.

Editors note: The interview below has been edited for length and clarity.

TC: How do you help your clients as a freelancer?

Robert Katai: One of the two things Im doing is that Im helping clients with creating their content strategy based on their objective. You can get web traffic, but you can also create a message and build the brand. You dont have to start at the beginning; You can rebuild the brand later.

For instance, Im working with a Romanian outsourcing company that pioneered this industry in our city of Cluj-Napoca. But lately, they started to realize that they should be more attractive from a sales as well as from an employee perspective. So I worked with them to perform an internal audit to see why employees love the company, why they leave, why they stay and what they want from the company.

Image Credits: Robert Katai.

From there, I got to the idea that they needed to reshape their brand to not just have people notice them but to also maintain their attention. And here comes the content: I started an ambassador program, because there are people outside of the company who love it.

I also recommended they create an internal print magazine. Its a very well-designed magazine that their 200 to 300 employees can take home and read. Its not just about the job; its also about their hobbies, things to do in the city and some thought leadership articles that can inspire them to have a better life.

Whats the second way you are helping clients?

Apart from content strategy, Im working with clients on their positioning for their audience, community and market, but also sometimes in terms of employer branding. Content can be a bridge between the two ways I am helping clients, because Im using a lot of content marketing here and not focusing only on performance or growth marketing hacks. Im helping them understand that if they want to establish a memorable, long-lasting brand in the market, they have to make content marketing part of their life.

If they want to reposition themselves in the industry, they need to say: Okay, these are the kinds of content we have to create for our goals; who will amplify the content, who will connect with us, and who will consume the content. Today, content creation is free everybody can do it. The hard part is how you distribute and amplify that. And heres how I can help the startups: Make a big piece of content and repurpose it in several small pieces; get it in front of people so that the brand is on their minds.

Have you worked with a talented individual or agency who helped you find and keep more users?

Respond to our survey and help other startups find top growth marketers they can work with!

How can brands achieve that top-of-mind status?

We all know that there are four kinds of content: Text, video, pictures and audio. These four formats never die. The platform can change, but the format will stay the same. A video can be an Instagram Reel, a documentary or something else, but its a video. The same goes for a photo. So the content strategy Im working with is how brands can use that content ecosystem.

When I work with my clients and also with Creatopy where Im a product marketer I recommend them to use content to build their brand and be visible to their users every day in their feeds. Every morning, when their customers are waking up and checking their phones, they dont open a newspaper. They will open Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, and maybe then when they get out of the bathroom and make coffee, they will open YouTube and connect with Alexa.

I really believe that brands should create content that can just be in the mind of the user. Snackable content, Reels, TikTok It doesnt matter what we call it.

You also talked about repurposing content. Can you explain that?

Lets take the interview youve done with Peep Laja. You could have recorded it as a video. And he covered several topics, so you could have several short videos 30 seconds, three minutes, whatever. You can publish them daily on your site or social media channels with a comment that says, Heres the link to the full article. But remember that on LinkedIn, that link will need to go into the comments section, not the post itself.

You can also have a longer video that you can publish on social media or on Wistia, asking people to give their email so now you also have subscribers.

Then the second type of content you can create is audio. You already have it from the recording. You dont have to publish the full 45-minute conversation, but you can have a five-minute audio clip, and again link to the articles.

Now we have video and audio, but what if you also designed quotes with his headshot and messaging? If its part of a series, you should also give it a name.

And its not just motivational; its educational, too, so you should take these quotes and create carousels for Instagram and LinkedIn. The first slide should grab attention it can be a question. The second slide can be a link to the interview so that even if people dont click it, it will be on their minds. Then you can have slides with insights.

The last slide will always be a call to action: Asking people to share, comment or save it for later its the new currency on Instagram! And once you have your Instagram carousel, you create a PDF and publish it on LinkedIn.

So now you have five formats of content from one piece of content.

Wow, how much do we owe you?! Just kidding, we actually do some of that for the Equity podcast, for instance. Now, what other advice do you have for startups?

Im a big advocate of documenting the process. Just imagine if Mark Zuckerberg had done that and you could read how he launched Facebook and so on. Noah Kagan is doing that right now. I think startup founders should do it, not just from the PR and marketing perspective, but for their audience. Even if your audience is not paying for your product right now, they are staying with you and giving your brand an essence in the industry.

Just think about what Salesforce is doing right now: They launched Salesforce+, which is like Netflix for B2B. Its to get the attention of professionals and also maintain it, and I believe this is the currency of the big companies today: Peoples attention.

Do you work with any startups in Romania? And do you have any impressions to share on the Romanian startup ecosystem?

Yes, I help a few Romanian startups with their content marketing and positioning. Sometimes other startups email me with questions, so I help them, too, but I dont charge for email advice. I work with the ones that are looking for a long-term or project-based collaboration.

Startup founders here in Romania are curious, and very courageous to experiment even if it wont necessarily work. And Romanian startups are very smart. For instance, Planable is doing a great job with content, social media and positioning. We also have social media analytics company Socialinsider, which this year launched virtual events, and TypingDNA, which wants to get rid of needing to log in with passwords and was founded by a former colleague.

I also found that the founders here work harder than their teams and dont just leave others do the work at least the ones I have met. We have several startup events in Romania: How to Web, and Techsylvania here in Transylvania.

I dont like this name, but people say that Cluj-Napoca is the Silicon Valley of Romania. Lots of startups have been launched here, but the city that is getting more and more traction is Oradea, where the bet on education is paying off.

(If you are a tech startup founder or investor in Cluj or Oradea, fill in TechCrunchs European Cities Survey 2021.)

Here is the original post:
Romanian marketing expert Robert Katai explains how to get the most out of your content - TechCrunch

An interesting finding stated by Forbes magazine, mentions that over 78% of salespeople using social media marketing outsell their competitors in promoting their brand.

But the implementation of social media marketing for a business requires not just creativity but well-curated strategies.

Whether you are someone who engages in the creation of digital content to advance their career or a business owner looking to cross the million-dollar mark, effective social media marketing is probably the best solution out there to expand your organisation in the virtual space!

Keep reading to learn how social media marketing can boost your leads in todays digitally-driven international business market.

Importance of social media marketing

Grow the brand awareness

Social media marketing is all about spreading the word about your products and services to your target audience. Marketing through social media can help you showcase your brand to the right customers, by providing accurate information.

Gaining brand recognition can eventually make room for effective brand building, and generate conversation among the audience about your products and partners. It is very important for you to learn social media marketing and leverage its applications to make your customers feel special, as well as solicit feedback on your service by asking open-ended questions.

Having an online presence to share your brands story will let you interact with your audience on a more personal level, thereby allowing your company to obtain a larger exposure when it comes to perceiving the realities of business. Social media marketing can also help you transform your brand to impress audiences from different cultures. Effective social media marketing allows you to adjust your tone and style based on different audiences, while maintaining a simple and impactful brand image.

Increase brand traffic

Practising social media marketing strategies will also allow you to take a deep dive inside gathering data from consumer research, to improve your relationship with your customers, allowing immediate interaction and maintenance of a strong line of communication with them. This also includes focusing on strengthening customer loyalty, assisting them on how to go about with your website and associated social media channels.

Social media marketing can help you with creating an impression on the minds of potential buyers, as well as understand your competitors better. Building custom audiences is yet another venture that you can learn when handling strategy marketing tools, enabling you to grab opportunities of creating customer satisfaction and adjusting with the diverse perspective associated with online purchasing.

Promote your products and services efficiently

This will allow you to build links relevant to trending topics and establish your brand as a topical authority while-engaging your audience with targeted advertisements. Social media marketing is the best way to exude a ton of positive publicity pushing your brand to go viral! When you learn social media marketing, driving conversions will become easier, allowing you to attract more customers and increase your sales. Grab the chance to analyse the buying patterns of your ideal customers by developing better marketing strategies and creating content relatable to not only your audience but those located at different demographics. This is how you increase your overall ROI and showcase your products via different branches of creative advertisement and niche topics.

Benefits of social media marketing in the digital world

Demonstrate authenticity

If you want to let your brands personality shine, then it is crucial that you find a voice of your own and stand by it throughout the business journey, so that your audience can get a glimpse of the real mind behind such a wonderful business.

Completing a social media course in marketing can help you connect with potential customers by using social proof of your existing audience. Be it memes, GIFs, Facebook lives or Pinterest stories, having a good grounding of professional level social media marketing allows you to identify specific social media channels that are a perfect fit for your style of business.

Expand your brand affordably

It is vital that you figure out inexpensive ways to market your business digitally, right at the start of your business journey. This is why social media marketing academic programmes help students learn to be consistent while posting an advertisement, aiming for the highest Google ranking.

Are you feeling nervous about taking the first step towards creating a digital brand and weaving it into the daily patterns of your audiences life? Well then, you must check out the wide range of executive education courses on marketing that the London School of business and finance (LSBF) has in store for you!

Turn that dream of having a strong social media presence into reality by enrolling yourself on our Marketing Planning and Strategy programme today.

This article was written by Deblina Dam

Read more:
Why is social media marketing considered important? | LSBF Blog - London School of Business and Finance

The Drums social media executive Amy Houston explores the murky world of influencer fraud in the wake of recent BBC Panorama documentary Hunting the Social Media Fraudsters, and assesses the ripple effect it may have on the wider influencer marketing sector.

An investigation by BBC journalist Kafui Okpattah for its Panorama series uncovered a seedy side of social media that may take some users by surprise fraud being touted as a lifestyle. Similarly to fashion or make-up gurus, these online stars brazenly boast flashy lifestyles and materialistic goals with one person even self-identifying as the Kim Kardashian of fraud. The anonymous con artists steal private details and sell them on apps like Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram, with some amassing audiences of up to 150,000 followers. The marketing may be modern, but the crime is old hat.

Influencer partnerships can be extremely profitable, with many brands putting their faith (and ad spend) into the social celebs of today to promote a wide range of products, but do reports such as the Panorama doc harm relationships?

Trust takes time to build and seconds to destroy. Its easy to forget that influencer marketing is still a new industry thats constantly evolving and developing, says Mary Keane-Dawson, group chief executive of Takumi.

The volume of brand-influencer posts on social media has inclined in recent years, but it could be argued that consumer trust has declined. Takumis 2020 research found that 25% of all consumers are more likely to source news updates and opinions from influencers than journalists and established news outlets, but a more recent 2021 survey carried out by Clear Channel and JCDecaux found that 60% of Brits are more likely to trust a brand if its recommended by someone they know, while just one in five say the same for those used by influencers/public figures.

Without trust, influencer content loses its efficacy, with potentially negative knock-on effects for achieving brands marketing objectives. And creator output can even cause reputational damage to brands if they are seen to mislead audiences or act fraudulently, adds Keane-Dawson.

Its the age-old question and one that lawmakers and social networks like to bat to and from each other: whose responsibility is it to protect social media users from being duped? With so many parties involved, there is a growing blame game between the industry trade bodies, government, social media platforms, brands and influencers themselves, Keane-Dawson says.

Earlier this year the UK government introduced the Online Safety Bill, which aims to tackle harmful content online, but some people have voiced concern that it wont address the problem. In the BBC documentary Arun Chauhan, a solicitor specializing in fraud, says he thinks the bill is not fit for purpose in the fight against fraud.

Establishing a trusting relationship is something that takes time and needs to be nurtured. Brands that have close partnerships with their ambassadors will reap the rewards and feel more confident in achieving campaign targets. The measure of true value is finding an influencer who has the right fit with your brand, someone who shares your values, who consumers trust, and who genuinely endorses your product over your competitors, notes Hannah Walley, head of media and digital, Kantar.

Within the influencer marketing sector, many organizations make the mistake of working with online personalities that have the most followers but, at its core, social medias heart lies in the community. Stories like these can be damaging to trust in the industry, Keane-Dawson says. Thats why its so important that all parties involved take a strong stance against it and unite in fighting it. Doing so can help contribute toward repairing and recovering any damaged trust.

Earlier this year the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) named and shamed prominent influencers on a new non-disclosure website whose content had breached rules regarding promotional posts. The Influencer Marketing Report found that there was a disappointing overall rate of compliance with rules regarding paid-for ads.

Regarding the new site, ASA chief executive Guy Parker said: We prefer to work with influencers and brands to help them stick to the rules, but the first influencers to be named on this list have been given every opportunity to treat people fairly about their ads. Its not difficult: be upfront and clear when posts and Stories are ads. If this doesnt bring about the changes we expect, we wont hesitate to consider further sanctions.

In essence, trust means a firm belief in the reliability, truth or ability of whatever or whoever you place it in. Shocking revelations, such as the ones featured in the Panorama doc, will quite rightly cast a negative light on the industry, but I believe it is a wake-up call for brands to invest more care and time into having established and well thought-out campaigns based on ethics and community.

You can catch up with previous The Drum Social articles here, and remember to use #TheDrumSocial to join in the conversation online.

Continue reading here:
What happens to confidence in influencer marketing when fraud goes viral? - The Drum

As part of its ongoing effort to improve Stories interaction, Instagram is making a change to the way that external links are shared within Stories frames, with the current 'Swipe up' links to be removed from the process entirely, and replaced by its new 'Link'sticker option instead.

Instagram has confirmed to SMT that all users who can currently access the swipe-up link for Stories will be able to access the new link sticker, with swipe-up links to Stories going away from the end of this month.

As per the prompt (shared by social media expert Matt Navarra), those who can currently access swipe-up links will revert to the link sticker instead, which Instagram says provides a range of benefits:

The update could well be an improvement. For one, it will enable more prominent placement of links within your Stories frames, which could give you more ways to entice click-throughs, and put more focus on driving that action within your Story.

Right now,the 'Swipe-up for more' prompt is displayed right down the bottom of the screen, so maybe, by adding a Link sticker, which you can place wherever you like on top of your visual, that'll give creators more presentation options to help drive traffic, by featuring them more prominently within the frame (you can see this in the top example above).

Then again, the swipe-up prompt has become habitual, so it may take some time to change user behaviors around link sharing in Stories. Still, it seems like a potential opportunity, and initial results of Instagram's testing must have shown a positive response, at least to some degree.

The next question, then, is whether the new Stories link option will eventually be made available to all users, or if link stickers will remain limited to verified profiles and/or those with more than 10k followers, as per the current 'Swipe-up'option.

Back in June, then Instagram Head of Product Vishal Shah told The Verge that link stickers for all users was the eventual goal, enabling more functionality within the Stories process.

That's the sort of future system we would like to get to, and thats what we hope to roll out, if were able to make this work.

But it's not going that far just yet.

With this new roll-out, Instagram says that integrity and safety will be a key focus, and it'll be keeping a watchful eyeover the links that people share via the option, in order to ensure that it doesn't become another surface for spreading misinformation and spam.

Because of this,Instagram will need to introduce link stickers in stages, but it is assessing whether to expand link access to more accounts in the future.

So, a new way to share links in Stories, which, really, had been on the cards for a while. Will that help you drive more referral traffic from your Stories efforts?

It certainly opens up a lot of new doors for your Stories approach.

Time to start experimenting with optimal link sticker placement.

More here:
Instagram is Removing Swipe-Up Links for Stories, Replacing the Function with Link Stickers - Social Media Today