Marketers Use Social Media Not Just to Build the Brand, But to Bolster Engagement

Yes, it looks like increasing audience engagement is the key objective for many advertisers who have signed on for social media marketing.

So purports an October, 2015 study by Ascend2 which queried 294 marketing, sales, and business professionals around the world about their most important social media marketing objectives were.

“Almost two-thirds of respondents said that increasing audience engagement was crucial,” reports eMarketer. “Other intentions included increasing brand awareness, lead generation, and website traffic.”

Of course, according to 82 percent of the marketing professionals, development of compelling content is key to even social media strategies.

“That content is very likely to include video, according to respondents, more of whom rated that format effective for social media marketing than any other type of content,” reports eMarketer. “Infographics and blog posts rounded out the top three.”

While marketers at times struggle with content creation, they’re not going to stop trying.

That’s because by 2015, 88.2 percent of U.S. companies will be using social networks for marketing purposes — and by 2017 that number will grow to 89.4 percent, eMarketer forecasts.