Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer

What is the Future of Social Media Marketing in 2022? Here's My Take - and Advice for You

October 14, 2021 Neal Schaffer Episode 229
Your Digital Marketing Coach with Neal Schaffer
What is the Future of Social Media Marketing in 2022? Here's My Take - and Advice for You
Show Notes Transcript

If you're doing your social media for business or yourself the same as you have for the last few years, your time is up. All of the trends in social media show us that we truly need to think visual first in so many ways in order to gain visibility within social media news feeds.

In this episode I analyze all of the changes that have occurred in social media over the years, putting even niche platforms like Tsu and Ello (remember those?!?) into perspective. From this I believe the future of social media and thus social media marketing becomes clear, and I finish this episode with my advice on the ideal trifecta for your social media marketing going forward into 2022 and beyond...

Key Highlights

[01:33] Introduction

[02:40] The History of Social Media

[05:15] The Emergence of New Social Media Platforms

[07:55] Dynamic and Emergence of Reels

[10:28] Pinterest Dynamic

[12:06] What Are Video Pins?

[12:28] How To Get More Impressions from Different Social Media Platforms

[14:13] The Effects of the Changes in Social Media

[15:26] Tools You Can Do For Livestreaming

[17:13] The Use of Video Content

[17:59] Easy Ways of Repurposing Video Content

[19:39] Why All Social Networks Now Want Content Creators

[20:53] Get Paid for Sharing New Reels

[21:31] The Other Important Type of Content

[21:41] What Are Idea Pins?

[23:00] Why Carousel Images Perform Better

[25:12] Where Does Influencer Marketing Come to Play in Content Creatio?

[27:18] Summary

Notable Quotes

  • Where we start with everything is we need to have a digital presence and the digital presence, the digital gateway becomes our website.
  • If you want to get more impressions on Instagram, you do reels. If you want to get more impressions on Pinterest, you do video pins. More impressions mean above the funnel visibility and brand awareness does it add to more clicks or not, is a whole other story.
  • It's about showing yourself showing up doing real-time content. You can't do reels you do videos igtv. But if you can do something longer, and cut it up into something as engaging as real, it's a new skill set that we sort of all has to learn. 
  • If you want to get the most visibility for your content, almost everywhere, video is going to be the key.
  • The reels is all about entertainment. The carousel, the idea pins, and carousel images are more about education. And what's really interesting is that your results are going to vary.
  • If you can't create the content, there is a ton of people out there that can't create the content are creating the content that you need to figure out ways to collaborate with. That's the heart of what I wrote about in the age of influence.
  • People completely misunderstand, misinterpret influencer marketing, it's tapping into the influence of others in social media, whether they have 100 followers, or have 1000 followers.
  • People that have influenced people that are able to build followers are a great content creator.

Learn More:

Neal Schaffer:

Social Media Marketing in 2022 is going to be fundamentally different than social media marketing only a few years ago. Here's my question for you. Are you still doing the same things that your business the same things for your personal brand that you've been doing for the past few years. If that is the case, your efforts, your effectiveness are only going to dwindle with the passing of time. Instead, understand where social media marketing is going in 2022 and more importantly, what you and your business need to do to stay ahead of the game. On this next episode of The your digital marketing coach, podcast, digital social media content influencer marketing, blogging, podcasting, blogging, tick tocking, LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, SEO, sem, PPC, email marketing, who there's a lot to cover, whether you're a marketing professional entrepreneur, or business owner, you need someone you can rely on For expert advice. Good thing you've got Neil, on your side, because Neal Schaffer is your digital digital marketing marketing coach, helping you grow your business with digital first marketing one episode at a time. This is your digital marketing coach. And this is Neal Schaffer. Hey, everybody. Welcome to episode number 229. of the your digital marketing coach podcast. How are y'all doing today? This is Neal Schaffer, I am coming to you from Tokyo, Japan, where I am currently, actually in my second week of hotel quarantine. And it's been an amazing experience. I am a little bit late on publishing this episode for a reason. Because once you're out of your own country, it really gives you a chance to understand everything about you your life, your business, in like Technicolor, for lack of a better word. So it's been a really, really great soul searching time for me. And this episode, in particular, I really wanted to make sure that I nailed because I think it's going to be one of the most important podcast episodes you listen to, because we have to start doing things differently with our social media. If we want to have impact going forward, the writing is on the wall. The question is, are you going to change your habits. So let me begin with a little history of social media, we're going to go back memory lane. Because without historical perspective, the future is lost. This is something my father may he rest in peace taught me as I was writing my senior thesis, having experienced the tenement demonstrations in Beijing, China, that's my junior year abroad. That's what I wanted to write about my senior thesis, he says, Neil, don't, you need a little bit more historical perspective to better understand the enduring impact that that historical event might have. And I've really taken that concept to heart ever since. And therefore, today, what I'm going to be talking about, we begin with the past. So there used to be a social network called Sue. I don't think it's related to the Japanese Sue, which is like expert or like, you're really good at something. When we had this explosion of social networks. I'm going to say 678 years ago. So we used to have Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, the big three. And then Google Plus came. And when Google Plus came, people were like, what do we do? Right? I already mastered Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, I gotta do Google Plus now. And what happened with Google Plus, which is no longer available, obviously, is it launched an opening for other platforms to sort of compete, because at that time, the social networks were simply competing to get users on, if you get lots of users on, you might get a lot of venture capital, you might be able to build a lot of interest in the media. And that seemed to be the play at the time. So to was one of these networks that came upon us, we also had a network called ello. I don't know how many of you remember ello, where it's Sue. The thing about Sue was that for every person that visited your profile, whatever content it was, you would get paid money. So the more people that came to your profile to read your content, the more money you would get. It was like an RPM, Google Ad type of model, right? And basically, they they wanted to share the profits from advertising with you, which is really unique. What's happened now is, after two came out, we had ello. And ello is a network that said, You know what, we're never Going to do advertising ever. And ello had a boom every now and then I still get Hey, so and so followed you on ello notification. And what happened over time though, was Ella both ello and Sue and Google Plus really fizzled out. Because we saw the emergence of instagram instagram really became that really strong fourth network. We also saw YouTube really become a major force with every young generation, which competes with social media, obviously, and social media now competes with YouTube. And also we saw the emergence of Snapchat. So early on Instagram might have lost the Snapchat, but they were really smart to emulate Snapchat, emulate their stories. And then tik tok emerged and an Instagram emulates rails and here we are today. So everything has really changed. But what happened several years ago was everybody wanted eyeballs, they wanted you to become a member of the platform. But now, eyeballs alone are not enough. Now what social networks want is they need you to spend more time on their site. They all want time on site, why? It's all about the advertising revenue. That's what sells businesses, that's what makes stock prices go up. That's where the profits are, with the exception of LinkedIn that have you know, LinkedIn Sales Navigator, LinkedIn, recruiter product, they don't necessarily have to live on advertising revenue alone, which is why you can still have organic impact there. But once again, I'm digressing from the main theme. But they all want you to spend more time on site. And what's happened over time was, if you look at sort of the history of the Facebook algorithm, we've seen text, go to image, go to video, go to live video, go to story. And now we've ended up at the real end, even yesterday, when I published my first real in a little while on Instagram and asked me Hey, do you want to share this on Facebook reels as well. And it's because people are actually consuming this information. And what's really critical for social networks is they realized, you know, we still have Twitter. And we still have Pinterest. I'm going to talk a little bit about Pinterest because it plays a really, really important role. But Twitter and Pinterest are like search engines like YouTube, we don't care who the Creator is, we find information. We click on the link, we watch the video. You know, Facebook was never like that. Facebook was all about us seeing information from your friends. And then you see disruptive ad. And LinkedIn was the same. You see information from your connections. And you could say the same thing about Instagram. But in order to get you to see more ads, consume more content, and ultimately spend more time on the platform. They had to do something different. Well what did they do? Well, we saw the emergence of reels, and the whole dynamic of reels any of you that are on tik tok, you know, you don't have to follow someone to consume the content, the AI the algorithm, based on everything you give the platform about, you will decide what you want to see. And it just continues to show video after video after video and I forgot the data. I wish I brought it with me but at traffic and conversion summit, there was a great speech about Tick tock, but the data is really scary in terms of how many videos how many of these short 15 30/62 new videos that people are consuming every day on Tick Tock. In fact, I believe, correct me if I'm wrong, I believe it was last month where there were more monthly users on tik tok than they were on YouTube. So now, all these social networks go YouTube is this huge center where people go to watch video. But now with reels. They can attack YouTube, can't they? They can start to steal that time. So while social networks compete with each other, they have their eye on Google. And they can't compete with the Google search engine. Although Twitter and Pinterest have quasi search engine functionality, but they can compete if people just want to go entertain for videos you don't need to be on YouTube be entertained. Now you could be entertained on tik tok. You can be entertainment Instagram and with Facebook reels you can be entertained on Facebook to this has completely changed the dynamic which is why yesterday I made a little full pa you can go to my Instagram profile. I was on a YouTube interview and they repurpose the content and they sent me like a minute vertical video. I just immediately put it on reels, forgetting that you're only going to be able to see the first 30 seconds right? And even the guy who sent it to me he's like Dude, I want you to put an igtv but I put it on reels because I know that that is what is going to get the biggest bang for your buck. That is what because it is showing to people not just following me but anybody you're going to get more visibility for reals, it is an absolute no brainer, right? So with this new Dynamic have more time on site where this is really clear the changes that have come about and I think if you're a marketer and you're on Instagram you slowly see that maybe your your feed gets less engagement. You get less followers because it that stuff doesn't matter when people are just watching it reels, right? They're just consuming fewer of your posts, few of your igtv is and yes even fewer stories I believe. But really where we see the effect is on Pinterest. Now for those of you that know me, Pinterest, used to get about as much traffic to my website Neal Schaffer calm as did Twitter, which both get way more than LinkedIn or Facebook and don't even talk about Instagram. I don't really publish a lot of professional stuff here. Pinterest is really interesting because I continue to do the same thing. Now you should listen to my previous episode to my podcast, you should be subscribed to my your digital marketing coach podcast, but that's where I interviewed Melissa Megginson from tailwind because this is the ultimate tool to do everything, Pinterest, and even help your Pinterest outside of Pinterest with their unique features like like Pinterest or tailwind communities, I guess is what they call it. So terrowin and Pinterest have always been very they've done my website very well. They've sent a lot of traffic to me year in, year out, and I have a system I have a process. I'm constantly you know, you need to make fresh pins. I'm creating fresh pins. I'm doing everything Pinterest is saying to do. But what happened is Pinterest is like Well, you know what? And I think Twitter has the same issue. And Twitter, you know that they're trying Twitter spaces they're trying to, you know, integrate livestream We'll see. But Pinterest is saying you know what, we're having people come and just sending them off. If we want to get more advertising revenue, we need to make our sites stickier, and people will stay on site longer if it is video than a static photo. Because of that, like every other social network, even Pinterest started to push video. Now when Pinterest pushed video, they started to push video pins. So when you go into Pinterest for those of you that go into Pinterest to see your feed, instead of static images with titles, you now see some movement in the pins, which really capture is something that I want to transition into doing more of, but I haven't done a lot of, but you see more video pins in the feed. So if you want to get more impressions on Instagram, you do reels. If you want to get more impressions on Pinterest, you do video pins. More impressions means above the funnel visibility and brand awareness does it add to more clicks or not, is a whole other story. Now, Pinterest also started their own version of stories called story pins, which are now called idea pins. And these are getting even more visibility. And in fact, what Pinterest is saying is indirectly if you look at the data and the case studies that we can hear on podcasts that Kate all has a great podcast about Pinterest, interviews a lot of people clearly when you do these story pins or stories they call idea pins. Although you're not directly linking places, indirectly, people are starting to see that and follow you and build a relationship with you and Pinterest. Once this, they want people to stay long on the platform. And by fostering relationships with content creators. And by allowing content creators to get more visibility for their content because they've gone out of the way to create idea pins, which take a little effort to create. They're also trying to bring more content creators in the platform while keeping people there longer in their own unique way, utilizing a type of multimedia content called story pins. Now here's where it gets really interesting. So I have seen over the last 12 months if I look at my Google Analytics for traffic from Pinterest, because of this emphasis on video pins, and on idea pins, literally my traffic has gone down month to month like this. I'm going to give a shout out to one of my good friend Mr. Vogel Minh out of San Diego, I had a chance to catch up to him at traffic and conversion summit. And he confirmed like Pinterest traffic has pretty much like disappeared for his business and the clients that he works with. And it's because of these changes, and I believe what we see with Pinterest, whether or not you're on Pinterest is irrelevant. It's a microcosm of all these changes that are happening in social media. So with that in mind, right? I see going into 2022 the subject of this podcast episode is you know what you need to do for your social media marketing in 2022. We see or I see two trends emerging obviously the real trend is a no brainer. You have to think video first in your social media content. My live streaming, this is my own way of thinking video. First in a new and fresh way than I think I've done before. And I challenge all of you to do the same. I am currently using a free platform called Lula l o l a.tv. I went to the I did some searches I found it you can actually live broadcast to YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, which is what I'm doing now, you can do Twitch and tik tok as well, you have the ability to do Twitter, although it glitched on me. And it's completely free for like three or four hours. And it's really, really easy to use from my from my browser. So if you're curious, that's what I'm using. I'm also a huge fan of restream.io and a huge fan of stream yard. So you've got a lot of tools out there, it's just really easy to do if you just want to go onto one platform, you just use the Instagram app for Instagram Live Facebook app for Facebook Live, you can do both at the same time, have the computer with Facebook and have your mobile phone with Instagram. What's really cool about Lula is it allows me to do Instagram and I still can use my phone to watch the timer. So I know how many minutes I'm actually recording this podcast, so don't go on too long. But getting back to the subject, obviously, it's about showing yourself showing up doing real time content. You can't do reels you do videos igtv. But if you can do something longer, and cut it up into something as engaging as a real, it's a new skill set that we sort of all have to learn. Just go on the TIC Tock to spend time there watch what other people are creating. We've now come so far with Tick Tock that you have people like myself that are just talking about marketing or blogging. It's not just people dancing, right there's and I'd say the same thing about Instagram reels as well. If you don't have the confidence, look at what everyone's doing. Just by if you go into my Instagram profile, go into my Instagram reels. There's a 32nd shot I believe when I was at the coastline, in Laguna Beach, California, a beautiful shot of the Pacific Ocean with Under the boardwalk plane in the background. And the results were pretty incredible for for what I got because it was a real if it was a post on my profile, I wouldn't not have gotten nearly the visibility that that photo got no ROI for me I'm not selling you know views of the Pacific Ocean, you know, beachfront properties in Laguna Beach, but you get the picture in terms of visibility. So obviously the use of video ideally reels, it's going to get you on tik tok, it's going to get you on Instagram, it's going to get you on YouTube shorts. And the beautiful thing is, you can actually pretty much repurpose the same content for all three, you can create it on Tick tock, post on Tick tock, tick off the tick tock watermark post on Instagram and YouTube. They all like you to use their application in order to create these real time videos. And the audio licensing each platform has is very different as well. So you might be able to use certain audio on Tick tock, you probably can't use the same audio on Instagram and on YouTube. They all have separate licensing deals with separate record companies, music companies, entertainment, Mega plexes, whatever the word is, you know what I mean? So but there are easy ways of repurposing at least a video part to those platforms. Obviously, with LinkedIn, with Twitter, with Facebook, you could post as is you could post as a vertical video, you could post as a horizontal video, you're gonna have to experiment. But needless to say, if you want to get the most visibility for your content, almost everywhere, video is going to be the key. And because of these tools, like I can repurpose this live stream into several snippets, or reels if I wanted to. And you could do the same once you have video content. So that's sort of the first stream and I believe this is above the funnel entertainment. Get you lots of visibility now at traffic and conversion summit. And I'm sorry, I'm forgetting her name, but she actually is making six figures from tik tok. And the idea is that you have a LinkedIn bio. And if you talk about something enough, and it's compelling, and you can get people to click on your link and bio and go back to your website to buy your program, or whatever it is, yes, there's ways of generating money through reels through that type of interactive content. And I think it's a numbers game, if you get you know, if you get 10s of 1000s of people, it only takes zero point X percent to go in and click your link and bio, that's a game that requires mass, I don't think it's going to work if you don't have the visibility. The beautiful thing is right now with all these platforms, you get the visibility. And what's really interesting is I talked a little bit about the content creators, not only do the social networks want you to stay on site longer, but now instead of looking at content creators, as potentially spammers, or we're going to hide you in the algorithm because you create too much content. Now, all the networks want content creators, YouTube actually has always had these YouTube studios. I've never dropped in in one I know they have in the major cities, they have one here in Tokyo. At some point I want to drop in and see if I can actually access it, but they do have these studios where you can you know potentially record videos or educational seminars or whatever Have you. So YouTube is a platform that's been doing this for a while, but now and remember I first started talking about sue the network that paid you to post. It was tik tok that created this creator fund that says we want to bring more content creators onto our platform, we're gonna actually pay your money it was last year, I think, in the winner, were at a few agencies reach out to me saying, Hey, we're paying creators like $500, all you need to do is I create Tick Tock a day for a week or for two weeks.$500 for me, isn't that a lot of money, so whatever, right, but now, the social networks are paying you to post we're back to the days of Sue. But instead of trying to get eyeballs, they want you to create really good content that's going to keep people on the site longer. And what prompted me to talk about this and record this episode was that I got this notification from YouTube earn up to $800, with bonuses. But as I read this to you, it's time to get paid for sharing new reels. This opportunity is only available until November 5. And when you go through the process, you're basically filling in all of your information. And you're linking either a bank account or your PayPal pretty amazing. Instagram is not going to pay me $800. It doesn't care what reels I do. It just wants me to do reels. In other words, there is just not enough content. If you want to compete with YouTube for video entertainment, there is not enough content out there. They need you, they need you to create more content, they need to create more reels. And that is this huge paradigm shift. So if you want to take advantage of that, you will create content like that. Now, there's one other really, really important type of content, though, that I think more people should be talking about it. And it really comes from Pinterest. It's the idea of pin. Now, idea pins are like carousel photos. They're carousel photos, it's like a step by step, I think it's a 10 frame maximum, you can once again use audio, use different effects. But it's basically instead of a pin, which leads people to a recipe, for instance, very, very common thing on Pinterest. It is a 10 step thing that has a title slide, and then eight slides, the eight steps of the recipe, and then the 10th pin, which is going to be Hey, follow me on Pinterest for more, go to my website, whatever it is, right? This is a formula. So I was like messing around with idea pins. So I had an Instagram carousel photo of Instagram for real estate agents, you can find it on my profile, it was 10 photos. I literally imported this into the idea pins, added music, did a transition of five seconds per photo within the 60 seconds, and boom, it was done. And that has gotten some pretty incredible visibility, even just one idea of him on Pinterest. But I mentioned this, because the reels is all about entertainment. The carousel, the idea pins and carousel images are more about the education. And what's really interesting is that your results are going to vary. While everyone talks about video. I have one client and we were doing carousel images, we change the videos, the carousel images are actually outperforming the videos and there's a reason why it's the video. There's no interaction. The carousel has an interaction when someone actually flips through the photo, right? And the algorithm is done. It just sees Oh, I see interaction, right? Therefore, it is going to give more priority to that content creators content and to that piece of content as well. What's really interesting though, is we also or I should say well, I together with the team of my client, we also post these Instagram videos and Instagram carousel photos to Facebook. Now Facebook has a shareability perspective or option that Instagram doesn't. And we found that the carousel photos, were getting many more shares than the videos to the point where this Facebook business page was outperforming Instagram. So the carousel photo is still important. And your results are going to get a different with the video, especially when we talk about Facebook, right? or LinkedIn where we can use carousel photos. So but the carousel photo leads us into the idea pen is step by step. And that leads us into Google Web stories. If you're on an iPhone, you don't see it. If you're on an Android and you go to Google, you go to Google discover, you see web stories. These are driving massive traffic. It's not a social network. You can upload a Google Web Store if you're an Android user, or you can use the Google Web Store his WordPress plugin. And you can basically publish from your website these web stories that can generate a lot of traffic. This is something I have yet to do. But this is a way that you can repurpose carousel photos, idea pins, and now web stories. repurposing is more important than ever. It's easier than ever. And I believe if you look at these two branches, the entertainment branch of the reels And the education information branch of the idea pins, web stories, carousels, that those are the two things I think that you need to master going forward. Now, let's say your business is b2b, or your business doesn't have the resources to do it, or you don't have the resources to do it. That's where influencer marketing comes into play. Because if you can't create the content, there is a ton of people out there that can't can create the content that are creating the content that you need to figure out ways to collaborate with. That's the heart of what I wrote about in the age of influence. For those of you that are read it, people completely misunderstand, misinterpret influencer marketing, it's tapping into the influence of others in social media, whether they have 100 followers, or they have 1000 followers, right. And if you have 5000 followers, and there's someone that only has 10,000 followers, that's twice as many as you have, if there are 10 people with 1000 followers, that adds up to twice as many as you have. If you're just posting to your own profile, you're only reaching your immediate followers. Yes, when you do reels and stuff, you can reach more people. But when you work and collaborate with others and social media, that's where you can reach exponentially more people, especially if you're challenged with these new platforms. I'll never forget when Snapchat came out, big consumer brands were allowing the Logan Paul's of the world to do account takeovers because they couldn't create the content. They didn't have the creativity or the flexibility. But there's a lot of people out there that could like the Logan Paul's who became very famous, or obviously we have a lot of the platform that Twitter bought out. Why is it escaping me right now? It's not twitch? vine. Why did I think twitch But anyway, Vine, another thing, right? a platform that some people got really good at. People that have influenced people that are able to build followers are great content creators. And more and more these days, they're great creators of this type of content that businesses need in order to be seen. So there's a do it yourself approach. And there's a collaboration approach that is the trifecta. for social media marketing, for 2022. and beyond. It's something that I'm going to be working with my clients on, it's something that I am going to be doing myself with my own videos, I plan to be doing a heck of a lot more in YouTube, and I hope that you will as well. But this wraps up another episode of The your digital marketing coach podcast. As always, I really appreciate any reviews, any tags, posts, and social media letting me know that you are a listener, and any subscriptions that you do, you know, make sure you subscribe so you don't miss an episode. obviously have a lot of great episodes coming up not just my solo episodes, but a lot of great people that I am interviewing, and I really do appreciate your support now and into the future. We're in this together. If I can be of any help to you or your organization. Let me know I can answer your questions on this podcast slash live stream. Or I do have the digital first mastermind community where we are a group of marketers, entrepreneurs, business owners, just like you helping each other leverage digital and social media marketing as a strategic engine for our growth. All right, everybody. That's it. This is your digital marketing coach, signing off. You've been listening to your digital marketing coach, questions, comments, requests, links, go to podcast dot Neal schaffer.com. Get the show notes to this and 200 plus podcast episodes, and Neal Schaffer calm to tap into the 400 plus blog post that Neil has published to support your business. While you're there, check out Neil's digital first group coaching membership community if you or your business needs a little helping hand. See you next time on your digital marketing coach.