Since most of us use
Facebook, we think we know how effective it will be, or what kind of posts
garner the most attention and interaction. Since we have a Twitter account, we
have a sense of knowledge about how it works, and what a business should do (or
not do) on Twitter.
All that is great, but
how much of our social media behavior is founded upon fact.
1. Email marketing has
an ROI of 4,300%.
What? A statistic
about email? You thought this was about social media, right?
The basic fact is
this: Email marketing has a huge ROI — way better than any social media
marketing ROI can ever dream of achieving. Compare 4,300% that with the ROI of
social media, which is crawling around on the floor. Is there even a
comparison?
Take a look at this
chart of ecommerce sites to find out where these sites got their customers.
Here are the top six sources:
Paid and organic
search have the highest customer acquisition percentages. The next biggest
contender is email. Based on its ROI — higher than paid and organic search —
it’s a no brainer. Email marketing is awesome.
According to the chart
above, the fascinating thing about email marketing is that its acquisition
rates are rising dramatically. It has quadrupled over the past four years.
Email marketing’s effectiveness far outranks any social media platform, and its
growth outstrips them.
Even the customer
lifetime value (CLV) of social media is hardly worth a second glance. Again,
email marketing crushes social media by a huge margin:
Simply put, email
marketing is way more effective than social media marketing. It has greater
effectiveness, better ROI, and higher CLV.
Spend
more time and money on email marketing than on social media marketing.
2. YouTube has the
highest engagement and lowest bounce rate.
Whenever we think of
“social media,” we automatically think of Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.
What about YouTube?
Check out these engagement stats!
·
Average time on site:
227 seconds
·
Average pages per
visit: 2.99
·
Average bounce rate:
43.19%
How does this stack up
against the rest of the social media landscape? Decide for yourself:
“YouTube is the undisputed champion. YT drives
the most engaged traffic.”
YouTube deserves more
of your social media time and effort. You can’t afford notto put more work into creating and adding
videos. The more YouTube content, the more you’ll engage your potential
customers.
If you want engaged
traffic, spend time optimizing YouTube.
3. Facebook drives
more referrals than any other social platform.
Want to know which
social media site sends you the most amount of traffic? It’s Facebook — by far.
Facebook crushed the
competition, asserting itself as the most powerful social media referral engine
on the planet.
Companies
gripe and complain over the way that Pages have been squashed in the Facebook algorithm. Facebook
wants more ad revenue.
But even though page
interaction is shrinking, there’s nothing shrinking about the number of
referrals that Facebook continues to drive. Simply stated, Facebook still
drives more traffic than any other social media site, soaring way above its
nearest referral competition, Pinterest.
Many marketers have
become disillusioned with Facebook.
The super long breakup letter that went into overtime
with a P.P.P.S.S.S. was full of foodie talk and hurt feelings. But they were
gone from Facebook for good.
If
you have a fan base below 10,000 (that’s most of us), and only 28 interactions
per post, please don’t be discouraged, don’t binge eat, and don’t write a
breakup letter. You’re right where you ought to be, as ranked by Social Baker’s average interaction chart.
And if you’re in an
unsexy industry like finance or telecom, you can expect your average post
interaction to be lower, than say, an alcohol or fashion site.
In spite of the
apparent downward spiral of Facebook metrics, I suggest not giving up on Facebook. Though it is fickle,
and though your page isn’t featured at the top of everyone’s news feed, and
though you may have to turn up your party music while you check your stats,
Facebook is still giving you referrals.
“A counterintuitive way to combat Facebook
reach: Stop caring about it.”
4. Pinterest pins are
worth 78 cents each.
First off, a Pinterest
disclaimer (or two), and then a Pinterest happy dance.
The first disclaimer
is this — Pinterest has high bounce rate (53%) and low engagement. Disclaimer
number two: Pinterest doesn’t work for everyone. If you are into food, crafts,
photography, weddings, design, fitness, humor, travel, fashion, and
inspirational quotes, then Pinterest is killer. It holds promise for some, but
not for all.
The happy dance is
this — Pinterest is the second biggest social media referral platform. Though
it trails Facebook distantly, it still beats out Twitter, YouTube, Google+, and
LinkedIn by a sizeable margin.
Now, let’s talk about
ROI. Pinterest, as it turns out, does have one. But it’s a delayed reaction.
When a pinner curates his or her pinboard, it takes a while for there to be
social buildup, let alone revenue. Unlike Twitter, which has a short half-life,
Pinterest visits increase as time goes on. It’s like wine. The older, the
better.
As it turns out, the
revenue doesn’t start happening until more than two months after pinning.
Pinners spend more time exploring other people’s pinboards then they do
searching for stuff offsite to pin. The average Pinterest pin gets 10 repins,
but it takes time for those pinners to start repinning pins. This leads to a
corresponding delay in revenue.
Pinterest is money,
but it’s slow money. It’s like investing in a CD or a bond. The egg just takes
a little while to hatch.
5. 65% of Twitter
users expect a response in under two hours.
Customers use Twitter
like a company hotline. If you don’t respond within minutes, you’re toast. Here
are the lofty chronological expectations of Twitter users, in all their
statistical glory:
