BY Kathy Crosett
Social media remains a major force in marketing. As the number of platforms continues to increase, businesses are evaluating how much and where to invest. Among the social media tasks on business’ list this year is the need to use the format as a listening tool.
Social Media Program Goals
The 2025 State of Social Media report from Meltwater includes perspectives from B2B and B2C decision-makers. And the survey incorporates data from large and small businesses.
Social media has been around for decades. But marketers don’t feel they’ve mastered it. Around 50% of respondents rate their social media program skills as intermediate. They know what they want to do. But achieving their goals is challenging. These challenges arise primarily due to a resource shortage.
The vast majority of businesses, 77%, believe organic social media will be more important to their organization this year. With the increased focused on social channels, marketers expect to:
- Raise brand awareness 77%
- Connect with customers 30%
- Increase brand engagement 50%
Engaging with consumers and attracting more attention can come about through investment in many different media formats. In 2025, video posts will take first place, with over 75% of marketers using the format on their social sites. Around 60% will use carousels. Site visitors typically engage more with this type of content versus static photos, which only around 30% of marketers will prioritize this year.
Around 30% of surveyed businesses will boost their social media marketing investment. But 46% will keep the funding level the same as last year. The marketers most likely to allocate the same dollar amount operate in the B2B sector. Funding restrictions will make it challenging for businesses to complete all their social media tasks this year.
In particular, 22% of businesses are up against their limited video capabilities. This limitation is partly due to overall team bandwidth issues, faced by over 60% of marketers. Quality videos can be difficult and time consuming to produce.
Range of Social Sites
Marketers don’t limit their social presence to one site. And they adjust where they are active from year to year. Facebook long ruled the social media scene. But in the past year, Instagram outpaced Facebook as the site proving useful for social media business activity. And while the number of businesses that use Facebook dropped slightly in the past year, the number using LinkedIn increased.
Around 27% of marketers in the Americas will reduce their Facebook use, and 54% will cut back on their X activity. Over 60% of marketers continue to use YouTube for organic social media.
Posting Frequency and Timing
Marketers must also balance the frequency of posting on social channels against desired outcomes. For over half of marketers, the posting cadence of between 3 and 4 times a week is about right.
The timing of posts matters too. Not all social sites appeal to the same audiences. And not every marketer targets the same audience.
But in general, posting on Facebook between 9:00 a.m. and 1:00 p.m. between Tuesday and Friday, yields the best outcomes.
On LinkedIn, where the target is usually a B2B-oriented audience, posting on Wednesday and Thursdays between 7:00 a.m. and 8:00 a.m. will increase visibility.
Social Media Outsourcing
If your accounts are struggling to keep up with their social media tasks, offer to manage it for them. While around 79% are handling their social media channels internally, 21% are using outside contractors for this work. The tasks they most commonly hire out include paid social and non-video content production.
In addition, help them understand which audiences are most likely to be influenced by social media. Some consumers will respond to paid social ads. Others will notice and take action after seeing a post on their favorite social media platform. These details are available with a subscription to AudienceSCAN, powered by AdMall.
Social Listening
Brands are also using their social media sites in another way. They are turning to social listening to understand what consumers are saying. Around 50% of marketers engage in this activity. For 77% of businesses, social listening is all about monitoring brand reputation.
For other marketers, social listening can yield competitive intelligence. Around 40% of marketers are benchmarking themselves against their competitors with social media data they collect. The social listening activity can be labor intensive when it’s added to the other social media tasks. To reduce that effort, around 76% of marketers use software. For those that don’t, around half use Google Alerts and the other half monitor manually.
Paid Social Media
In the Meltwater survey, around 78% of businesses reported paying for social media ads. Most of these businesses spend between 2% to 3% of their marketing budget on paid social. Over 80% of these marketers also see paid social as being more important in the coming year.
The same social channels that receive the investment of organic social media benefit from paid social: Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn. However, researchers detected a shift in the type of posts being used for paid social.
Single images are the clear favorite for over 75% of marketers. Video has been slow to catch up, but this year, up to 70% of marketers may use video in paid social ads.
Summary
Your accounts are likely using both paid and organic social media to expand their reach. The list of social media tasks can easily overwhelm marketers. Pitch your services to help them optimize their program and their outcomes.
