Social Media Secrets

Summary

Social media is essential for brand awareness, even if it doesn’t immediately convert to direct sales. Always maintain a presence, as removing it can lead to a revenue decline.
Social media marketing is rapidly growing, offering plenty of opportunities across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Each platform has strengths, such as TikTok’s high engagement and LinkedIn’s business-focused audience.
Engaging social media content can indirectly boost other marketing channels like email and blog traffic, enhancing overall ROI.
Paid social ads significantly generate revenue, especially among younger generations. Lean into ad investments to overcome organic reach limitations.
Short-form video content is highly effective for social media ads due to its engaging nature, but long-form content builds deeper connections.
Regularly test and adjust your ad strategies for the best ROI, using platforms’ AI tools to optimize creative content.
Pinterest is valuable, especially for reaching millennial audiences, and offers effective ad options with lower competition than giants like Facebook.
Employee-generated content (EGC) and user-generated content (UGC) are powerful for authenticity and trust-building. Encourage your team to contribute.
Influencer marketing remains impactful, expanding brand reach especially with micro-influencers who engage niche audiences.
Video content is vital, with platforms prioritizing it for engagement and SEO. Utilize both short and long form for a comprehensive strategy.
Social commerce is booming; make buying seamless through platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok to capture purchases directly in the app.
LinkedIn is a key platform for B2B efforts, driving traffic and building authority. Engage in storytelling and use LinkedIn ads effectively.
Don't overlook smaller, niche platforms like Reddit, Pinterest, or Discord; they offer unique opportunities to reach dedicated audiences.
Direct messaging is a highly effective conversion tool. Use DM strategies to engage directly and facilitate easier customer interactions.
Continually experiment with new content formats and platform features to stay relevant and improve engagement on social platforms.
Repurpose content across social networks to maximize exposure without needing original content for each one, boosting views by 2.5 times.
Avoid clickbait and prioritizing engagement to maintain credibility and avoid alienating your audience; know what's unattractive to them to prevent unfollows.
Both organic and paid strategies are important for a balanced approach. Use cross-platform synergies and adapt your strategy to your audience's preferences for maximum effect.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest starting with building and maintaining a strong social media presence. Even if sales don't happen instantly, just being on platforms like Instagram and TikTok helps people become aware of your brand. Your presence and consistency matter a lot. Think of it like planting seeds that will grow over time.

A good way of doing this is by creating engaging, short videos. These are really popular now and people love watching them. You don’t need fancy equipment—your phone will do just fine. Just make sure the content tells a story or offers something useful or entertaining.

Testing is key! Try posting different types of content and see what your audience enjoys the most. Use the free analytics tools that social media platforms offer to learn from each post. Experiment with various formats and styles.

If possible, involve others. Encourage your employees or friends to create their own content about the brand. This builds authenticity and trust because it's real people talking about what they like.

Consider exploring smaller platforms like Pinterest or Reddit where there's not as much competition. These might be less known than Facebook, but they can offer big opportunities if your audience is there.

Lastly, don't forget to use direct messaging to connect more deeply with your audience. It makes conversations personal and can lead to more sales. Just be friendly and helpful.

Remember, it’s about trying new things, seeing what works, and staying active on social media. Keep it fun and genuine!

Quotes by Author

"Organic reach is continually declining should we even spend time on social media what's the ROI?"

"Short form video is king and is the safest place to start"

"If you want more followers especially for your brand because social media is really where it's at you got to give them what they want"

"Pinterest has over 553 million monthly active users it's the 15th largest social media platform in the world"

"Influencer marketing has shifted it's still a major driver of social media and of conversions"

Full Transcript

[Music] heat heat up [Music] here [Music] [Applause] [Music] heat heat [Music] hello everyone thank you for joining today today we're going to be talking about social media secrets and I love this topic because when you think about social media a lot of people are like "Organic reach is continually declining should we even spend time on social media what's the ROI?" Well not only will we answer those questions for you but we'll show you what you need to do in today's world to do well in social media so let's dive right in i'm Neil Patel and I'm the co-founder of NP Digital uh and I have quite a few other people with me on my team here today um Kimberly do you want to give a quick introduction of yourself and then Eric you can do the same right after hi everyone i'm Kimberly D our director of digital PR over here at NP Digital and our digital PR team oversees link building traditional PR content marketing social media which we'll be talking about today and influencer marketing and I'm Eric Stebons associate director of paid social at NP Digital been in the marketing space for over a decade now five of those years at NP Digital working with some awesome clients along the way so really looking forward to uh discussing the social media secrets today so at NP digital we have a thousand plus people we work with a lot of big brands all over the world and we see a lot of what's working in social media and what's not and there's different patterns in different parts of the world um for example we see engagement higher in India than let's say the United States but in general a lot of the same strategies and concepts work globally it's just in some regions you'll find that you'll get a little bit more engagement than others anyway we go next slide kimberly or is it frozen or is it just me eric you there looks like Kim might be frozen she might have dropped out of here all right we're gonna wait for her to come right back there you go so some people say social media is a waste of time well we looked at 16 companies that have over a 100,000 followers and what ended up happening with these 16 companies they stopped posting on social media because they believed that it didn't drive a ROI and what we saw was after roughly 6 months the organic social traffic declined but more so the revenue declined by roughly 6% that was the average and what we learned from this whole uh analysis and experiment was that people find brands through social media but in many cases they don't convert right away but it builds that brand awareness so your brand's getting out there it's let's say a lot of times the first touch and then people are eventually coming back and then purchasing so if you remove that you're going to remove some of your revenue as well so now let's dive into the current state of social media marketing when you look at it it's the second fastest growing marketing channel from a year-over-year perspective there's a ton of opportunity with social media marketing a lot of people take it for granted there's just a lot of room to drive revenue facebook Snapchat Reddit Instagram Pinterest etc these companies wouldn't be large if it wasn't for their traffic producing a positive ROI and when you look at engagement rate by channel Tik Tok I know a lot is in the air especially in the US with Tik Tok you know they're trying to find a buyer but Tik Tok is really the king of engagement instagram also does well facebook does well x does well um from what we're seeing and this is all from social insider 2025 when we look at this the one other channel that's not mentioned here that we see performing extremely well right and I know social insider had their report here is LinkedIn and the main reason we also see LinkedIn performing really well they lack content see other social networks have an issue of people posting tons of content so they get to pick and choose what to show people linkedin lacks people posting content tons of users the users just don't post content so consider also posting there as well but engagement doesn't necessarily pay the bills uh social media posts with a ton of likes and shares doesn't necessarily mean it's going to drive ROI and you can see here for both B2B and B TOC the channels that are causing ROI but one thing to keep in mind channels like email right website traffic blog traffic these are all indirectly affected by social media if you get more social media traffic to your website you collect more emails if you get more social media traffic to your website you have more blog visitors website visitors right and some of these subscribe to your blog and then come back and then eventually buy so they may not purchase on the first touch but they are part of the journey kim frozen again looking like it uh let's see colin do you have the deck on your end can you just share your screen Colin or Barbara all right so now let's look at marketing leaders um when you look at marketing leaders they're prioritizing social media coordinators why because it's a really effective channel if social media wasn't converting and didn't have the eyeballs I believe the last stat I saw is the average person in the United States spends 2 hours and 27 minutes a day on social media if it wasn't commanding that much attention people wouldn't be spending um you know money on social media coordinators and we look at the top social media channels for 2025 here's a list from HubSpot but even if something's not the top channel keep in mind it can drive revenue maybe not as much as Facebook that's okay it all adds up when you think about some of the new players out there like Blue Sky Reddit Discord threads again these ones won't drive the volume as Facebook or Instagram or Tik Tok it's okay leverage each channel and optimize them for profitability and when you're deciding which social networks to leverage think about where your ideal customer is spending time are you targeting Gen Z millennials Gen X this gives you a good idea of which social networks work best depending on the audience type in you just may want to screenshot this so then that way you have it for future reference when you also look at behavior it's shifting gen Z is using social networks for search in many instances when you look at search now Google is still growing in popularity but it's declining in market share a lot of people are using social media uh AI platforms like Chat GPT to perform searches they're even using social media to get news whether it's X or whether it's Tik Tok or Instagram these channels social channels are also there for product discovery now people are starting to make a lot of purchases on Tik Tok and Instagram and you're going to just see these numbers explode once they get into live shopping so if you want more followers especially for your brand because social media is really where it's at you got to give them what they want a lot of people follow brands because of coupons they're interested in buying they're looking for incentives these are the main reasons that people follow a brand then they look for things like useful content or entertaining content but the top three reasons are the main reasons from our survey on why people follow a brand so just keep that in mind and hashtags you don't need them as much anymore they don't matter uh in today's world like they used to why because with AI they can understand the content and what it's truly about and hashtags which is a form of keywords don't matter as much awesome thanks Neil so from here we're going to cover the 11 social media marketing trends of 2025 the meat and potatoes of this uh webinar here kim and I will be splitting them up based on our expertise but for the first uh trend we're going to look at here is paytoplay while posting organically remains a must to stay engaged with your audience and to have that relevant content for users who are using these platforms now as search engines organic reach has been declining over the last few years almost all businesses individuals have discovered the value of having that online presence which is resulting in increased competition on these platforms and ultimately limiting that reach going viral still remains a huge opportunity for businesses and individuals but has become increasingly more difficult as that competition has gone up luckily we can circumvent these limitations with Ads Manager simply posting organically is no longer enough to just reach your audience's potential especially at scale the algorithms are increasingly prioritizing this paid content and if you're not investing in ads you're likely being drowned out so let's talk numbers because we know those don't lie here um organic social media is responsible for just 2.3% of total revenue according to an NP digital study compare that to paid ads at nearly 24% of that revenue the picture gets much clearer that paid is where immediate revenue is along with strong returns from SEO and email that Kim will be able to discuss what this tells us is organic posting helps brand building but it's not necessarily where that ROI lives so we know ads are effective for reach but who's engaging with these social the social ads the most as we would have all guessed the younger generations who've grown up with devices in their hands uh their whole lives are the most attuned to seeing these ads and most comfortable clicking through them gen Zers at 40 40% millennials at 36% are the most engaged now while boomers at 9% seems slim in comparison boomer's potential has been increasing significantly over the last few years and we'll talk more about that in some later slides so we know we need paid ads but what type of content should we be investing in well according to an MP Digital study short form video is king and is the safest place to start here soaking up 28% of all ad budget static images carousels and stories follow closely behind why because short form is where attention lives right now it's fast scroll stopping and algorithm approved long form not so much for from the paid perspective long form does have a ton of value in other areas that we'll discuss for now if you're just getting started trust this data lean into formats that are proven to be effective to get your feet wet after you start to see success then we can start testing into other opportunities so now the question becomes how do we maximize our ROI with every dollar we spend the short answer is testing while the algorithms have gotten much smarter they're only as good as the content and signals you're feeding them test your copy your visuals use the analytics as your north star and perhaps most importantly you have to remain agile platforms and algorithms are changing quick the brands that win are the ones that are evolving quickly leaning into new trends trying new content the goal isn't to just show up but it's to show up effectively all right so we've talked about the importance of investing and paid let's talk about how we can spend smarter platforms like Meta are going full throttle on AI powered optimization this means we're getting smarter budget allocations dynamic changes on the fly and simpler campaign structures instead of guessing which campaign ad formats will work best ai is already making optimizations for you based on an insane amount of data so what's the takeaway we're entering an era where human strategy and AI execution go hand in hand if you're not leaning into these tools you're not just missing out on efficiencies you're actually leaving performance on the table and AI is a powerful tool but it's not just but it's only as good as the inputs you give it if you're running just a couple ad variations you're almost starving the algorithm let's look at this chart on average marketers go through 50 to 60 creatives on platforms like Facebook and LinkedIn before finding that winner that's a lot why so much it's because the AI systems like Meta Advantage Plus campaigns thrive on variation to figure out what's working also serving specific creative to individuals in that moment that best aligns so you need to start testing enough creative to give AI a chance to win for you so testing 50 creatives can sound overwhelming but right now um it's achievable look at what we got from a single prompt from Adobe Firefly it spit out four unique creatives same vibe all unique in their own way um generating high quality images on brand has never been faster or easier if you missed the news last week from chat GPT I'm sure it's been buzzing around we kind of all seen it show up in our feeds that's changing the game right now we're not going to be covering it in detail during this webinar but it shows you how easy it is to break down these barriers to get into the paid space leveraging these AIs can they can spit out images um in a couple minutes and so using that handinand with the human creative team is great as we embrace AI in our creative development it is important to clarify as I just mentioned it's not about replacing human creativity it's about enhancing that in our internal study human generated creatives outperformed AI only 68% of the time but here's where collaboration can become effective when we used AI to generate variations based on those top performing human ads those new variations actually won 75% of the time so it's not just about choosing between human or machine it's about achieving speed scale and making tweaks quick with the combination so to be successful in 2025 brands aren't asking "Can AI replace humans?" It's "How can I supercharge my creative strategy that we're already great at?" And into some really cool stuff here we're now at a point in under 15 minutes you can go from a static image to fully animated sound design motion ad in this example the image was created through midjourney animated and imageart layered with music gen that's amazing we aren't just talking about faster production now this is giving brands the ability to test into new formats without changing their creative capabilities smaller brands that didn't used to have the resources to break down those barriers to get into video can now leverage placements like reels and Tik Toks with these tools so the ability the ability to scale visual storytelling quickly is a massive competitive edge kim I think you're on mute i think you're on mute Kim no not working we see you talking but we can't hear you all right I'll go for it so let's talk about Pinterest's power play you look at Pinterest has over 553 million monthly active users it's the 15th largest social media platform in the world and it has a very large female audience that are very active buyers you know when you think about Pinterest it's a great way to reach young audiences nearly 80% of millennial women and 40% of millennial men use Pinterest for inspiration um Jenz is Pinterest fastest growing audience and represents over 40% of the platform's users if you're not on Pinterest you should consider it even in B2B we're seeing small amounts of volume but we are seeing conversions on the B2B side as well and when you look at Pinterest as I mentioned not just B TOC we've used it for things like infographics which we've generated a lot of traffic from you can see the example there from Hootsweet but where we love Pinterest is even their ads we see a convert like uh we had ads running for how to get a website set up and we were able to drive it to landing pages that educated and monetize it profitably through affiliate marketing as well um and that's one of the hardest channels to monetize because you're paying for traffic then sending them to page and then getting paid out only for a conversion but it just shows Pinterest has a lot of potential and when it comes to pins you know creating high performing pins that convert you need to focus on trending categories use high v uh use visuals but ones that have high impact that are really clear easy to understand you want to optimize for pin dimensions don't get too crazy and then what you want to do is leverage educational uh infographics or some people call them instru and what we find is they just drive people from step one step two step three and it causes more of them to convert and you want to profit off of Pinterest ad options look there's a lot of options they have they can end up driving quite a bit of ROI they have a AI system of course that helps as well um but in general Pinterest isn't that competitive it can't drive the volume like of a Facebook Instagram or Tik Tok but it can drive a lot of profitable traffic over time and of course from UGC to EGC you know if you can um encourage your team and other people from your organization to help create content employees are a great way to get more content out there we do it for our own corporation um I highly recommend that for businesses as well and when you think about EGC you know your employees talk to a lot of customers and they know what's working well and what's not so you really want to consider making sure that you keep your employees in the loop especially on the content creation side because it's going to produce some sort of ROI that you may not be thinking due to the fact that even if you're the business owner or your executive if you're not touching your customers daily you probably don't know their needs and wants as much as your employees i'm not trying to be rude about that it's the reality and this is why EGC is super important user generated content is even better because it has that authentic third-party validation it's not your brand talking about your brand it's people who already know your brand and love your brand that are talking about it it really helps to break through the noise build real trust we also recommend using UGC and EGC in social media ads that that really helps them break through the noise and convert in a bigger way so employee generated content is just a little bit different it's not your customers or your users it's your employees they're really able to give an authentic view of your company culture and it puts the spotlight on the credible experts that are behind the brand people want to learn and buy from brands that they trust and employee generated content videos really humanize your brand this allows your customers to build a relationship with the people that are behind the company logo and it makes the partnership and the purchase more personal for them now moving into influencers as our next secret here influencer marketing has shifted it's still a major driver of of social media and of conversions but it influencers are driving the evolution of social media they're an incredibly influential part of the purchase journey across all different stages of the journey as well from discovery to inspiration to conversion influencers provide that authentic valuable information that helps move your potential customers closer to conversion whether that's Tik Tok YouTube or any of these other rising social media platforms there are creators that are influencing audiences there 63% of consumers say they're more likely to buy a product if it's recommended by an influencer i know I've been moved to convert from listening to an influencer show off a product or give their detailed experience with with an experience and I know many of you on this call have too millennials are the most inclined to respond well to influencer recommendations but there is an influencer for every brand and for every industry and we've worked with many of them from trucking to B2B software to women's jewelry and truly everything in between there is a creator with an audience you are trying to reach the key is to partner with the right influencers who align with your brand and who speak to your target audience then build those deeper relationships and partnerships with influencers so the more they authentically have relationships with your brand the more the better they can promote it to their audiences influencer marketing one of the biggest benefits of it is expanding your brand awareness beyond your own reach reaching tens of thousands of new people enhances visibility within social platforms it helps to build mentions and backlinks which are Google ranking signals and it increases the likelihood of those videos and information being pulled into Google search results and AI search results we love micro influencers here at NP Digital these are those creators that have 10,000 to 100,000 followers they're posting regularly they have very close connections with their followers because of because of these factors we really see higher engagement with micro influencers higher engagement and conversion rates both on B2B and BTOC partnerships with micro influencers you're going to capture a more targeted audience that are interested in more specific topics so you can drill in more niche and it's going to provide more value than a macro influencer or a celebrity influencer who has a large but a much more varied following we're now in a search everywhere landscape and the same SEO principles that apply to your website need to be applied to social and influencer content you can set your influencers up for success by providing direction on the specific target audience that you're trying to reach with that video and providing the keywords that they should include in their script on-screen text and captions to help that content be seen and displayed in as many places as possible we always recommend accepting the collab post request so that your content can also be seen by your audiences and then repurposing that influencers creative across ads website newsletter content wherever it makes sense for your brand awesome let's take a look at trend number six the continued domination of video this year over 80% of all internet traffic is expected to come from video and when it comes to engagement video outperforms text and image content by over 1,200% in share rates alone platforms like Tik Tok Instagram reels and YouTube shorts are driving a lot of this shift creating an environment where motion sound and storytelling are now almost the default of communication and with AI making video production faster than ever there are few barriers as to why video needs to be in your content strategy so let's talk about the format shift first off when we're thinking of video we immediately think of social however Google has been making moves out of texton ads for a while now back in 2020 Google was almost exclusively showing long- form videos in search results fast forward to now short form video is taking over it jumped from barely 3% to over 30% of what's showing up and that number continues to climb google's pulling content from Tik Tok Instagram reels and even shorts why because it's fast it's engaging and it's also mobile first short form is no longer just for social it's becoming a search play and as we've talked about and something we alluded to earlier is short form clearly has a ton of value especially from a paid perspective um especially top ofunnel with engagement and reaching audiences however long form still plays a critical role and should not be overlooked especially when it comes to retention and building authority with your audience looking at these stats when people were asked what kind of content they actually remember long form crushed short form you can see that 35 to 3% that's a huge gap and shows the value in long form media this isn't just older audiences gen Z millennials are into long form more than you'd expect over half of Gen Z is it's one of their favorite types of content and platforms love it too to that point social platforms are actively embracing long- form video because it supports more ad placements for them and has high monetization potential for them platforms like Tik Tok are leaning in hard you can now post videos up to 10 minutes at one point they tested 60 minute uploads that is wild for an app that made their name on 15 to 30 second videos so why the shift the short answer is money uh long form videos let these platforms run more ads and make more money and they also keep the users engaged much longer and it's a win-win for those platform so while short form can get you discovered long form builds that relationship with those users a good way to think of it short form pulls people in more top of funnel long form keeps them engaged nurturing them through that funnel and as we talk about video domination we've been highly focused on the benefits of leveraging within social channels but we want to make sure YouTube is not forgotten about as Neil was mentioning we need to be leveraging all these platforms even if they're smaller they still have their own value and YouTube has huge value especially with the growth in YouTube shorts it's becoming its own standalone social channel and content should be leveraged across all social platforms more and more people are discovering YouTube videos from outside platforms as well think Google search blog embedments email and LinkedIn this means your content has a much larger footprint than just siloed out in these individual platforms however when we are optimizing these videos make sure you're optimizing your titles your descriptions your transcripts because it helps Google's algorithm um really find and connect with that correct audience and trend seven social shopping which is absolutely blowing up right now um we'll get into all the details here but it's already over a $700 billion market and it's projected to hit $6.2 trillion by 2030 yes trillion and when we ask businesses where they're investing social shopping came in at number one i had AI podcast and even search this isn't surprising platforms are making the checkout process and commerce more seamless you don't need to leave the app to buy anymore instagram shops Tik Tok shops and even YouTube product tagging features are removing that friction and it's making fewer clicks and faster conversions so as we talk about social shopping winning which platforms are working the best it's pretty clear the top three are Facebook Tik Tok and Instagram but now before we dive into these individual stats this is an aggregate true value of each of these platforms will depend on your own audience and where your product truly lives um according to Sprouto Facebook leads at 39% Tik Tok's right behind it at 36 and Instagram holding strong at 29 this makes Meta the dominant force right now because you get to tap into both Facebook and Instagram placements from the same ads manager but Tik Tok is closing in fast because of its seamless in-app checkout and viral discovery engine these platforms are no longer just content channels they're full-blown commerce ecosystems and they're actually becoming storefronts for some of these brands and if you think social shopping is just a Gen Z thing think again there is no age limits yes Gen Z and millennials are super active but check the chart out gen X and boomers are in the game too they're finding products researching brands and yes even buying directly from the social feed in fact 37% of all shoppers say they've discovered new products on social media and 31% are using social media to research products and then making the purchase so this isn't just a you trend it's full-blown across all ages even your parents are likely clicking buy now on Instagram too for me individually I was just at a golf uh tournament with my dad went back we were cleaning our clubs and he had a new uh a new cleaning tool for his golf clubs asked him where he got it he said he bought it on Instagram that's when I knew this takeover had really reached kind of all generations they're seeing the benefit in it as well we see the shift happening across all ages it is important to note millennials still represent the largest share here um next slide Colin represent the largest share um of commerce in 2025 at 33% the data does support it um 82% are engaged with the brands half are following their favorite brands here and over a third are discovering new stuff in their feed so millennials are digital natives grown up with around phones and technology and now hold the purchasing power and are shaping the future of that social shopping and for a full circle moment here video does run the show on social commerce as well um people aren't just watching they're buying users want to see the product in action they want to hear from people again UGC EGC is really important here um before making that purchase and YouTube alone has pulled in $28 million in inapp purchases in 2024 for YouTube um so that's crazy to see just these other platforms growing we talked about the top three but seeing that growth in YouTube as well is showing the shift number eight new ways to leverage LinkedIn linkedin is our number one social platform for B2B marketers it has a growing user base across every kind of industry and is a channel that has great potential reach to build your network and drive social traffic like other social platforms your LinkedIn strategy should be about 80% dedicated to inspiring educating and entertaining your audience linkedin has the potential to drive a high volume of targeted traffic back to your website content and your engaging LinkedIn content should be linking to that link to things like blogs comprehensive guides white papers datadriven reports calculators and other helpful resources that you have on your site make sure that when you are adding those links on your LinkedIn profile that it's adding more value you're giving the user a reason to click on that link giving them a good experience when they do and then the next time they see your post with a link in it they're more likely to go ahead and click on it thought leadership is one of the top content types on LinkedIn linkedin is a place for brand storytelling and just storytelling in general case studies customer experience stories it's a great place for workrelated humor and it's a place for employees to chime in as we said before with EGC content don't forget about community management that's a key part of LinkedIn as well and involving your employees all the comments and shares that your posts get help expand the visibility of that post so you want to make sure that you're commenting back to it and um rewarding your users for engaging with you linkedin ads the advertising side of LinkedIn has its advantages it is able to reach generate leads and convert from targeted roles industries and audiences at a lower rate often a lower cost than other channels and it's a great option for B2B of course number nine investing in those less popular networks and niche communities it seems like 2025 is the year of niche communities specifically Reddit has been the star of the show this year with forums ranking in Google search results at a higher rate than we've seen in years past and faster than we've seen before google's even currently testing a forums tab in its search results because users are searching more in forums discord Pinterest might have lost her neil if you want to take it can you guys share the slides again colin sorry about that everyone some technical difficulties yeah usually we're pretty good at this colin any way you can share the slides uh there you go she's back go for it Kim i'm not sure where I dropped off for you but I'll just kind of start from here so we know that these niche communities are growing this year reddit has been extremely popular in 2025 and users are gravitating more there for that user generated content google's ranking forums google's even testing a forums feature in its tab search results because users are gravitating more towards these types of communities discord Pinterest Blue Sky these are channels where users are directly going to find the information that they're looking for and I'm we're not telling you to be everywhere all at once but you should consider if your target audience is starting to adopt these less competitive channels and take advantage early of the opportunity to meet them where they are the underlining tone of these emerging spaces really is about community you need to contribute authentically here to expand your brand's reach and really find success in these new spaces you do this by leveraging your real experts your employees your thought leaders the experts that you work with to comment contribute and add value authentically things like LinkedIn groups and collaborative articles is a great place Facebook groups for every topic under the sun and of course subreddits your brand will benefit more by prioritizing what you can give to these communities versus what you will immediately get back in return sliding into their DMs uh can be used now by businesses as social algorithms evolve and attention becomes more fragmented marketers are finding success in shifting conversations into a more personal space here um specifically DMs whether it starts with a comment a story reply or even a paid ad bringing those conversations into the DMs makes it feel more direct and way more effective and there's tools out there like Mini Chat you can actually automate a ton of this sending lead magnets answering FAQs or collecting emails all without human interaction but really feeling like that organic uh onetoone connection there we've tested it and it works um on this next slide here you'll see deja vu with Neil's face again if we can get there Kim I think it's Barbara uh just back one um talking about the success that we've seen here we've posted this is a completely organic post no ads all we ask the people to comment leak and it automatically DM them a link super simple super clean and the results showed it pulled in 541 leads led to 35 discovery calls and ended with a $109,000 deal all from one post this what happens when you make engagement feel effortless no forms or waiting it's just instant interaction we're not going through Salesforce and it takes days for a sales rep to reach out and people feel comfortable meeting them in this space so if you're looking for ways to turn the attention into action direct messaging is actually one of the most effective conversion channels available right now um and has explosive growth our 11th and final social media secret is around experimenting with content to see what gets engagement organic social media is not dead social platforms are constantly releasing new content formats and features and the algorithms reward the content that uses them so when a new feature comes out use it and that will help your content be seen by more people things like polls carousels with music and longer Tik Tok videos are just a few of the recent enhancements that have been made to these platforms and the algorithm adjusted to reward that content as a brand you can incorporate these content features into your social media strategy to unlock higher engagement see what performs best and then continue to iterate on that content format moving forward social content format should be tailored to the target audience as well as to the algorithm right you're trying to reach the person so for example Gen Z likes to engage with more entertaining content things like games and challenges great example of this is Mr beast Beast Games millennials on the other hand love their infographics gen X loves learning content and everyone loves a poll so give someone something to engage with and get the engagement user engagement as a result of it so now let's talk about maximizing your social media ROI in 2025 when you think about social media certain content types appeal to different audiences so for example if you're going to do webinars they appeal really well to millennials but on the flip side you know you look at Gen Z they don't care for webinars as much as let's say millennials and then there's certain content types like long form and short form videos that appeal to all types of people what you want to do here is think about the type of content you create make sure the content you're creating is ideal for your targeted audience and when it comes to posting on social media you probably want to just take a screenshot of this you can see the stars for the days and times per platform on what's ideal and the timing would be in your own time zone right so if you're targeting customers in Pacific Standard Time well you can use this rubric for targeting customers in Pacific Standard Time and you would just adjust the time zone based on where your ideal customers are if you also are a big believer in hey you need to create unique content for every social network I agree that is ideal but it's not realistic for most businesses and a lot of businesses believe well if I can't create unique content for every single social network out there I'm only going to post on the networks that I have content for well when we look at companies who repurpose versus ones who don't the ones who repurpose generate 2.5 times more views on average so repurpose your content it's better to do it than not to do it if you already created the content might as well get views if you don't want to do it you're just not going to get as many views and when posting make sure you avoid the common sins things like using clickbait headlines you think that they can get you more engagement but it also gets a lot of people to be uh pissed off about your brand and it hurts your image in the long run and same with exaggerating content or posting fake content or sharing boring or uninspired you know content make sure that you focus on quality and what quality really means it varies per audience what Gen Z is looking for is very different than someone who is a millennial in the B2B category you got to make sure that you're adapting your content to your ideal audience and giving them more of what they want and avoid the stuff in the chart because that's the main reason we're seeing that people are unfollowing brands and this is according to 18,000 plus survey respondents so key takeaways you want to stay up to date with consumer preferences if you're giving them what they want you're much more likely to do better and when it comes to organic versus paid ads they both are effective organic isn't as effective as it used to be but it still is effective overall you want to invest in both of them and take advantage of crossplatform synergies and doing things like repurposing as well so if you need help with your social media marketing you can scan the QR code right there and we can end up uh scheduling call with you see what you're doing that's working see what you're doing that's not working and help you out or you could just go to npdigital.com and of course we have an upcoming webinar that's happening in two weeks from now um you can also scan the QR code for that although I think we're having internet connections on maybe Kim's or Barbers End so let's just dive right into Q&A the tech gods are always against us it seems on an April Fool's Day maybe that maybe that has something to something to do with it so Neil there were tons of questions uh and I think you kind of answered it at the wrap up there but I'm going to ask it anyway so is organic social kind of dead or dying i don't think so right no it's not dead um it still is effective and you got to pick and choose the platforms correctly the most the biggest reason people feel organic social is dead is they don't get the engagement if you look at most of channels what they optimize for is how long does someone watch your video adam Maser even said this for Instagram the longer you can get people to watch your content the better off you're going to do and the reason most people don't watch content isn't the editing or anything like that is because people talk about the same regurgitated stuff over and over again and they want new stuff and to add on to that it's uh actually been a way for me i recently just looked for a car cleaning service I would come to the house i actually used Instagram organic post to decide which company I was going to go with based on what they were posting so beyond just the reach you're getting from the initial post as people are trying to decide which company which product to go with they're finding you in the feed and your organic content that way yeah I like your dad Eric i buy stuff off of Insta all the time uh so Neil Neil another one for you you had a slide that showed top reasons why users follow brands um does that apply do you think to to nonprofits too or do nonprofits need sort of an entirely different strategy and approach to everything we spoke about today i mean most of this stuff works for nonprofits the main reason people follow nonprofits is the cause and to learn more about it and uh you know find out what they're doing or what they're not doing or seeing the results or making sure that the nonprofit's actually legitimate uh and not scammy but yeah for most nonprofits most of the strategies we talked about today work and some of the platforms may offer uh grants for nonprofits so you should look into that word uh Neil Kim is there any research to show how people are reading blogs given the rise of chat GPT and all the other stuff that's going out there we had a slide that spoke to social content and two people asked that same question like are there any stats on just blog consumption given everything else that's that's going on out there or or no we're not seeing much change this on how people consume blog content because of AI um we've looked at a lot of data and analytics uh you know for a lot of blogs when I say a lot of blogs well over a thousand and we're just looking at average patterns and we really haven't seen much change the big thing we see AI really you know affecting is people using it for research so instead of asking Google 20 different questions and then compiling all the results and doing a research to come up with the answer people are just going to like chat GPT typing in a very detailed question um and I'll give you a great example of this i saw uh someone showed me an example of this one of my buddies is really into fitness and he talks about this concept of macros which I don't know what is right i think it's something like calories or I don't know and he ends up breaking down like "Here's my weight here's my age here's my height uh I'm trying to gain whatever muscle or strength or whatever his goals are and tell me a plan and this is what I eat." And he breaks it all down and it analyzes and gives an answer and it tells you how to adjust like that's the kind of stuff people are using AI for it's really detailed answers for very very specific questions yeah it's gamechanging trisher uh one for you Eric this came up twice um and it was about in the middle of the the presentation how do you control or can you control that an ad doesn't get served 50 times a day to a certain user like is that that's possible right like so yeah I think they're asking it how you can control frequency uh right now there is no with the depends on your objective right you could run a reach and frequency campaign in that case you would be able to choose your frequency however when you're running a conversion campaign there's no good way to do that right now um I did just do a think group with meta and there's potential of something like that coming uh just to tease that out but we'll see if uh that goes through right now as far as conversion campaigns go um no you kind of just have to let the algorithm do its Right on Kim one for you we talked a little bit about micro influencers several people said like "What's the best approach to find micro influencers for you know my business or or my niche or industry any tips on how to find good micro influencers one of the best ways to find them is to leverage an influencer database software which we use here but if you don't have access to one of those then I would recommend looking up content that you would want the influencer to post so if it's on tax tips for married couples search that see who's already talking about it then find those that would qualify as your micro influencer from there right on scrolling through the list here eric you're a popular man today any social platform recommendations for folks that are in the services business um I know we showed some sort of upand cominging platforms don't know if those apply or not but any any tidbits of of thoughts there would be good services I mean service is very broad right uh so I don't know exactly which company that would align with i would say having a social media presence is mandatory for just about every business right now though um as I just talked about service industry car washing car detailing I found somebody through Instagram so I think there's no reason to not be on some of these platforms um especially with the ability to generate content through these AI machines uh reducing the kind of barriers to entry there yeah good answer and then we get this one a lot and I think we do a pretty good job of answering but it's tough and maybe it varies by platform but is is there a time limit or just some guard rails on the difference between short form and long form when we're when we're talking about video yes yeah go ahead Neil it's based on the platform every platform has its own time limit for long form videos and short form for example LinkedIn if I upload from a uh a mobile device I can only upload a 10-minute long form video if I upload from a computer I can upload I think 15 minutes is the maximum length on LinkedIn if I want to upload from you know a computer on YouTube I can upload an hour plus video right so each network um has their links youtube their short form videos in theory have to be shorter than let's say Instagram yep any anything to add Eric are you good i would just say short form has gotten a little bit longer we used to think of short form as like six second 15 second videos i think that now can be out into the 30 second to a minute range uh would be the only thing I add all right and then while we have you um last one because we're approaching time here um what's the best place to stay on top of new features specific to social media i'm going to go out on a limb and say neilpel.com is a is a great place np Digital does a really good job of rounding up everything that's going on and we're posting those to NP Digital on a monthly basis so go download that but any where where are your favorite places to sort of you know stay on top of all of this stuff eric you're on it and whoever asked that they're on it as well coming to webinars like this is exactly the place you want to be kind of hearing from industry experts how other people are running it um social media social media news ad weeks those are obviously all kind of uh ones we've all heard about a great place though is really within LinkedIn uh has been one of my favorites right now kind of following thought leaders within the space um again they're super active and so being able to hear kind of different tests that they're running different um tweaks that they're seeing again these social platforms only release so much data they're making so many backend updates that we're not reading aren't making the blogs and so hearing people that are testing into them um other thought leaders is a great place to do that and LinkedIn has worked for me good stuff that's all we have well everyone appreciate your time thank you guys for everything and if uh you ever need any help on your marketing check out npdigital.com and sorry for all the technical issues today take care [Applause] [Music] heat heat [Music]