How can you persuade the board to embed social media into your business? What are the most important trends and actions that you should be prepared for? Let's dive into the top 10 trends.
1. Turning your employees into your brand ambassadors, (or Employee Advocacy as you may hear it called) is here to stay
Gartner is predicting that by 2023, 90% of B2B social media marketing strategies will incorporate scaled employee advocacy programs. We’ve been talking about employee advocacy for years, and the latest research shows that when employees share content, the content achieves a 200% higher click-through rate (CTR) than when the company shares it, according to LinkedIn. Source.
If you are just about to start a new employee advocacy program or scale your existing one, check out our kick-start guide here.
2. HR & Marketing Should Become Buddies
With 76% of employees stating that culture is very or extremely important to them, but only 24% (Source), of workers actually feeling connected to their company culture, HR and Marketing are uniquely placed to help each other out. Here are some practical examples to take away:
- Members of both the marketing and HR teams can post inspiring stories, company accomplishments, and personal anecdotes about the company and the brand to communicate with customers and potential employees.
- Company events that allow leadership to communicate directly with employees and build trust are a great way to collaborate. HR can arrange the events while marketing can promote them both externally and internally. When HR and marketing work together to create moments where employees can interact with leaders, employees feel more appreciated.
- Share data and findings with each other. In the case of HR and marketing, HR can share information gathered from employee interviews, while marketing can share information gathered from customer satisfaction surveys. This creates a brilliant content creation opportunity for both teams.
3. Embedding Social Selling Enablement Into Sales Enablement Platforms
Enterprise organisations are investing in sales enablement platforms (for example, Seismic, Salesloft, and Showpad) to streamline how they enable their sales teams, provide easy-to-follow learning paths and be able to track knowledge transfer.
In 2023, we’ll see more Social Selling programs embedded into these platforms (something we’re already doing with ServiceNow and Henkel) to make the learning experience more streamlined and relevant for sales employees.
4. Marketing And Communications Need To Get Better At Marketing And Communicating Themselves On LinkedIn
This is less of a prediction and more of a wish! It’s cobblers’ shoes to them, but to truly understand the power and impact of marketing, they need to start with themselves. LinkedIn is a great platform for professionals to invest in their own learning too – within the ever-changing marketing landscape, it’s crucial to stay up to date with the latest trends.
5. Your Employees Are Already Content Creators
Employee-generated content is going to be huge – advocacy platforms will move this way to help employees contribute content to the platform and even create content within it. If you haven't already, it's time to get on the front foot by enabling your employees and keeping them safe online.
Check out our recent discussion with Chris Kim, from Airtable discussing how best to encourage employee-generated content.
6. Employee Experts Will Become Influencers
At a recent marketing event panel discussion, somebody in the audience asked, “How do I get hold of a database of influencers”, to which I replied ‘You actually already know your most important influencers, they are your employees.’ This becomes even more powerful when you connect your employee experts with external influencers.
Of course, fee-based influencer programs will still have a place, but smart brands are building long-term relationships that scale and most importantly of all, are authentic.
7. Joining The Dots - Ditch The Siloes
Social media will grow significantly in 2023, see the graph below. It's time to ditch the siloes and build programs across the business, not just from within the marketing team. We're going to see more roles higher up in the organisation wrapping their arms around all social-related programs – organic, advocacy, influencer, and social selling.
Source: Hubspot 2022
8. More Executives Will Move To Social – Even Though They Might Not Want To
Employees expect it. Financial markets expect it. Those organisations that will get ahead in the talent crisis and the big shift will be those that have leaders walking the talk on social – they’ll be visible, human, accessible, and relatable – not corporate, stuffy, polished, or ‘trained’.
9. LinkedIn Algorithm Research
Of course, we couldn't finish without a shout-out to Richard van der Blom LinkedIn report that came out last month. No more than 10 emojis per post, plus some good insights on how much reach your shares and reposts are likely to generate.
10. The Future Of Social Marketing
Last but not least, check-out Hootsuite’s predictions for social media marketing next year – it’s all about the creator economy!
We hope you have found this summary useful, please leave us a comment if you'd like to add anything else to the list. Happy 2023 planning!
