What was 2014 in social media like? The World Cup in Brasil showed potential of real-time marketing, Luiz Suarez’s biting virally took over Twitter in June. Twitter went visual all the way, but the use of hashtags in tweets still seems to be crucial. We covered all those topics and many more on our blog, bringing you solutions, tips and news from social media world. We even took a glimpse on the future of social media measurement. Read five best posts from our blog from the last year.

FIFA World Cup in Facebook marketing – you don’t need to be a sponsor to hijack news and engage fans

During the FIFA World Cup social media have been overpowered by football excitement. The biting of Suarez, the staggering victory of the German team over Brazil and finally brave fight for the Cup were only a few pretexts for brands to use the real-time marketing. Sponsors of the FIFA World Cup paid huge money and tired to use the sponsorship also for social media marketing. However, some of their competitors were referring to the World Cup too, sometimes with big success, as our analysis shows. No matter if you are an official sponsor of a big event or not, you can use it to engage your social media fans. Read more.

Good examples of news hijacking during FIFA World Cup 2014

Good examples of news hijacking during FIFA World Cup 2014

How to use hashtags in Twitter marketing?

Hashtags are inherent part of Twitter communication and a way of highlighting topics in tweets. They can also help in getting more attention from users. The popularity of specific hashtags reflects interests of followers. Because every profile has its own group of unique followers, there is no universal hashtag that everyone could use and win. There are various strategies and principles that can be applied to maximize the effects of using hashtags. To inspire you, we looked through several cases of using brands’ own and trending hashtags. Check what we discovered.

How to use # in Twitter marketing

How to use # in Twitter marketing

Photos on Twitter can make your Twitter go boom!

It’s been more than half a year now, since Twitter became more visual, enabling users to preview photos from pic.Twitter.com and videos from Vine. Sotrender checked how the impact of including a link, video or picture on the number of retweets and favorites changed over the last months. Analysis of 1 000 most followed profiles on Twitter proved that tweets with pic.Twitter.com photos get 97% more retweets and 135% more favs than these without!

Tweets with photos get more activities

Tweets with photos get more activities

Real-time marketing recipe for success: The case of Suarez

In the 79th minute of World Cup game Uruguay – Italy Luis Suarez bit his Italian opponent Giorgio Chiellini. For Suarez, one of the biggest stars of nowadays soccer, it was the 3rd biting over last years! No wonder, the Internet memes flourished immediately. Furthermore, many brands tried to use this incident for their own real-time marketing, aiming at hijacking the news and attracting the interest. Analysis of Sotrender proved that real-time marketing in social media really worked, bringing very unprecedented high engagement. Moreover, the study enabled us to find the factors which helped the most on Twitter and Facebook – the real-time marketing social recipe for success.

Real-time marketing regarding Suarez - the best posts on Facebook

Real-time marketing regarding Suarez – the best posts on Facebook

How are we going to measure social media communication in 2015?

Average post reach

Average post reach

Companies and brands are carrying out more and more intense and professional activities in social media. It means that the way they look upon their results is also undergoing changes. Type of measurement that is precise and consistent with company’s objectives shows to what extent the company realizes its goals and how it copes with competitors. It is worth knowing, how and what can be measured, and choose which indexes are right for particular objectives and strategies. From a researcher’s perspective it is clearly visible how marketing measurement and reporting in social media are changing together with the market. It seems that social media industry is now prepared for more mature types of measurement. Ones that are not limited only to counting fans, shares or other values of engagement indexes, no matter what are the communication goals and strategy of a brand.