Only 14% of respondents said they can always tie their social media efforts to ROI while only 31.5% knew how well their competitors are performing on social media.

NEW YORK, Jan. 26, 2022  — ListenFirst, the premier enterprise social analytics solution, today announced the release of the 2022 Social Media Marketing Trends Survey. The findings of the comprehensive online study confirmed that despite the ongoing pandemic, brands are more committed than ever to social media as a marketing channel. 

55% of respondents said their brand’s social media spend increased during the pandemic, with 50.5% of those surveyed adding their brand’s social media spend will increase further in 2022.

However, measuring the impact of their social media spend remains a challenge for many brands. Only 14% of survey respondents said they can always tie their social media efforts to ROI, while only 31.5% responded “Yes” to knowing how well their brand is performing on social media relative to competitors. Meanwhile, 52% of respondents either wanted more influencer analytics or were unclear if they had enough.

“The survey results confirm what we’ve known in the marketplace, that even while brands are investing more in social media, they just don’t have enough data that speaks to performance,” explained David DiGiacomo, Chief Executive Office at ListenFirst. “To get a more actionable picture of what’s working, companies need a social analytics solution that goes beyond vanity metrics such as Likes and Followers and offers meaningful competitive and industry benchmarks, as well as robust influencer and partner analytics.”

Other key finding of the 2022 Social Media Marketing Trends Survey include:

• Instagram is the social media platform most important to brands, picked by 40% of marketers and analytics professionals
• LinkedIn is the social media platform that’s most trusted, picked by 39.5% of respondents
• Facebook is the least trusted social media platform, picked by 44.5% of respondents
• 66% of those surveyed expect social media video to be an increased focus for their brand in 2022

ListenFirst’s 2022 Social Media Marketing Trends Survey questioned 200 brand marketing and analytics professionals on the future of social media marketing, between December 28-29, 2021 The full survey results can be downloaded here.

If your brand needs to know what social media trends will shape social media in 2022 and beyond, this is the report for you.

ListenFirst questioned 200 brand marketing and analytics professionals on the future of social media marketing, asking the probing questions marketers most need answered. This comprehensive online study confirmed that despite the ongoing pandemic, brands are more committed than ever to social media as a marketing channel. 

55% of respondents said their brand’s social media spend increased during the pandemic, with 50.5% of those surveyed adding their brand’s social media spend will increase in 2022. 

However, measuring the impact of their social media spend remains a challenge for brands. Only 14% of survey respondents said they can always tie their social media efforts to ROI, while only 31.5% responded “Yes” to knowing how well their brand is performing on social media relative to competitors. Meanwhile, 52% of respondents either wanted more influencer analytics or were unclear if they had enough. 

In order to navigate an ecosystem where social media is increasingly important to brands but best practices around strategy and reporting are often mysterious, these types of insights are invaluable. 

Download the survey results to see how your peers are approaching 2022.

When it comes to social media benchmarking, one size doesn’t fit all. There are endless metrics you can use to evaluate how your campaigns perform compared to competitors, top performers, this time last year, and the list goes on.  

With a thoughtful approach, benchmarking can be a powerful measuring tool. Join ListenFirst experts Meghan Cahill, SVP of Client Experience, and Devin Carroll, Director of Revenue Strategy, to explore benchmarking best practices. You’ll learn how to benchmark in a way that supports your unique goals. 

In this 1-hour session we’ll cover:

• Why contextualizing your data with benchmarks is critical
• Factors to consider when choosing what to benchmark
• Tips on how to benchmark efficiently and in a meaningful way in ListenFirst
• Four valuable benchmarking metrics that often get overlooked

ListenFirst couldn’t be more excited to share the Birdseye Report | Industry Deep Dive Media & Entertainment which we’ve collaborated with Twitter on and was just released today. We’re celebrating the release of this great report the only way we know how – by sharing even more data!  

Here are 5 bonus TV industry related insights we found while researching the Birdseye Report about how the Twitter audience is engaging with TV content.

Insight #1. Use Tweet Threads As Push Notifications About New Episodes 

❤️ this tweet to receive reminders when new episodes of Marvel Studios’ #WandaVision start streaming on @DisneyPlus. pic.twitter.com/ZRIhna7NK5

— WandaVision (@wandavision) January 1, 2021

WandaVision, The Falcon and The Winter Soldier, and Loki all shared Tweets reading “ this tweet to receive reminders when new episodes” with those Tweets generating as many as 218,611 responses. Asking fans to engage with Tweets for reminders about when new episodes drop has become a best practice for keeping the online conversation going around TV shows that are released weekly.

Insight #2: Anime Is Becoming More Popular 

In the Birdseye Media & Entertainment report we focused on how Korean entertainment became so much more talked about in the last year, but that’s also true about Anime. There were 136,951,504 Tweets mentioning Anime in 2021, a 29.78% increase from the volume of Tweets mentioning Anime during 2020.

Meanwhile, the Twitter conversation increased by 249% around Crunchyroll, the video streaming service that focuses on anime, manga, and dorama, comparing 1/1 – 11/16 in 2021 to that time period in 2020. That was the biggest increase for any major network or streamer in 2021, with Crunchyroll only trailing Netflix, MTV, NBC, and Disney+ for the title of being the most talked about network overall on Twitter for the year.  

In a time when the creation of live action content is especially challenging because of the pandemic, the audience is especially receptive to Japanese animation.

Insight #3: Nostalgia Drives Engagement For Legacy Kids Shows 

So about that time Steve went off to college… #BluesClues25 pic.twitter.com/O8NOM2eRjy

— Nick Jr. (@nickjr) September 7, 2021

Kids shows are breaking through on Twitter by targeting adults. For example, the most

successful TV Tweet in 2021 got 2,626,762 engagements and was a video from Nick Jr. where Steve explained why he left Blue’s Clues way back in 2002. Meanwhile, a Teletubbies Tweet showing that the Teletubbies got vaccinated got 557,972 engagements. The current audience of kids shows may not be able to read yet, but there are a lot of former kids who are on Twitter and still enthusiastic when talking about these multi-generational hits.

Insight #4: ​​ The Twitter Audience Views Broadcast TV As A Long Term Relationship

Of the 10 broadcast TV shows that generated the most engagement between January – October 2021, they’ve been on the air for an average of 15.7 seasons. Similarly, during the same time period, the 10 ad supported cable shows that had the most engagement on Twitter have been on the air for an average of 12.9 seasons.

As we cover in the Birdseye Media & Entertainment report, streaming shows are becoming more talked about on Twitter, while broadcast and ad support cable TV shows are becoming less talked about. That said, broadcast does have one key advantage over streaming. A 2018-2019 study by Ampere Analysis found that shows on streamers such as Netflix average 2.1 seasons, compared to shows on free-to-air networks averaging 6.5 seasons. 

Streamers like Netflix have popularized the practice of promoting almost all of their shows from their main social accounts which have a huge social following and not setting up dedicated social channels for individual shows. That strategy makes total sense when promoting a project that will only be around for a couple seasons. However, given that broadcast shows on average have a longer lifespan, creating unique social accounts for those shows and slowly building a unique audience over time is what ultimately will lead to more engagement on Twitter for broadcast.

Insight #5: The Lack Of Elections Hurt Late Night Talk Shows On Twitter

The late night talk shows aggregated on this chart are Late Show with Stephen Colbert, The Late Late Show with James Corden, Late Night with Seth Meyers, A Little Late with Lilly Singh, The Tonight Show starring Jimmy Fallon, Last Week Tonight With John Oliver, The Daily Show, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, Conan, Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, Real Time With Bill Maher, Desus & Mero, and Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen.    

Late night shows are traditionally among the best performing broadcast TV shows on Twitter. However, there was -32.43% less Twitter engagement around content shared by broadcast and cable late night talk shows in January – October in 2021 compared to during the same time period in 2020. In 2020, there was a big peak in engagement in February right before the pandemic hit and in the Fall around the elections and there were no comparable peaks in 2021. With this being a midterm elections year, and given how big a conversation driver politics is for late night talk shows, 2022 will likely be a bounce back year for the genre on Twitter.  

*All the Twitter data shared in this blog post is global. 

Looking for more audience insights about TV? Either download the Birdseye Report | Industry Deep Dive Media & Entertainment or request a ListenFirst Demo!

Social media data from ListenFirst, including proprietary metrics can now be accessed directly from the Tableau dashboard.

NEW YORK, Jan. 12, 2022 — ListenFirst, the premier enterprise social analytics solution, today announced the launch of BI Connector for Tableau, providing their customers with an interface to connect directly to the ListenFirst API and access data on-demand within their Tableau dashboard. This new feature introduces codeless integration and enables ListenFirst customers to tell a multitude of stories by manipulating and layering different insights within Tableau’s 24 visualization types and reporting customizations.

Available in Tableau’s app directory, ListenFirst’s BI Connector for Tableau creates a quicker, more seamless way to get bulk selection of data without needing frontend access. Reporting cycles are readily available in Tableau by utilizing dynamic date ranges to automatically refresh the latest insights in the desired date range and parameters.

“More than half of ListenFirst API customers use Tableau, and BI Connector For Tableau creates a quick path to insights for these data power users,” explained Jimmy Li, Product Manager at ListenFirst. “Users can now effortlessly conduct cross data source analysis, on-demand reporting, advanced charting, and data visualization. Additionally, insights can be published side by side with other data points from non-ListenFirst sources, simplifying complex stories into insights that are instantly understandable.” 

Optimized for self service, BI Connector for Tableau supports flexible data queries for brand, content and paid level datasets.