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5 Instagram Marketing Trends We Will See in 2019

CrumbledNewspaperOnSidewalkSpending Sunday morning with a cup of coffee and the newspaper is quickly becoming a thing of the past, according to new research from Pew Research Center.

Pew found that 20 percent of U.S. adults who responded to its survey said they often get news via social media, marking the first time that social network topped newspapers (16 percent) since Pew began researching this topic.

Television was still the top source, at 49 percent, down from 57 percent in 2016. TV was followed by news websites (33 percent, up from 28 percent in 2016) and radio (26 percent, up slightly from 25 percent in 2016).

Pew also included getting news via streaming devices on TVs as an option for the first time, and 9 percent of respondents said they do so often, with 73 percent of that group adding that they also get news often from broadcast or cable TV.

And the research firm also looked at the disparities among age groups:

  • Respondents 65 and older were five times as likely as those 18 through 29 to get news from TV, with 81 percent doing so, along with 65 percent of those 50 through 64. Meanwhile, just 16 percent of those 18 through 29 and 36 percent of those 30 through 49 said they often get news from television.
  • Those trends reverse for social media, with respondents 18 through 29 roughly four times more likely to get news from social networking sites than those 65 and older.
  • The 65-and-older group is also print’s last stronghold, with 39 percent getting news often from newspapers, while no other age group tops 18 percent.
  • The 30-through-49 age group was the most prominent among online news sites, with 42 percent of them getting news from those sites often, compared with 27 percent of respondents 18 through 29.
  • No more than one-half of those 18 through 49 get news often from any one platform.

On the TV side, 37 percent of respondents get news often from local television, compared with 30 percent from cable news and 25 percent from national evening network news.

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New Report Highlights the Importance of Brand Awareness in SEO

The links between social media marketing and SEO have long been debated, and while there’s no definitive connection between the two (Google, for example, doesn’t factor in Likes and shares on social platforms when ranking pages), social platforms do facilitate content sharing, and help drive traffic – there are various key SEO elements which are very much directly influenced by social media activity.

And now there may be another consideration in this. According to a new report from Red C Marketing, based on eye tracking of over 400 search journeys, 82% of consumers will select a brand that they’re already familiar with in search results, regardless of that brand’s actual ranking within the SERP.

As noted by eConsultancy:

“The study’s findings lend a new weight to the importance of brand trust, brand recognition, advertising, and other off-site factors when it comes to winning clicks on the search results page.”

Essentially, by utilizing social media, and other digital marketing platforms, to help raise brand awareness, you may be helping to influence search behavior, regardless of Google ranking.

There are a couple of key provisos within this – the first being that users in different life stages and age brackets behave differently in this regard.

For example, younger, pre-family participants are the most likely to choose a familiar brand in their search, with 91% making a selection based on familiarity, not on SERP rank. Older users – people with families of their own – referred to the familiar at a slightly lower rate (84%), while the darkly titled ‘post-family’ cohort were most influenced by search rank, with 67% of them opting to choose a brand they knew ahead of other considerations.

Red C search behavior study