There are a couple of social media news outlets we regularly monitor, and Social Media Examiner is one of them. Their 2020 Social Media Marketing Industry Report is a must-see, and we would definitely recommend you download and read it for yourself.

In this year’s report, Michael Stelzner and his team interviewed over 5,000 of our social media marketing peers to understand trends on different platforms and tactics. The report includes top questions faced by social media marketers, video channels used by marketers, and how will marketers change their future marketing activities.

Here are a few highlights that stuck out to me and my thoughts on them.

Facebook is declining, but still very strong.

This one wasn’t a huge surprise to me. While I am still digging around in Facebook every day (as I have been for years), I am also noticing clients are becoming more and more open to diversifying their social media platforms. We’re regularly getting into LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, and other newer players. We recommend platform diversity for the same reason it’s good in your financial portfolios: you’re less reliant on a few giants in case something goes awry, and might be present for a spike in traffic if one trends upwards. It will also be interesting to see the impact of COVID-19 on Facebook usage over time, as engaged users and other key metrics for the social platform have spiked heavily in the past few months .

While I disagree with the 10% of marketers who say they’re going to decrease their organic marketing on Facebook, increasing efforts elsewhere should yield great returns for B2B and B2C brands alike. For those of you losing faith in organic Facebook tactics, give my colleague Michelle Heathers’ “quality over quantity” post a read to tighten up your strategy.

Social media marketers want to dive deeper into video, but are unsure how.

We all know video is important - but are you clear on your video strategy? Marketers are a bit all over the place here. While YouTube interest is high, with apparently 69% of marketers planning on increasing use of the platform in the next year, TikTok is quite a bit farther behind. Only 5% of marketers plan on using the new quick video platform, but as much as 30% want to learn more about it.

Live video has unimpressive usage rates, and fewer are doing it in a way they can accurately measure ROI. I’d only recommend using it, personally, if you can produce something with regularity in order to get higher viewership over time. Also, always have a moderator in the chat that can answer questions and drive traffic to your ultimate destination for viewers while live is running. I’ve seen live videos where the host was also trying to moderate and it just gets messy.

The top social media question marketers want answered might surprise you.

If you were to ask me what the number one question marketers had regarding social media before I read the report, I probably would have said something like “How do I make more sales and prove a solid ROI via social media?” I was pleasantly surprised to see that the actual top question marketers had was, “What are the best ways to engage my audience?”

What this tells me is that marketers are (finally) respecting the role social media plays in the marketing funnel: it’s to engage people with your brand, oftentimes at the very beginning of their journey with you. It’s not always to immediately sell someone on a product or service. With more people asking the good question of how to make social media more engaging, we’ll see better content out there and less sleazy, money-grabbing sales pitches (because they simply don’t usually win).

I could go on and on and on, but I don’t want to spoil too much of the fun for you! Be sure to grab your copy of this year’s report and do your own deep dive. I’d love to hear what you find!

What findings from the report stuck out to you? Hit us up on with your thoughts!