“You Spend All Day On Facebook, Right?” – Challenges of a Digital Professional (+ Infographic)

What’s the future of social? Will you still be doing the job you’re doing now in five years? How will the role of social media change within companies? These are just a few of the questions we asked you during our survey. Our intent was to find out what you – social media and community managers, market researchers, PR executives, digital marketers and many more – see as the upcoming trends in social media and which challenges you face in your everyday work.

Last time, we looked at the different stages digital professionals go through during the course of their career – from “innocent” beginners to “enlightened” experts. In this part, we take a closer look at the expectations people in the digital industry have for the development of their jobs and the biggest challenges they face in their work every day.

Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are the most relevant for social media marketing

Many people have predicted the slow death of Facebook. While the network still has more than a billion users worldwide, it is struggling to attract users in the 13-24 age group. For digital professionals, however, it is still one of the most relevant networks. 47% of our participants say Facebook will be “very important” for their social media marketing strategy in 2015, with 36% still rating it as important. Only 2% rate it as irrelevant or completely irrelevant.

In terms of social media marketing, established networks continue to remain the focus for digital professionals.

The importance placed on various platforms also reflects another development: the growing relevance of image-driven networks and videos. YouTube is considered relevant for 39% in regards to their social media marketing and Instagram is important for more than a third of respondents (35%). In contrast, “old-school” platforms such as message boards are considered uninteresting for most digital professionals. 43% are neutral towards them, while almost a quarter (23%) consider them completely unimportant.

Fighting stereotypes: The idea of “You’re on Facebook all day, right?”

Job-wise, engagement rates and content virality are causing the most headaches for digital professionals. 76% say ensuring virality is the toughest aspect of their job and the only thing that is even more challenging is convincing people to engage with your postings with 80% saying they find this an especially difficult task.

Job-wise, engagement rates and content virality are causing the most headaches for digital professionals.

It is often claimed that with the advent of work-from-home solutions and constant availability through mobile Internet connections, employees – especially in the digital industry – have lost the ability to distance themselves from their jobs when they aren’t working. However, only 45% of respondents overall said that they consider this a particular difficult aspect of their job.

One interesting fact here: just about a third of industry beginners (31%) say it’s a challenge for them to keep their distance, compared to 49% of more experienced professionals. A possible reason: young professionals are likely to move on to lower-level management jobs during this period and often feel the need to prove their commitment. But being focused at work 24/7 is impossible to do forever, which explains why after 5+ years, digital professionals are more likely to want to take a break from time to time.

Third place in the overall “job challenges” category: making the rest of the company understand the relevance of a digital professional’s job. 70% say it’s difficult for them to explain their tasks to their colleagues. Changes in social media and the digital industry in general happen every day. For more “traditional” colleagues, it can be hard to keep up with the development – which would also explain the low budget allocated to social media. English-speaking countries seem to be significantly ahead of others when it comes to job relevance: while two thirds of people from both the United States and Great Britain say it’s difficult for them to explain the significance of their job, 78% of the people in Germany/Austria/Switzerland (D/A/CH) say they face this issue.

For UK professionals, good content is the biggest challenge, while North Americans struggle with engagement rates and D/A/CH with content virality.

The biggest challenge for digital professionals in the UK is the creation of high-quality content (82%) and promoting said content into virality. In contrast, only half of the German-speaking professionals see content creation as a challenge – the biggest issues here are virality (86%) and ensuring engagement (83%). Keeping engagement rates up is also the most difficult aspect for North Americans (80%), followed by content virality.

Fighting for attention & struggling with the ROI

Aside from the challenges digital professionals face in their day-to-day work, there are also the bigger issues that concern the industry as a whole. Topping the list: the fight for the audience’s attention. With the number of companies present on social media increasing continuously and the audience being easily distracted by new content, 80% of digital professionals say it’s hard to get people to listen to what they have to say.

Audience attention and ROI are the big challenges in the digital industry.

Next up on the list: tracking the ROI. Almost 8 out of every 10 respondents have a problem with this. Since social media is rarely a game played only with cold, hard numbers, it can be difficult to come up with the right metrics to measure success. And for a lot of digital professionals, measuring the success of their work does not involve a monetary value. Instead, it is defined through an engaged and active online community. One thing we noted, however: The D/A/CH region is ahead of its English-speaking colleagues. While professionals in all regions have trouble clearly defining or measuring their ROI, the D/A/CH region (78%) is doing slightly better than the English-speaking world (UK 82%, North America 84%).

Digital industry trends: targeting content and paying for visibility

After thinking about the challenges digital professionals face every day, we of course wanted to hear about the opportunities they see in their industry. A big one that was mentioned quite often is the increasing relevance of content marketing. This is probably no real surprise for anyone. Consumers are looking for more than just advertising these days so companies need to make sure they provide insight and analytics instead of solely relying on traditional advertising to reach their target audience. As far as the type of content is concerned, the majority of our digital pros expects to see stark increases in image and video-based content – a trend also expected by high-profile social media experts.

Most respondents also seem to agree that having large organic reach is a thing of the past. “Paid advertising”, “loss of organic reach and necessity of paid ad campaigns”, “paid advertising required to cut through” were some of the answers we got on the question of upcoming trends. No matter the channels, digital professionals are convinced that they need to pay for ads to ensure the visibility of their content.

Other trends include the increasing relevance of wearable devices and geo-localization, meaning users will receive ads and content that is targeted specifically to their current location. And – another trend we’ve already heard about – many also expect to see more targeted networks, ranging from localized ones to those created by a brand or based on the shared interests of its members.

What do you think? Which trends and social media developments are you expecting to see in 2015?

“You Spend All Day On Facebook, Right?” – Challenges of a Digital Professional (+ Infographic)