Social media is more popular and important than ever to make sure your business is up and ready to compete and thrive in the digital age. As digital media is taking over the traditional marketing methods, social media has emerged as a great tool for marketing for business promotions. It has evolved as one of the most powerful media platforms over time to give endless opportunities to connect with customers. Almost every social media platform is used for media marketing in some or another way to have a strong online presence.
Just like other forms of web technology, social media marketing is changing at a quick pace and marketers need to be in line with the latest social media trends to get the most out of their marketing efforts. It is very important to make your social media marketing strategy future-proof to get the best results possible with improved customer services.
So, which social media marketing trends you choose to include in your marketing strategy is crucial to your success. You do not need to spend on marketing practices that don’t make sense to achieve your specific business goals. However, there are certain social media marketing trends that are equally impressive for digital marketing, regardless of business offerings. With each passing day, new social media trends are being introduced, and you cannot make excuses for not implementing them on time. Following are a few social media trends for your future-proof marketing strategy for better business growth.
Influencer Marketing
Influence marketing is the future of digital marketing for brand promotion and product endorsement on social media. It has become popular very quickly in the past few years with the emergence of social media platforms like Instagram and TikTok. As per Google Trends, Influencer marketing has already taken over print marketing in terms of popularity among marketers in the last five years. It is a great way to generate instant popularity and brand awareness on digital platforms.
(Image Via: Google Trend)
People with thousands of followers on social media platforms are considered influencers, and they leverage their online presence for endorsement of products/services in collaboration with brands. They get paid by companies to promote their products to their followers. Businesses can reap the benefits of influencer marketing to reach their target audience as part of their social media marketing plan.
The Rise of Groups
Facebook business pages are the things we are all familiar with, but it’s time to engage with Facebook groups to connect and interact with an audience with similar tastes and understanding. Facebook Groups are a great way to start a conversation around a subject to generate engagement. With the latest algorithm update of Facebook, Groups are the go-to places to connect with a target audience on the social media giants. The best thing about Facebook Groups is that you can participate as a business page to take part in a conversation.
Not only you can generate additional engagement through Groups but even get feedback about your business. Though Instagram has no such features, many influencers are creating a similar effect by making their profiles private. “Close Friends” feature in Instagram stories can also be used to start a conversation with a group of followers.
Stories
Starting on Snapchat, stories are now a popular feature of social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. Stories are vertical, full-screen content in form of photos and videos that usually last for 24 hours. They generate more engagement and interactions than regular news feed posts. Marketers can create different types of content such as polls, quizzes, live interactions, and many more using stories posts to start a conversation with their audience.
Due to a great rate of engagement on stories, many influencers prefer to create a story post for endorsement than news feed posts to reach a wider audience. There are one of the latest social media trends in recent years and are going to rule your content strategy.
Live Videos
Live videos are another popular trend on social media to interact with your audience and followers in many interactive ways. Many marketers include live video content in their marketing plan to showcase what goes on behind the scene. This feature was introduced on YouTube in 2008 then Facebook adapted it in 2016 to give people another way to create and share posts. Instagram has also added this feature recently to give marketers and businesses an opportunity to offer something unique to their audiences.
There’s a lot of things you can do by going live on social media profiles, including:
Launching a new product
Going live for a Q&A session
Creating an explainer session to clear doubts after feedbacks
Creating how-to live videos
Going live to show your fans what’s going on behind the curtains
With the growing popularity of video marketing, you cannot rule out live videos from your marketing plan. It gives your brand a more human touch to build credibility and trust around your name.
Chatbots and AI
Chatbots are the latest trend on social media platforms to let people reach out to brands in a simple way. Chatbots have become increasingly popular among brands to respond to queries of their customers as quickly as possible through an automated channel. When you are not available 24/7 to respond instantly, chatbots with AI can come to your rescue. You can create a response system to answer some frequently asked questions to provide immediate help to your audience. For example, chatbots on MasterCard’s website talk to customers about their queries related to finances and expenditures.
(Image Via: MasterCard Newsroom)
Chatbots powered by AI are the future of social media marketing to have conversations with your customers without being available all the time.
Augmented Reality
Augmented reality is already used by social media platforms that provide filters to give your face different looks in photos and videos. You can now use AR during video calls via Facebook Messenger. And now, Instagram has already rolled out this feature to market products. AR allows customers to try out something to see how it looks in reality. For example, you can try sunglasses to see how it looks on you graphically before placing your order. It will help brands to showcase their catalog in a virtual environment where customers can try out things to make better decisions.
Conclusion
Social media is very unpredictable with new features rolling out every year. It creates a lot of opportunities for marketers with endless choices. Keeping yourself up to date with these social media trends and preparing for them in advance will help you future-proof your social media marketing strategy for ease of implementation and transformation.
Vijaya Raj Laxmi Tyagi has been an avid content writer for over five years with a keen interest in writing SEO articles and blogs. She also finds great enthusiasm in writing about a vast variety of topics, including gardening, interior designing, health & wellness, and tourism. Her educational background in Computer Science and Engineering has given her an edge to write about technologies that tend to mark a great impression on daily lifestyle and behaviour, while her intrigue towards Mother Nature drives her to discuss green topics.
