8 Social Media Marketing Trends That You Should Be Watching

Social Media Marketing Trends To Be Watching

Social media marketing is a part of your business whether you like it or not. Remember that it’s a tool to use to get the word out about your business, help you work with your customers in the way they want you to, and to help you make more sales. The tools will change and grow and evolve, but you will still use them to find and serve your customers.

The social media marketing trends to watch this year aren’t that much different from last year. However, the 8 trends below take on a new urgency as the technology becomes more precise and effective. In other words, it works now. Therefore, it’s time for you to put your toe in.

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8 Social Media Marketing Trends That You Should Be Watching

1. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing builds and expands upon the idea of the old celebrity endorsement, with emphasis centered around content. As a brand, you need to get serious about finding social media influencers who share your values to work with. Remember that you don’t need to work with the most popular influencer. Instead, work with highly engaging influencers with smaller but more engaged audiences.

2. Audience Segmentation

Enough can’t be said on how important it is to segment your audiences. You already segment audiences once you get them on your email list, and before you create content for them. But the ability to segment your audience and what they see you sharing on social media will become more accessible and more important.

Creating ads and messages that speak to specific audiences represents the solid foundation of a top-tier sales funnel that actually converts.

3. Integrated Social Shopping

The tools will come out that allow shopping to be as simple as a click on the item that they see you sharing and that you like. Payments can be made more automated and faster so that buyers can buy from any device at any time, as long as they set up the process.

Remember though if your ad screams “BUY NOW!” and is sandwiched between, say,  two personal Facebook posts in someone’s feed, it’s going to stick out like flashing lights on a darkened street. And not in a positive way.

While there’s nothing wrong with offering special deals and discounts, subtly typically scores more points with users than in-your-face offers.  There’s a reason why education-based ads for webinars, case studies and reports are so popular. If you are promoting a discount or product, mull over how you can approach it as something humorous or helpful versus a hard sell.

4. More Story Content

Every single day, people get more interested in the real human stories that drive business owners and those who work in the business. Storytelling is the process of creating a company-wide narrative that is factual, emotional, and branded, while promoting your values and your business.

5. Video Content

Text content is still relevant, but video content has been outpacing text for years. Visuals have become an essential part of social media marketing, with the fastest growing social networks (Pinterest, Instagram, etc.) all putting a larger emphasis on image and video content. It’s more likely to be shared, it’s more engaging, and people prefer it over text. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t also include text, but you should up your video game.

6. Customer-Centric Service

Customer service is becoming a one-to-one proposition. This is due to the enactment of social shopping and other technologies that enable you to help your customers through their buying journey (at the time of purchase as well as other times), in a less abrupt and more customer-focused manner.

7. Augmented Reality (AR)

Whether you’re teaching people or serving people, AR can truly be a game-changer. You can provide experiences to your users that create buzz for your brand. It can be used to teach, for example, it’s used to teach surgery now. It can also be used to help tell a story and so much more.

8. Artificial Intelligence and Chatbots

You’re likely familiar with chatbots already but AI, along with chatbots, is going to get even more popular for companies that want to enhance their relationship with their customers and improve customer service specifically. It might take some know-how to deploy AI and chatbots, but it’s more than worth it for most businesses – especially small ones that have fewer human resources.

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Brands today are running campaigns across virtually all types of industries, with a staggering 93% of social marketers currently tapping into Facebook’s paid ad platform.  With that comes the need to optimize your advertising content. With the updated Facebook algorithm giving priority to paid content over organic reach, competition in today’s advertising space is only going to continue to increase.

Although everything about Facebook isn’t perfect, its advertising strategies still work. Yes, they do make changes to their advertising guidelines without notice which can be frustrating. But if you remain diligent and watch your spend and results carefully, you can buy Facebook engagement and get a good return on your investment. For more info, download my free checklist, How To Run Successful Facebook Ads.