Social Media Marketing Trends All Businesses Should Consider

As you’re most likely well aware, Social Media Marketing can be incredibly volatile at times, especially with trends coming and going in the space of a few days. That’s why it’s never a bad idea to get yourself ahead of the curve when it comes to marketing your business, especially on medium viewed by over 2 billion people.

When planning Social Media campaigns for the year ahead, it’s important to identify potential trends in advance so that your channels can grow, adapt and flourish with the times effectively. The most successful marketing strategies this year will be those who take a dynamic approach to the trends that occur in the next 12 months.

Engagement will be crucial for growth

You may remember the days where brands simply ignored many of their followers choosing to stick to their marketing plans instead. Although this method seemed cold at first, it was understandable from a logistical perspective as live engagement required a lot of time and money.

However with Social Media algorithms noticeably favouring engagement throughout the years, it’s no surprise to see global brands embrace this new engagement focused strategy with great success. When planning this sort of campaign, it’s important to stir up the right kind of attention – brands that break away from their corporate image tend to experience increased engagement due to being more relatable. A great example of an engagement focused campaign done well would have to be Groupon’s Banana Bunker.

Groupon’s Banana Bunker was designed for two main purposes, to help protect their customers bananas from the daily dangers of life and to cause a conversation online.

Groupon’s goal here was to help raise awareness of their brand by creating a spectacle their followers would want to share and be part of. On top of this, they also began to engage with followers interacting with their campaign. This helped to build a stronger relationship between the two which in turn produced brand advocates who actively wanted to share and promote their campaign to more people.

In the moment posts will be favoured over everything else

When you think about this next trend, it actually makes a lot of sense. Users of Social Media are getting more and more savvy and can sniff out an overly produced filler post from a mile away. With more and more businesses joining Social Media, it can be hard to find the time to make dynamic ‘in the moment’ posts on a regular basis, which is why so many rely on solely scheduled content.

Now don’t get me wrong, scheduled media plays a vital role in many Social Media strategies, however it shouldn’t be the only component. As Social Media suggests, you’ve got to be …well… social which requires live engagements and dynamic reactions. Platforms that promote this algorithmic methodology well would be Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat as they each feature ‘Story’ and ‘Live Streaming’ elements that help to promote more organic media.

Influencer Marketing isn’t going anywhere

As mentioned in my previous blog post ‘What exactly is influencer marketing?‘ (shameless plug I know but definitely worth a read) more and more businesses are choosing to embrace new strategies that include social influencers. With creators now growing fan bases of upwards of a couple million each year, more brands are choosing to trial this method over heavily produced advertisement.

A great example of this would be from Emirates Airlines – they decided to upgrade YouTuber Casey Neistat to a first class seat and the rest was history. Thanks to Casey’s unique family friendly personality and following of 10 million, his documented experience gained over 61 million views. This type of exposure would not be possible any other way.

It’s important to note that Influencer marketing is still evolving, in fact due it’s heightened popularity, many Social Media platforms have chosen to implement specific rules to help make sponsored content more transparent. If you’re a brand that specialises in a B2C service or product, Influencer Marketing should definitely be on your list of things to look into. Be sure to vet your influencer carefully though to ensure you avoid any potential problems.

Businesses can no longer afford to ignore social media ads

We saw a lot of businesses jump on board with social media ads last year and this trend is showing no signs of slowing down. In fact, reports suggest that many marketers chose to increase their social ad budgets by 32% last year alone.

With businesses producing more ads than ever before, more paid features are likely to be trailed and produced in order to help brands deal with the elevated costs and competition

If you found this blog post insightful, please feel free to share your thoughts online being sure to @UrbanElementWeb – we would love to know your personal thoughts on the upcoming digital trends ahead. If you would like to read another one of my articles, why not check out my previous post ‘Some of the DO’s and DEFINITELY DON’TS of Social Media Marketing.

About the author