Social media can no longer be seen as ‘just a trend’ – it’s here to stay. With 94% of adults having at least one social media account, and 40% of users admitting to following their favorite brands on social media, it is crucial to direct that 40% to follow their business. Next year is not meant to slow down in the social media department. So it’s time to embrace the growing social media trends and make them work to your advantage.
The Challenges of Social Media
To learn how to maximize your social media accounts, we first need to recognize the impending challenges this year.
In previous years, it was no secret that Facebook’s organic reach is steadily declining. This decline is due to the increasing amount of content available to users. In addition, algorithm changes that focus on providing the most “useful” content to users also affect. Since these have an emphasis on content from friends and family over publishers and brands. The decline in organic reach means that companies need to find innovative ways to reach their reach. In order to be seen more and gain more followers and users. A great way to counter this is to create compelling content that users react to, which the social media trends described below will help you do.
Pay-to-Play Increase
Due to declining organic reach, we see brands increasingly using social advertising or Social Ads. Which increases the need to pay to better disclose your own accounts and social media content. This is an extremely effective way to broaden the reach of your pages and more precisely target the audience where you want to see your content. The important thing to consider when paying to play is your ROE and the importance of your brand to your business.
End of Vanity Metrics
Due to the current hurdles for brands reaching the top of people’s feeds, it’s becoming more important to ensure that all your posts are related to your brand. And also useful for your followers. It’s one thing to post a picture of a dog and get hundreds of likes – but companies are starting to realize that these vanity metrics aren’t necessarily helping their business. It is becoming evident that it is much more important to focus on creating genuine engagement between followers and customers. And then provide them with useful content that makes them think positively about your product or service.
Social Media Trends
To address the top three social media challenges we are currently seeing, there are five key social media trends to follow this year.
First, recognizing the importance of social discovery will help boost your pages with great content to attract potential customers.
Second, using social selling will help you provide useful and convenient ways for customers to buy your products.
Third, the rise of “dark social” is forcing companies to create shareable content. And finding innovative ways to track your actions and the interested audience.
Fourth, video ads will help your business use and create more intriguing ads. Therefore, this content will captivate your audience and attract new followers.
Finally, utilizing your workforce will help build user trust and engagement.
How to adapt the trends
Especially in younger generations – it is becoming more common to lean more towards an enterprise social media account (s) to find information rather than using conventional search engine methods. Users tend to look more at a company’s online presence, user reviews and comments, and any self-defense.
A 2016 Global Web Index study found that 36% of internet users ages 13-24 are using social networks to get information about branded products and services. This is one of the big trends in social media. When you consider your audience, if people in this group are part of your audience, it’s easy to see the importance of providing information to as much of your audience as possible.
First of all – do not deviate from your previous strategy. Be sure to think and recognize who your target audience is. While younger buyers are starting to use social media for search, older buyers still tend to use traditional search engines. So if your audience is in the older generation, make sure you are still using search and SEO strategies to attract them.
For the part of your audience that uses social media, you want to make sure your accounts portray credibility and customer trust. Customer testimonials, reviews and stories will help build trust between your brand. And also a potential customer that comes across your page. Also, try to bring the discovery to your followers. We are seeing a lot more possibilities in methods for generating content for people. Through Facebook Live, Instagram Live, etc. This will help reach consumers who may not be visiting your website.
New tools are constantly being introduced to the social media platforms that are there to promote their business leads. One of the biggest tools now is to give businesses the ability to take users directly to a product buy page or sell directly from their social media pages. Using these tools adds a huge amount of convenience to your followers.
Who doesn’t like convenience? Buying is much more intriguing when the opportunity is right in front of you. The “Buy Now” button is appearing on some of the largest social media platforms. Think of Facebook and Instagram Stores with buy buttons. Therefore, it is a good idea to start using these resources as quickly as possible to keep up with competitors and offer your customers a convenient option.
Each brand is different, which is why you need to experiment and find the processes and tools that work best for your brand. Start by setting a goal for a small campaign as a promotion. Then try your campaign and see if it works for you. You will also have ideas for what can be done next time. A few different ideas for attracting customers to your campaigns are using fun videos or incentives.
The video is growing in the social media world in many different ways (from video ads to live streaming). Why not promote your brand with some videos that help showcase your products and attract customers? An additional approach is to give incentives to buy – because who doesn’t like an exclusive deal? You can offer small rewards to shoppers who use their new social media tools to buy products. In short, by following social media trends, your business will grow rapidly.
