It is few days to Christmas... but for smart marketers, this can only mean one thing. This is the time for marketers to measure and evaluate the effectiveness of their 2018 marketing campaigns including email, search engine, and social media campaigns. Smart marketers always delve deep into the data generated by their campaign throughout the year to know what worked for them and understand why they failed in certain campaigns. Of course, this doesn't stop here, they also keep tabs on social media future to be able to design and plan better social media campaign for the upcoming year.
Undoubtedly, social media strategies are constantly. No one understands the implication of this more than smart marketers who know the value of social media in marketing in the 21st century. You need to keep up with the trends and learn to adjust your campaigns and strategies if you want successful results. A smart marketer also needs to be prepared for new developments as well as expect a constantly evolving consumer behavior.
Of course, it is hard to predict what will happen in social media in the next 10 or 15 years. However, it is possible to forecast some trends for next year. In this article, you will learn expert prediction on social media future for the New Year. Keep on reading to find out more:
- Social Growth Continues
If you are expecting the Facebook scandal that happened early in 2018 to stop the growth of social media, think again! Experts believe that the growth of social media will continue an upward trajectory for a foreseeable future. With more internet access in Africa, more people from the region will enter social media making it easier to leverage the markets there.
According to Simon Kemp, a social media expert at Hootsuite, Instagram will witness more growth and its dominance will increase globally. He believes that Instagram will grow more to become the new home for brands in 2019.
- The Death of Organic Reach
Every day, it seems like Facebook is growing desperate for more advertising revenue. According to new research, you could have an organic reach as low as 2% with a Facebook page of 500,000 likes. This is certainly not good news especially if you are only depending on the number of followers you have on the platform for your reach.
According to Facebook, the reason for this is due to the huge number of contents published on the network every single day. Moreover, they have recently come under public scrutiny and senate query. Thus, they need to be cautious and extremely picky about what content they place on the user's feed. In their defense, they are trying to ensure that the content appearing on users’ feed is the most relevant to them. Without a doubt, Facebook is slowly transforming into a paid marketing platform, especially for marketers. "Over the coming years, this will become more evident". Meanwhile, now is the time to increase your advertising budget and learn how Facebook advertising works.
- Visuals Will Get More Powerful
One of the most consistent social media forecast since 2014 is the growth of consumption of visuals on social media platforms. In their recent research, Facebook discovered that people spend an average of 1.7 seconds when looking at a piece of content. Their research also showed that people look at videos 5 times longer than static contents on both Facebook and Instagram. Of course, no smart marketer can ignore the importance of visuals in social media marketing.
- The popularity of Video and Live-Feed Advertisements
Almost all social media expert agree we will see a wave of video and live-feed advertisements in 2019. Recent research has shown that short-video marketing and company live-feeds command a significantly higher share of the consumer audience than a textual advertisement.
Top brands are already repositioning and re-designing their social media campaign to key into this trend in 2019. Next year, expect to see more short-video and live-feed advertisements.
- More Companies To Target Gen Z
Most companies using social media heavily for advertising have already given up on Baby Boomers who don't use the internet as much and are focusing their marketing on Generation Z. In 2019, Gen Z will undoubtedly become the social media target audience of choice for both commercial and non-profit purposes. Gen Z is mostly those born after the year 2000.
The reason is clear. The Gen Z are more digitally-oriented. Moreover, by next year, they will be ripe for entry into the job market. Experts believe that private companies will invest a bulk of their advertising budget in targeting Gen Z-ers in 2019.
- AI-Driven Customer Service (Chatbot)
As of today, over 60% of the millennial population already make use of chatbots and over 71% implied they are open to using chatbots. According to Hootsuite, more than 85% of all customer service interactions will be powered by AI Bots such as chatbots in 2019.
If you are still hesitating, now is the right time to learn how you can leverage chatbots in reaching your younger customers.
- Social data - Trust and transparency
2018 saw Facebook CEO - Mark Zuckerberg faced an inquiry by US Senate over mismanagement of personal data. This brings worldwide attention to data privacy, security, and surveillance across social media. Facebook has already banned some apps and will come up with more stringent data policies going forward.
Your consumers also expect you to take data privacy seriously. If there is anything we learned from Facebook early this year, it is data mismanagement can pull down a brand. Facebook lost a lot of money, there were able to survive because they are a strong brand - Your company may not be so lucky.
Conclusion
We expect a lot of changes in social media marketing in the following years. It is very helpful to know these emerging social media trends early and leverage them. By understanding social media future, you can be able to re-strategize and make 2019 the year you own the market!
