The great thing about the world we live in today is that you can wake up in the middle of the night to order a new cloth for work and have it delivered to your doorstep early the next day. Amazing, isn't it? Our world is constantly evolving. Take, for instance, we now have social media celebrities. These people did not have to wait to get into "American Got Talent" show to have their shot at fame. Top celebrities like PewDiePie, Justin Bieber, Kate Upton, and Shawn Mendes were all discovered on social media. All they did was to post a picture/video of themselves doing something really special, ... and boom! ... they are famous. Most of them now worth millions of dollars. That is the power of social media.
On the business side, top brands like Dominos, Nike, and even KLM have excellent social media strategies and have reached the majority of their customers through social media. The reward is more than 100% increase in their revenue. Without a doubt, social media platforms have become a powerful tool for both individuals and brands. Social media spending by brands is expected to reach $15 billion in the first quarter of 2019. As a brand, you need to ensure you are aware of the recent trends in social media marketing. This is very important for the survival and success of your business. As trends continue to evolve on social media, it is extremely important that your marketing strategies and techniques correspond to these trends. To make it easier for you, we have rounded up top social media trends to keep an eye on in 2019:
Top Social Media Trends Your Brand Should Be Aware of:
- Social Listening
Social listening didn't start today but we believe that most brands are going to take it more seriously in 2019. Last year, some brands made an effort to hire full-time experts not just to handle their social media account(s) but also to leverage the tools for social listening.
Social listening is just crawling the web and social media platforms to find all mentions of a brand. Brands need to know both tagged and untagged mentions. They need to know who is talking about them and what they are saying about their products/services. The goal of social listening is to provide better customer service, feedback, reputation management, and customer targeting.
There are tons of tools you can leverage for social listening. Some of these tools include Hootsuite, Social Mention or Sprout Social.
- Video Content
The growth of video contents on social media platforms which started around 2015 is expected to continue in 2019. In fact, experts believe that video content will once again dominate the market in 2019. According to a survey, 80% of what we consume online will soon be video contents. Facebook recently started paying Video creators on Facebook in an effort to get many video creators into the platform.
The growth of live videos is also expected to double this year on Facebook and Instagram. Brands can now use Live Videos to put a face on their brand, show their customers what goes on behind the scene and use the same to build trust and credibility. Without a doubt, this is a trend your brand don't want to ignore.
- Viral Videos and Posts
A viral post on Instagram or Facebook can take your brand to the next level. Back in 2017, brands pay a huge amount of money to social media experts to get their post on Instagram's "Explore Page". Just last year, Facebook introduced a feature on Facebook known as "Popular Across Facebook". This feature is simply Facebook's version of Instagram "Explore Page". It is still undergoing testing but will be massive in 2019.
Getting your post on "Explore Tab" or "Across Facebook" is based on the number of engagements a post gets. The Facebook algorithm simply choose a post that is getting much engagement and put them on "Across Facebook" where they can be seen both by your followers and non-followers alike. It is a massive promotion for any brands that succeed in getting their post on Instagram's Explore Page or on "Across Facebook".
While the posts to be featured are chosen automatically by a Facebook algorithm, you can boost the chances of your posts being selected by making sure it is getting engagements that it needs. Brands use social promoter like Instant-Famous.com to get likes and comments on their photos and videos in order to make these posts go viral. Next time you are looking for a way to make your post go viral, consider using this service.
- User-Generated Content (UGC)
User-generated contents are simply the contents generated by your social media followers. It can be likened to the word of mouth such as a friend recommending a shirt that they bought from you to another friend. Customers find these contents more valuable and reliable. In fact, the purpose of user-generated content is reliability and authenticity.
Marketers around the world are starting to realize the potentials in creating online buzz and engaging customers leveraging UGC. More than 70% of brands already leverage user-generated content. To make sure you leverage UGC as it should, you should first focus on building a good quality large number of followers. Brands can quickly build large followership using social media services like Instant-Famous to get new and high-quality followers.
- Return To Organic Ads (Posts)
In 2017 and 2018, we saw a big rise in ads spend on Facebook with average small business advertising on Facebook spends around $500 to $1,500 per month. At a point, some brands thought there is no point in building their followership again. Of course, these brands learned their lesson the hard way. If there is any lesson we learned in 2018, it is that paid social ads don't always bring the best results. Facebook is already becoming saturated with the existing competition leading to increasingly rise of ads spends and poor results.
Most brands are now returning to the old way of building organic followership to reduce what they spend on ads. Instagram Feed and Stories seem to bring a good ROI for many brands. Thus, these brands are now turning to Instant-Famous.com to build organic followership and cut down their ad spend.
Final Words
As a marketer or brand owner, you should always be on a lookout for trends and ensure you tweak your marketing strategies and techniques to accommodate these trends. Fortunately, there are always tools to help you out. Now you know about these trends, you can have an upper hand against your competition. It now depends on you to figure out how to leverage these trends to your advantage by using some of the tools suggested in this article.
