Social Media Trends That Will Surely Boost Your Digital Advertising Today

Social media is continuously evolving. That’s why it’s crucial that you know how to utilize these platforms to your advantage.

Being active on social media is essential and necessary if you want to thrive in a highly competitive digital landscape.

However, social media alone isn’t going to make you successful. You need to utilize the latest marketing trends and knowing how to apply it in your business.

Remember that marketing and social media will always go hand in hand. So it’s vital that you and your brand stay on top of things right now.

In this post, we’re going to talk about the top social media trends that will surely boost your marketing strategy today.

Live video streaming

Last 2018, live video made big waves and this trend will continue to rise this year.

According to a study, live videos became so popular that 80 percent of users prefer watching a live video than reading a blog. Moreover, 82% even say that they’d rather watch live videos that read their feeds on social media.

Hence, a lot of social media platforms have incorporated live video options. As a result, a lot of marketers are taking advantage of these live streams. Even average people are utilizing it to share and connect and interact with their network on social media.

Because of its popularity, this trend helps boost engagement with your social media followers.

So, now is an excellent time to go live with your video channels. Respond with people’s comments on real time. That way, you can boost your reach and bring in new leads over time.

Integration of chatbots

Chatbots have been around for quite a time now. But they’re also continually evolving. Now, it’s possible for chatbots to be incorporated with social media channels.

A lot of businesses are utilizing chatbots to connect and communicate with their customers on social media. When Facebook Messenger first came out, the total number of chatbots jumped from 33,000 to a whopping 100,000.

Swelly is an example of a social chatbot.

In a survey, 80% of marketing executives have used (or plan to use) these bots by the time 2020 rolls in. It is even estimated that chatbots are going to save the banking and healthcare industry $8 billion per year by 2022.

Without a doubt, it’s an attractive, cost-effective alternative to paying human customer support representatives.

Of course, nothing can ever replace the human touch‒atleast for now. But these bots are surely on the right track.

Rise of micro and nano-influencers

Most companies recognize the value of micro and nano influencers in the industry and want to partner with them to boost a brand’s credibility.

A micro-influencer are people on social media that have a strong following but hasn’t reached celebrity status yet. Typically, they have about 10,000 to 90,000 followers.

On the other hand, nano-influencers are those that have less than 10,00 followers. Despite the lack of reach and follower count, they do compensate with higher engagement rates with sincere sounding comments.

You’d be even surprised that micro-influencers’ engagement rates are 60 percent higher than the conventional celebrity macro-influencers. Not only that, they’re more cost-effective than traditional advertising. Moreover, most of their audience trust their opinions.

So, don’t hesitate to spend your cash on these people. If you’re relatively new to it, nano-influencers are an excellent starting point to influencer marketing.

Leveraging of UGC

User Generated Content (UGC) is pretty much like free advertising. It’s an excellent way to grow your business by doing less work.

So let your customers do the talking. Ask them to utilize hashtags and talk about your brand on different social media channels.

When you’re more open to featuring users on your photos, a lot of people will post about your brand in an effort to be chosen.

When a user posts about you on their social media profile, it exposes you to their own network. A lot of those people don’t even know that your brand exists.

Remember, a lot of people trust the recommendation of their friends and family more. So that makes UGC a top lead generation strategy that you need to take advantage of.

Creation of ephemeral content

There are billions of videos streaming on social media, and therefore, you couldn’t ignore the engagement that short-lived (aka ephemeral) content brings.

Ephemeral content lets people engage with your brand on a more authentic level.

Using the right images, rich media (such as video), and influencers, you can create a strong ephemeral content strategy that’s guaranteed to bring in customer engagement and brand loyalty.

So no matter what industry you’re in, you should tailor your video strategy to be ephemeral, which means short-lived. That’s to trigger FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) among your audience.

Adoption of augmented reality

Have you ever heard about Snapshot’s face filters? Well, that’s augmented reality. It takes something real and then alters it.

Some brands are using Snapchat’s branded geofilters

Facebook even joined in as well through their camera effects platform. Most of these filters have a real-time response to interactions and motions. It also works on live streams.

Paid social media ads

A lot of brands and businesses are tapping into the power of social media ads. In fact, in 2018, there is a rise of approximately 32 percent on social media budgets and are producing ads consistently.

So, it’s not surprising anymore that one out of four Facebook pages is using paid ads in their advertising strategy.

If you want to take your social media strategy to the next level, you need to leverage on paid ads. For instance, on Facebook, it has become easy to set up ads and target a particular demographic.

The platform also makes it easy for you to set your budget. You can choose to set it up either on a daily or weekly basis. You’re also presented with a multitude of options of the different types of ads that you want to run.

It’s best to experiment with what works best for you and the specific type of audience that you’re targeting.

Social listening

Whether you believe this or not, social media channels are listening with your conversations.

Have you ever tried talking about something with your friends and then you come across an ad on it on social media channels? It might sound a bit creepy, but that’s social listening.

While it’s usually bigger companies that utilize social listening, that doesn’t mean small business can’t jump on the train. In fact, this is the latter’s way of competing against bigger enterprises.

You can take the data that you get from it to make adjustments with your marketing strategy and making sure that you’re targeting the right audience.

You’re also gaining insight on what people are saying about your company. You can utilize this tool to monitor related keywords and hashtags.

Thus, social listening is an ideal tool to grow your following, find your product-market fit, or come up with new product ideas.

Social plays a crucial role to your business

Gone are the days that social media is being used merely for brand awareness and product discovery. Now, social media marketing plays a crucial role in driving intent and conversion in the buyer’s journey.

Keep in mind that social media is dynamic and continuously changing. These changes are expected and will continue to evolve.

Author Bio

Kevin Urrutia is the founder of Voymedia.com, a Facebook Ads Agency based in New York. He helps businesses maximize the benefits of Facebook Advertising, leading to a dramatic improvement in sales while pushing down costs. Voy Media thoroughly studies each client and comes up with tailor-fit solutions to bring about the best results.