Latest Social Media Marketing Trends

The world of social media is in a constant state of flux, deploying new features that drive trends in digital marketing and advertising. When it makes sense for your audience, your business can leverage the latest social media marketing trends for increased outreach and visibility.

Social media platforms, such as Facebook and Snapchat, provide your business with clever and convenient ways to reach your target audience and generate exposure for your products and services. Keep in mind that these platforms introduce changes and add features so often that it can be easy to miss out on new social media marketing opportunities. New features or policy changes can impact your marketing efforts by forcing your business to constantly refine your approach or completely shift your area of focus. To continue to get the most out of your social engagement efforts, you have to be aware of the latest social media marketing trends. If your business has struggled to implement a cohesive strategy that produces results, a social media marketing company in Little Rock can help you expand your presence and generate new leads.

The Rise of Social Video

At this point, posting updates, images, and links on social media is the standard practice for businesses marketing their products and services online. But social video marketing is increasingly becoming the preferred way to more deeply engage potential customers. Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat all offer ways for your company to create and share video content on their platforms. These videos do not have to be long or expertly produced. Instead, your company can take advantage of shorter formats and streaming video services to produce your own social videos for marketing and engagement. This allows a more personal touch where consumers can get a feel for your company’s culture and the unique personalities on your staff. Instagram recently rolled out its Stories feature, which is very similar to Snapchat Stories, that allows you to combine photos and video into a 10 second story that is active for 24 hours before it disappears. The Stories feature for Instagram and Snapchat provides opportunities for immediate engagement through topical content. Facebook Live offers even more immediacy for content engagement as you can live stream events, product launches, and behind the scenes videos that can be both fun and instructive.

Employees as a Marketing Resource

Companies are moving away from relying solely on the public or their target audience to draw attention to content on their social media platforms. Now companies are asking their employees to share updates on their personal social media accounts, actively engaging with potential leads and influencers who have a dedicated social media following. This results in a higher level of engagement for content posted on a company’s social media account, leading to greater exposure and an expanded audience that your brand typically would not reach. Content shared by employees gets eight times more engagement than content shared on company accounts. Social media tools like Circulate.it and Smarp allows you to easily disseminate content to your employees who can then share it across their social networks to build your brand and increase engagement.

Increased Advertising on Snapchat

Snapchat has not been known for providing as many advertising opportunities as Facebook and other social media platforms, but that is expected to change this year. The social media site is expanding its advertising by launching Snapchat Partners, an advertising application programming interface powered by more than 20 tech companies. This will lead to wider availability for Snapchat ads, which should drive new social media marketing trends in the future.

If your company is looking to increase your brand awareness nationally, Snapchat Discover hosts content from national media where you can purchase 10-second segments of a Discover story. For more local targeted marketing, your business can utilize Geofilters to create overlays and filters for a defined geographic space and timeframe.

New Facebook Features

Even with the upsurge in marketing and engagement opportunities from other social media platforms, Facebook is still the industry leader with 1.71 billion monthly active users. Facebook is rolling out new features all the time that can benefit you and your business, but your marketing team will have to adapt to these changes:

• Canvas: This ad format for the social media platform’s mobile app allows for more creative, engaging advertising. Canvas ads expand when users click on them and include a wide range of features, such as touch controls, embedded videos, animations, and eye-catching call-to-action buttons.
• Live Video: This live streaming feature gives you the opportunity to stream videos that are 90 minutes or less. The downside of this feature for advertisers is that it might have a negative impact on paid performance for video ads, but companies should note that Live Videos typically appear higher in users’ news feeds.
• Instant Articles: This feature lets you publish articles directly on Facebook’s platform, instead of sending users to an outside site. While Instant Articles have roughly the same rank as traditional articles in news feeds, they typically encourage more engagement. Instant articles offer a faster, more streamlined user experience as they typically load 10 times faster than standard mobile websites.

If your company is not taking advantage of the latest social media marketing trends, contact the social engagement specialists at Scale by calling 501-588-3199 to set up a consultation. By helping you generate more leads and increase conversion rates, we can show you why marketing on social media is a critical component of your overall marketing strategy.
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