What do you think are the trends that will make it big this 2016 when it comes to Social Media Marketing?
Whether you like it or not, Social Media Marketing is here to stay. And it’s up to you on how you can use it for your business. Not all trends that come will be right for you and your business. However, there are certain trends that you must follow should you wish to become successful on Social Media.
Here are the 5 Trends That Will Change The Way You Do Social Media Marketing in 2016:
#1 The Increasing Power of the Videos as a Form of Visual Content
Fact – visual content is what makes content marketing a force to reckon with when it comes to advertising and promotions. This is because most people tend to be more stimulated with visuals rather than words. Videos are so useful in telling a story. In fact, in an article published in October last year in Content Marketing Institute, there are several ways that you can use videos in your marketing strategies and these include but not limited to the following:
- for branding– videos allow you to tell the story of your business. It enables you to explain the intricacies involved in the product you are pushing or selling. Videos allow you to unfold a story in such a short span of time, which you simply cannot justify with mere words or images. With videos, you can provide a series of moving or static pictures and include dialogues to further explain the scenes that are about to unfold.
- for advertising– how many millions of dollars are spent by big companies to air their commercials first during Super Bowl? These advertisers and marketers know the power of commercials through videos.
- for SEO purposes– no matter what social media channel you might be in, it’s a given fact that people tend to gravitate towards videos. This is simply because videos bring out the curiosity of people.
- for promotions and other gimmicks– what better way to explain a contest or promotion than creating a video explaining the mechanics and going through the notions of the contest?
#2 Employee Advocacy
What do we mean by employee advocacy? And how does it become a trend in social media marketing in 2016? Simply put, employee advocacy is maximizing your employees’ role by making them advocates of your company or business. Having employees promote, push and talk about your business in social media gives people the impression that not only are they your paid workers, but they are people who truly enjoy working for your company and at the same time believe in your business.
Encouraging your employees to be social media advocates of your business is a win-win situation for both of you (though more on you). You have someone (other than the one doing your social media promotions) talking about your business, and it gives your employees the feeling that you trust them enough to talk about your business on social media.
#3 Influencer Marketing
To put it bluntly, Influencer Marketing is a type of promotion where you are focused on advertising your business to certain individuals or type of people who have the clout to sway the opinions of consumers. Perfect examples of influencers are celebrities, sports personalities, and even politicians.
Influencer Marketing is leveraging word of mouth promotion which can generate twice the sales of paid advertising. How many restaurants or books have seen a spike in their sales simply because Oprah has mentioned them in passing? How many dresses have become out of stock since they saw Kate Middleton or Princess Charlotte wearing them?
Influencer Marketing as a trend in Social Media Marketing in 2016 is advantageous because it promotes native advertising as opposed to paid advertising. It is powerful and social. Best of all, everybody is talking about it, so it helps boost your SEO.
#4 The Use of Social Media Ads
Fact – paid social media ads are really effective when it comes to putting awareness on consumer’s mind about your product or business. It may have lost a little bit of its luster due to the emerging popularity of Influencer Marketing and native advertising. It will never lose its importance though simply because Social Media ads have become adaptable to the changes of time.
Social Media ads have the capacity for advanced targeting options. It means you can specify your target audience for your particular ad down to the age, gender, and even location. That way, you do not waste premium ads on people who are unlikely to buy your goods and services. With this kind of option, you also improve the chances for conversion.
Just a little reminder when using social media ads – always gear towards mobile advertising as there are more people who use mobile devices than computers when making purchases. Try to ensure that when using this kind of trend in Social Media Marketing in 2016, you put importance on mobile devices rather than computers.
#5 Social Messaging
Social Messaging as a trend for social media marketing in 2016 is something that you must consider too. This is because social messaging has been around since the Internet has become popular. Social messaging uses chat and mobile messaging apps like WhatsApp, Viber, Skype, Line, and Messenger just to name a few. In fact, WhatsApp alone has about 900 million monthly users while Facebook Messenger has about 700 million users. WeChat, on the other hand, has about 650 million monthly users. Just by looking at these outrageous numbers, it would be a shame not to take advantage of social messaging as one of your strategies for social media marketing in 2016.
Wrapping it up
It’s true that trends do come and go, but there are trends that are really effective and have been used for years already. In fact, they are no longer apt to be called trends but social media marketing rules or norms since they have already become the standard when it comes to this kind of marketing.
Whatever trend for social media marketing in 2016 you might have chosen, it is best to stick to it for a couple of weeks so you can track and measure its success. Why not try all of these and see what works best for you and your business?
Videos in particular carry a powerful message, especially in social media. However, we’re not quite sure if it applies to small-time businesses considering the cost involved in video content relative to images. We’re excited about the rest of the points though. Hoping for a better year for all companies this year.
The cost isn’t necessarily as high as you might think, there are places where you can get short videos in under $100 even half of that if the video is shorter. They can be quite nice and helpful – try searching fiverr for video presentations, there are also other places like this one to get them at affordable rates and 1-2 per month would suffice, you don’t need one daily.