The year 2021 saw shifts in social media marketing as the platforms continued to grow. There are now billions of people on various social media platforms, and brands are constantly looking for ways to get more out of their presence on them. For example, a lead generation campaign on LinkedIn can be an excellent move for companies that are focused on the B2B market. Knowing some of the key trends can allow a company to get the most out of its social media marketing efforts, so here are some that experts have noticed.
Quality Before Quantity
A lot of brands were focusing on hourly content on their social media pages. While it is essential to let your followers know that you are active, they can survive without an update from you for a few hours. This is the lesson that many brands learned, as many customers were overwhelmed by short posts that didn’t bring anything to the conversation. Many brands are making up for it by creating more effective posts that are posted daily or every other day. Allowing your customers some breathing space is now expected.
Aiming for Long-term Loyalty
Aiming to go viral was often the goal for a lot of social media marketing campaigns. The views that your campaign can get could go into the millions. The problem was translating it into actual sales. Many marketing campaigns are now moving away from flashy viral campaigns to more quiet but more effective community building. Social media is the perfect venue for such efforts. Businesses can reach out and coordinate with customers to build a community around products and services. It also helps that the community can be self-sustaining once a critical mass of loyal customers is created.
More Stories
People love stories, and this reflects in the sort of social media content that they like. Telling stories through your brand’s social media content can allow you to connect better with your customers. Presenting things as stories can get them interested and invested in your ideas. To make it work, focus on making the stories relevant. For example, if you are selling a nutritional supplement, then you should focus on how it can benefit your customers, especially those in your target demographic. Marketing them to older people will be a lot different from making it relate to younger people.
The popularity of Going Live
Live streaming is also becoming a major trend. Platforms like Twitch and YouTube now support live video presentations. While this can be challenging, it also creates a perfect opportunity to connect with your customer base. They feel that it is more real than any scripted content. Platforms have noticed it, too, and have been pushing for live video to appear on their platforms. However, to make it work, you have to put in some heavy preparation and be ready for anything. It can easily go wrong if you don’t have the right people working on it.
Bite-sized Content Is the Way to Go
Long-form content is interesting, but a lot of businesses have noticed the power of TikTok. The short second-long videos don’t last longer than a minute at most, and they still manage to get a lot of attention. The move now is towards creating easily “snackable” content that people can interact quickly with. It is not videos either. A lot can be packed into a single infographic that will fit into a single screen. The aim is to deliver as much value as possible in short doses. Animated gifs and memes will be popular in the coming year, and integrating your brand into that will be big.
Integrating Purchases
Customers love convenience combined with their social media. Instagram now allows businesses to sell what they feature in their posts without needing to go to another app. This can be a potential revenue stream for many platforms, so you might see this on other platforms soon. Knowing how to cleverly integrate promoting your products in your social media posts so that customers can instantly buy them should be something to focus on in the coming year. Instant conversions from interested social media visitors to paying customers are always a great aim.
While the year is nearly over, these trends are still there and will continue to be there as the new year comes in. Being aware of the above will allow your business to be ready to plan your social media marketing efforts properly. With this in mind, you should be looking towards the future and have 2022 as your goal.
