Social media marketing is the hot topic for 2020 and it looks like there needs to be a way to better balance data and customer experience. According to Sprout Social, there are nine social media trends to keep an eye on this year. Marketers are asking themselves the questions of what is successful in social media and what is not. Ranking number one across social media content is the number of likes, then shares, closely followed by customer interaction. The lesser measures of success being revenue attribution, inspiring customers to take action and last but not necessarily least, inspiring emotional response.

As we begin to move away from likes, we see trends gravitate towards something a little more crucial to social marketers; social listening. Rather than riding a short wave of likes, they will be working towards more engagement with customers to better understand what motivates them. Tribes of communities and “third place” social groups have also hit a chord causing markets to consider reaching out to their own platforms as opposed to the entire social landscape. Social Sprout also points out the “emergence of marketing tribes” and the “need for brands to focus on talking to individuals. “

Popular media platform Instagram created a new feature thread where they are now able to share their stories with whomever they choose. Brands have taken this and created a club atmosphere which in turn makes their targeted customers feel special and more open in communication. This seems like a great way to get more detailed feedback from users and I can see the advantages, but they may want to not do this exclusively for the sake of engaging new customers. In addition, marketing strategies address the need for more personalized ads, adding videos and even shipping costs into the ads to eliminate surprise fees and encourage consumers to finish their check outs.

Sellers are also beginning to sell directly on the social platforms which is proving to be more effective than having a consumer follow a link to a bio or website. Also on trend is the idea of social “influencers” to aid in marketing campaigns. Influencers, according to Wired.com, is “shorthand for someone (or something) with the power to affect the buying habits or quantifiable actions of others by uploading some form of original—often sponsored—content to social media platforms like Instagram, YouTube, Snapchat.” These influencers are becoming more scrutinized by companies and are given a more negative context in terms like “fake influencers” or ” nano influencers”. These users pose an issue because their followers are engaged by how many likes something has, which doesn’t necessarily bring in a meaningful audience. One better way to engage with a more productive audience has been growing the past couple of years and this technique is the use of stories on social media.

In stories you can create an interactive way to reach your audience through a mixed timeline of videos and comments sprinkled with polls and music. This type of marketing is growing fast this year as more and more user- generated content is being created. When a user invests in a product they’re encouraged to share and use connective hashtags on their posts so that when a potential new customer is curious they can see and read about others’ experiences with a product or service by simply looking up that hashtag. This type of product evaluation, if you will, is more intimate in that every day people can share to their stories and each person has a real and personal relationship to their viewers who they consider to be friends and family on social media. This is a cheap and effective way for businesses to spread the word and helps to bridge the gap made by influencers who don’t have that type of personal connection to their audience and who do not provide as much feedback.

Many companies upon the emergence of new platforms jumped in to create a presence on them before really considering if all of these were necessarily the most beneficial to their product or even had the best audience. Now, marketers suggest only participating in platforms that best fit your perspective user rather than spreading your product thinly over multiple platforms. This enables sellers to really generate rich, informative, niche content because they aren’t focused on maintaining a presence on so many platforms at once. I myself have been thinking I should remove my Facebook business account and focus solely on Instagram and Pinterest because my audience is larger on these platforms and feel like less of an extra weight that need not be troubled with.

Last but certainly not least are new user friendly tools that are surfacing which make it easier for businesses to track data. For example, Instagram now has the option to open a business account and, after you obtain 100 followers, the more data and reach you can obtain. Some of these tools are reports and charts which show how far a posts reach was and how many visitors a post brought in. Insights like these are broken down into three categories; content, activity and audience. You can even “boost” or promote your post after you have reached a certain amount of followers to increase your overall reach. You can view how many impressions your posts have made, if anyone shared your posts, and view page interactions and profile visits. You can even grain insight into your audience demographic to better help you understand who your preferred audience is.

All in all, social media platforms this year are on trend for becoming even more immersed with marketing and sales. While there’s no sign of these strategies slowing down, it looks like users can anticipate more interactive content and personalized ads from their choices of social media platforms. Sounds like a good deal to me!

Sources:

Barnhart, B. (2020, May 15). The most important social media trends to know for 2020. Retrieved June 9, 2020, from https://sproutsocial.com/insights/social-media-trends/

Influencer Marketing. (2020, May 26). Social Media Trends for 2020 and Beyond. Retrieved June 9, 2020, from https://influencermarketinghub.com/social-media-trends/

Martineau, P. (2019, June 12). The WIRED Guide to Influencers. Retrieved June 9, 2020, from https://www.wired.com/story/what-is-an-influencer/