How many fields can you identify that change as rapidly as social media? Probably not so many. Because of the various changes that social media is undergoing, you must know certain secrets and trends that can make you stand out on these platforms. And to remain the trailblazer in this space, you must understand how to make the most of the various social media platforms that most people use today. The following are six social media trends taking over in 2019 that you should know about:
Higher engagement rates between brands and customers
Consumers and brands have been connecting more closely in the recent past more than they have in the history of marketing. According to sprout social index, 1 in 3 customers is likely to mention your brand when sharing their personal accomplishments on social networking websites and then expect some kind of response for doing this for your brand. Further, available data shows that among millennials, 41% include brands when sharing with their friends and followers about certain life milestones.
These new and unexpected connections have made brands realize the power of social media engagement. Companies have realized that it is important to create working relationships that last, instead of using social media to just advertise the products and services they offer. As you grow your audience on social media, make sure that your page is a platform for your followers to reach you.
Today’s consumers are hardly passive, and want to connect, converse, and engage with the brands whose products they use. Instagram reports that more than 80% of its users follow brands on the network. Because consumers no longer shy away from connecting with brands, you can use this as an opportunity to grow by conversing with existing and potential customers.
Customizable chatbots
Every message you receive on social media should be responded to. But imagine that you’re a big brand and you’re receiving thousands of questions and messages on the various social media channels that you’ve created. How do you keep up with this overflow of messages? Many brands now are using chatbots to address this challenge.
Indeed, social media market watchers see this as the latest space for brands to grow. Just in the last one year, there has been notable spike in the use of chatbots. Available data shows that Facebook Messenger already has over 100,000 chatbots in use by many brands from practically all industries. Companies that are using chatbots report increasing their productivity by as much as 3.5 times.
Social listening will give brands an edge to their messaging online
Some marketers only track what their competitors are offering consumers, i.e. products and services as well as the content they post on social media. But just as important, it would help to monitor what people are saying about your competition. You can use this information as a metric to effectively compare the performance of your organization.
Monitoring mentions on social media gives you a lot of data that you can use to better market your products and services. Social listening gives you valuable information regarding the performance of your competitors. It therefore goes without saying that acquiring this information will give you an advantage when creating a content marketing strategy for your brand.
Brands relying on social listening tools
Given how important social listening has become, marketers are increasingly making it an everyday part of any marketing strategy. This perhaps is the reason why there has been a notable increase in the number of social media monitoring tools available to marketers. In the past most social media tools dealt with scheduling and publishing content. Today’s tools can do so much more including social listening.
In fact, some available tools use social listening to get instagram followers that your brand should follow and engage with. This leads to the accumulation of super-targeted followers that are likely to become customers. You can expect to see the emergence of even more social listening tools that will help marketers understand what people are saying about their brands.
More augmented – reality & face filters
Today’s social media is full of those images with face filters. For instance, it is quite common to open social media sites and not see an image of someone’s face with a dog nose.
In addition, augmented reality will become an even more familiar concept to social media users. Most of them will toy around with the idea of connecting what’s real with digital creations in augmented reality. The same way Pokémon does it, expect such trends to dominate the near future. A few years from now it is not unthinkable that this trend would go mainstream.
Social call-out culture and taking a stance
Big-brands often struggle to maintain contact with customers. As a result many of their customers can become unhappy and keep calling them out on social media. This just shows how close businesses can now connect to their customers. The boldness to call out businesses or take a stance on certain issues has now become a culture.
As a result, brands become more accountable. Consumers feel empowered to talk about their frustrations when using products or services from certain brands. Indeed, even the most loyal customers and fans will likely not remain quiet when something goes terribly wrong. Available data shows that only 8% of your customers would remain silent if your brand was to post something that most social media users would regard inappropriate on a social networking website.
