Content Savants brings you practical insights in the world of media and Social Media Marketing. The following article focuses on trending opportunities in marketing for your business, and practical steps you can take to leverage these trends for your own business success.
Enjoy the ride, and if these trends continue, 2020 is shaping up to be a major shake-up in which businesses are successful and which will fall behind.
A quick look back
2018 brought some key insights into the world of social media marketing. Many changes are taking place, and it is important for businesses to put into context some of the changes that are occurring in 2019, to identify longer-term trends that will impact the future.
There are a few key points:
- Direct customer engagement is becoming increasingly important. A simple meme posting is good for building awareness of your business, however for a small increment in time spent on social media, responding directly to customers shows that your social media platforms are not just bulletin boards, but rather, that you are actively engaged in the business and in the process of connecting with customers.
- Small-time influencers are becoming more important. Social media influencers are growing from a small niche industry into a major business category within social media marketing. Small time influencers who generate a following of well-targeted accounts can appeal to specialized businesses, offering effective endorsement at a fraction of the cost of major online social media influencers or celebrity endorsements.
- Stories as a new category of posting. First popularized by Snapchat, this short-term text/photo content format has also been copied by Instagram, Facebook, Youtube and even LinkedIn. There are over 400 million daily online users taking in story-based content on Instagram alone. Advertisers are beginning to take note.
Looking ahead
What these trends mean for 2020:
- The marketing mix is growing in complexity. A simple Twitter posting each day – while better than nothing – will wane in its effectiveness as simpler, more basic formats begin to lose clout versus complex visuals and videos. Add to the mix new formats such as personal stories and small time social media influencers, successfully managing different channels of communication will put the onus on overall message development to ensure a consistent theme is published throughout different social media channels and formats.
- Knowing your data will be key. Few businesses will have the time and resources to try all social media approaches – adding on to that would also include SEO and PPC strategies – therefore keeping track of customer data, response rates, and social engagement will be key to discerning which types of social media activity are more effective and which should receive less (or occasional) attention.
How to respond
For the small business owner, we recommend the following initial steps if they are not already being done:
- As always, maintain consistent engagement with your audience. Optimization among a wide range of channels remains a secondary consideration to the importance of being heard by your customers on a regular basis.
- At the same time, track responses in a structured manner. For many businesses, the occasional posting on social media, while a key part of their strategy, is nonetheless an informal task that continues to creep up on the calendars every week. Taking that a step further, it will be important for businesses to track their social media activity and use that to identify patterns between posting and customer responses. A simple spreadsheet showing the time of the posting, content description, accounts used, and after one or two days, what were the engagement statistics (including views, likes, and comments) as reported by the platform. Over time, this data will give you insights which can save time and effort down the road.
These are just a few practical highlights. Content Savants works with businesses on a case-by-case basis to identify opportunities to optimize social media with a customized analysis of your target customer profile and of the content which serves to generate action that leads to increased sales.