Social media is booming, and shows no signs of slowing down. This means social media marketing offers even more opportunities for the savvy marketer willing to spot trends and adjust their campaigns to make the most of them.
Facebook will continue to be the largest online social network. Their new focus is on:
* Memes – Your own, or those created with their meme maker.
* Video – The CEO of Facebook has predicted that most of Facebook will be video or memes by 2020.
* Video live streaming – This is in direct competition to YouTube as well, and part of Facebook’s thrust to get people to “live on their site,” spending as much time on Facebook as possible using all of the varied tools it has made available.
* Messenger as an advertising and marketing tool – Messenger ads are not a saturated market yet on Facebook, so if you are looking for a new way to connect with your target audience, this might be worth a try.
Facebook acquired Instagram in 2017, so expect to see both closer integration and significant growth. Instagram has around 500 million users per month. Its ad network, now being run by Facebook, offers excellent audience targeting compare with Google AdWords. If you have highly visual content, you need to be on Instagram.
Pinterest continues to be hugely popular with a female audience. If you have highly visual products, this is the place to be.
Pinboards are still the place to put your pins, but now you are allowed to group them into sections so they don’t look like one vast jumble. Take the time to set the category for each board and write a keyworded description of the board, for more visibility through search and better board suggestions and matches from Pinterest to their users.
They have been ramping up their advertising program with some impressive new features, and more are coming in early 2018 which can help take your pins to the next level. The audience selection for the ads is much more detailed. You can pay per click, or per brand awareness campaign. For those with a PPC budget of $100 per day, there is the Pinterest Propel program:
https://business.pinterest.com/en/blog/introducing-pinterest-propel-for-successful-advertising
YouTube and Video Marketing
These are both growing with no signs of slowing down.
Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing has emerged as a result of niches and industries getting ever more crowded and “noisy.” It’s impossible to follow every trend yourself, so following one or more influencers in your niche can keep you up to speed on the latest important information.
If you want to become an influencer yourself, immerse yourself in your topic and point the way to great products, services, articles and so on that will be of real benefits to others. This will then make it a lot easier to sell any paid products you might be creating, because you already have authority in your niche.
Content Is Still King
Post consistently on your networks in order to build relationships and stay connected with your audience.
If you’ve been seeing less engagement at certain of your accounts, try one or more of these trends and see what a difference they can make to your traffic, subscribers and sales.
Do you have some questions about marketing your business online but don’t know who to ask? Why not ask me? I can help you with both strategy and implementation to make your business more profitable and more popular. We can do this together in 75 minutes; though my whiteboard session. Learn more about it!
