Social Media Marketing Will Dominate Marketing Strategy

Social Media is constantly evolving and 2019 was no different. Here’s the top 5 social media marketing practices of 2019 and what you should know for 2020!

Rewinding 2019’s Key Trends and Fast Forward to 2020

For the larger part of 2019, we have seen political parties leveraging every social media platform during the run up to the Canadian national elections. Our friends in other countries have experienced the same. (Not to mention Trump and his passion for tweeting!) The truth is that whether you are promoting an individual, a product, a service, a brand, a corporation, or a nation’s political agenda, social media marketing has a place for everything and everyone. In fact, this is one dynamic space where the possibilities are so immense, that you can rewrite the rules of marketing, as often as you like. It’s no wonder that social media marketing has been a complete game-changer for businesses who have grasped the true potential of this channel.

Read on to know more about the vast possibilities of social marketing through what worked in 2019, and key trends expected in 2020.

Top 5 Social Media Marketing Practices of 2019

1. Social Listening is In: Crawling the web and social media platforms for seeking keywords or brand mentions has become a big trend and serves multiple purposes, including:

• Reinforcing customer service efforts
• Getting better insights for reputation management
• Achieving lead generation and social selling

Check out tools, such as Awario, Brand24, Mention, Talkwalker, or Brandwatch, amongst others. Each offers a plethora of analytics on various dimensions of social listening.

2. Video Content is Exploding: As per the State of Video Marketing 2019 study, the average consumer watches over 90 minutes of online video content per day, with around 15% averaging more than 3 hours. In fact, recent studies indicate that the exponential growth in consumption of video content has led to:

• Better message retention (54% increase in brand awareness)
• Higher conversions (66% more qualified leads per year)

If you haven’t used it so far, don’t miss incorporating it in your 2020 social strategy.

3. More Power to Micro-Influencers: With the growing number of social media influencers who have millions of followers, one cannot deny the power they have to boost your marketing or consumer engagement efforts. Whether it is Twitter, Instagram, or YouTube, social influencers are growing, and so are the prices for their services. However, another emerging and affordable option is micro-influencer marketing, which exists in pretty much every marketing niche. While these influencers may have fewer than 10,000 followers, theirs is a highly engaged and motivated lot that is genuinely interested in what their influencer has to say.

4. Personalization is Key: The vast amount of information that people post or upload each day offers critical insights into what people want. In addition to social media posts, you can also monitor consumers’ clicks, purchase history, and a host of other behaviours and demographics to personalize your content, products, emails and other promotions. Use measurement and monitoring to boost your social marketing strategy. Higher the personalization, greater the effectiveness of your social efforts.

5. Real-Time or Nothing: Time is everything, and timeliness will empower your social media strategy. Whether it is real-time selling, 24/7 customer support, or continuous monitoring for potential social media crises, today consumers expect everything here and now. Besides, there are plenty of tools that can support your real-time marketing efforts.

What Does the Future Hold for Social Media Marketing?

Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg described this in 3 remarkable words, “The Future is Private”.  His vision is that eventually, channels such as Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram will be unified to create more intimate social experiences. On the other hand, public platforms, such as TikTok, IGTV or Twitter will also continue to grow.  In this context, you may want to look at some of these options for your social media marketing strategy in 2020:

1. Extend Your Reach with Public Feeds: Integrate social advertising and influencer marketing into your organic social media marketing plans. Leverage the power of public feeds to build brand awareness, promote discovery, and extend your reach to a broader audience.

2. Balance Your Focus on Public and Private Channels: While the noise on the conventional public platforms will continue to rise, over time, some of your audience may start straying away from the impersonal and cluttered public feeds. Hence, it’s important to retain focus on public channels for brand discovery and customer acquisition and start relying on private channels for building and deepening relationships.

3. Bank on Technology: Automate the easy stuff but preserve the human touch. Opt for bots while addressing common queries, but have real people handle the nuances of complex conversations, when you connect with your audience.

Design Future-Ready Social Marketing Plans

Whether it is in response to user preferences, developer ideas, scandals, political requirements, or the general rise of social awareness and public policing, social media continues to go through constant changes and updates. As marketers, you will need to stay abreast with new features, layouts and functionalities of every channel on a real-time basis. Staying relevant and future-ready may be the only way you can optimize the cost and efforts of your social media marketing strategies. Let’s face it, if there is one aspect of digital media marketing that is impossible to avoid, it is social media marketing. It’s a matter of ‘adopt or perish’.

Feeling overwhelmed about filtering out the noise and staying current on relevant stuff within the vast social landscape? Rely on the experts at WSIeStrategies in Ottawa. Book a discovery meeting and let’s discuss ways to strengthen your social media marketing plans and make them future-ready.