Social media is an integral part of most of our day-to-day lives. For many businesses, their social platforms provide a place to connect with target customers and promote their product or services.
Given the popularity of social channels such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter – the competition is higher than ever. This means it can be a challenge to stand out from the crowd and build a solid profile for your business while driving noticeable digital marketing results.
With this in mind, it’s crucial to have a strong social media strategy in place for the year ahead. The best way to do this is by keeping on top of any social media trends and building your content calendar accordingly.
Which of these social media trends could your business benefit from?
We’ve put together a list of some of the popular trends that we expect to see even more of in 2021:
More stories and ‘snackable’ posts
‘Stories’ allow us to post photos or videos that are only public for 24 hours. Instagram introduced stories back in 2016 – and they’ve since been introduced to Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and even YouTube (these last seven days).
The way we consume content has changed – and consumers typically like ‘snackable’ content that is short and engaging – like stories and more recently, Reels. According to Embed Social; one-third of the most viewed Instagrams stories are from businesses. So, if you’ve thought about experimenting with stories as a business to boost engagement – then now might be the ideal time to do it!
More video content
All major platforms (Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and TikTok) are continually improving their video capabilities. We expect this to carry on into 2021 and for more businesses to use video when it comes to driving engagement.
The great thing about video content is how versatile it can be. You can choose between things like Stories, Reels, or TikTok’s – or long-form content on YouTube.
Now is the time to start thinking about including some video content in your marketing strategy (if you’re not already) to stay relevant on social channels. If video is something you haven’t experimented with before – start small and opt for an Instagram or Facebook story. You can read more on the different types of video content here.
More brands going live
Social media platforms like Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram have made it easy for businesses to live-stream their content to an audience for free. Live streams provide users with a way of communicating with an audience in real-time.
For businesses, this tends to include things like Q&A’s, interviews, product launches and other ‘behind-the-scenes’ videos. The benefits of live streams on social media include:
- A more personal approach
- Transparency
- Fresh and unique content
- A source of traffic
- Real-time content
Given the number of companies working from home and taking things like conferences and events online – it will be no surprise if live stream numbers increase in 2021. This provides businesses and marketers with a way of bringing more engaging and relatable content online.
Influencer marketing becoming even more powerful
If you’re using social media – you’ll already know that it is mostly dominated by social influencers and bloggers. More and more companies are noticing the benefits of investing in influencers to promote their brand or product online.
As a digital marketing agency – we’ve seen businesses of all shapes and sizes benefitting from an influencer marketing campaign. It’s a way of telling your brand story but through somebody who will resonate the most with your ideal customers. The right partnership can lead to better brand awareness, social media engagement and sales.
Many digital marketers are now working with more than one influencer or a group of niche, relevant influencers. We expect to see much more of this going forward.
More local targeting
Local targeting isn’t just for SEO – multiple brands have started to use location-based targeting on their social platforms, too. Reaching users in a specific location has become easier on Instagram and Facebook in particular.
For example, you can tag a location in your online stories and posts – which can help people in your tagged location find your content. On Instagram, you can filter posts by clicking on one location and only viewing content from that area. Similarly, Facebook offers a ‘boost post’ option that allows you to select a location when targeting your promoted content. Brands might use local targeting to promote events, conferences or simply reach a more targeted audience.
Social listening playing a key part in more strategies
While social media is used to promote businesses, drive sales and build engagement – it can also be a great tool for gathering useful data and marketing insights. With the ability to quickly tap into online conversations and trending topics – social media is the perfect place for marketers to find the insights they need to refine their online strategies.
Social listening means monitoring your brands’ social profiles for customer feedback, brand mentions and conversations mentioning relevant keywords, topics and industries. With these insights, we can follow up with an analysis to help work out the best ways to improve our social presence. With more social listening tools being introduced – this will likely become a key part of more businesses strategies.
If you’re not doing this already – we recommend experimenting with some of the social media listening tools that are already out there—for example, Sprout Social, Buffer and Tweetreach.
Are you seeing the results you expected or do you need someone to step in and drive better engagement from your social media marketing? Feel free to reach out to us.