We know that social media is evolving constantly and it is pretty fascinating to imagine what it would be just a few years down the line. This implies that Social media monitoring must constantly keep up the pace with the demands placed by social media users while brands and businesses go on modifying their tactics when new trends come up. So what exactly does a social medium have in store for businesses in the future? Let us explore the future social media trends that are most likely to emerge and impact brands and businesses.
As per the findings of the Pew Research Center, about 68 percent of Americans are on Facebook and about 73 percent are active users on YouTube. Over time we have seen that social media platforms have evolved into amazing marketing tools for brands and businesses. The world of Social media is a dynamic one and is changing rapidly. Hence, it is of pivotal importance for businesses to keep abreast with the latest social media marketing trends to achieve success and gain a competitive edge over others. Moreover, businesses must future-proof their social media promotion and marketing stratagem. You need to optimize your social media marketing plans to achieve the best outcomes possible. Let us explore some of the future social media trends that are likely to impact your businesses.
The future would be dedicated to niche marketing
As per https://www.entrepreneur.com, in the next few years, social media is certainly not going to disappear. The heartening fact is that nearly 42% if the global population is having a minimum of one social media profile. However, ‘the new social’ would not be targeting everyone anymore. The social media marketing in the future years to come is going to be niche-oriented since more networks would be coming up for uniting individuals who seem to share a common or similar interest – be they parents, neighbors, entrepreneurs, shoppers, women, or members of some other groups.
Even though they tried their best to restrict the reach of marketers and brands, conventional social networks have gradually evolved and become relatively less about people. These social networks have let down their users by deliberately selling their private information to advertisers culminating in a broad spectrum of long-term and adverse side effects. If you are running your business on your own, you must stay abreast with all the changes that are taking place in the social media world and accordingly adapt your strategies and content to keep up the pace with the future trends particularly, because the new social media channels are becoming more user-oriented as compared to their predecessors.
Assures a lot more security & privacy
In the present social media scenario, it is of prime importance for businesses and brands to identify and implement effective techniques for creating and fortifying consumer trust. This would start with the way they would be connecting with their target audiences. Gradually social media users are becoming more and more concerned about their privacy since they are becoming aware of the way their data is misused. As such, social media would be witnessing the ‘era of dark social’ in the future. This implies that online social interactions would be taking place privately, for instance, email, messaging apps, and other channels for private sharing only. Today almost 84 percent of social media users’ outbound sharing is taking place via private channels. We would be witnessing a certain boost in the number of dark social platforms in the future.
More importance to engagement
Audience engagement has always been regarded as very important and essential to social media marketing success. With the evolution of Facebook, and modifications to algorithms focusing on meaningful interactions, effective engagement has become all the more vital and integral to success. This implies that content that helps in starting candid and unpretentious interactions thanks to the change to Facebook algorithms, is gaining a lot more importance on Facebook. Your social media content must necessarily be compelling and fascination to grab maximum audience attention. It is certainly not enough to simply ask for beg others to comment, like, or share on your posts. One thing is for sure even in the future. Users could still buy Instagram likes with the help of trustworthy digital marketing agencies.
The emergence of groups
Groups on Facebook are having novel features like story updates, live videos, and even participation as business pages. With modifications in Facebook algorithms, groups have become your ultimate destination for connecting with your target audience. With the help of groups, you could receive authentic feedback regarding your products and this could help in generating some additional engagement. We have noticed a similar effect on Instagram. Here influencers are compelled to opt for privacy to deliberately avoid the impact of Instagram algorithms. An influencer switched his meme accounts to private and noticed a better growth rate as compared to when he had left them open.
Instagram Stories feature seems to have a ‘Close Friends’ option. Thanks to this special feature now brands could consider showcasing their Stories just to a select few for giving an insider look. Such augmentation trends could be growing and shaping the overall social media marketing strategies for businesses.
Influencer marketing is here to stay
Influencer marketing has gained a lot of traction in recent times on social media platforms. It has gone all the way to beat print marketing, as far as; popularity is concerned, on Google Trends. Individuals having thousands of followers could be successfully leveraging their audiences and effectively collaborating with brands. Today influencer marketing has become a lucrative career and influencers are paid by businesses and brands for promoting their products to their specific audiences. Brands are constantly on the lookout for trustworthy and impressive influencers for collaborating with so that they could seamlessly reach their targeted audience.
Influencer marketing is here to stay on the social media platforms but the new development in this arena is the advent of micro-influencers and nano-influencers. Big influencers with a huge following are quoting exorbitant prices and many brands cannot afford them. As such, brands are turning to micro-influencers who have relatively fewer followers as compared to big influencers but they boast of having higher engagement with their smaller audience. Moreover, they would be charging remarkably less as compared to the renowned influencers. The future social media marketing trends also point toward the advent and popularity of nano-influencers who are having less than 10,000 followers. They are successful in reaching tightly-knit audiences and they are pretty affordable and best for businesses with smaller marketing budgets.
Conclusion
Social media is supposed to be an integral part of all marketing and promotion stratagems. Apart from the above-discussed trends, AR & AI-powered chatbots, and live video are some of the social media marketing trends that would be redefining and shaping the future of social media marketing.
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