Social media marketing trends seem to evolve faster every year. (And don’t expect 2018 to be an exception!) Digital marketing experts are already predicting a number of influential shifts virtually guaranteed to occur during this upcoming year. Here are a few worth watching for:
1. Instagram Stories Will Continue its Meteoric Growth
Until recently, using this popular social media platform used to consist of a delicate balancing act. On the one hand, users had to strive for frequent-enough updates to keep their followers engaged. At the same time, users don’t want to flood their gallery with redundant and relatively low-quality photos and videos.
The perfect solution? A temporary “story reel” that allows users to post photos and videos that last for 24 hours before disappearing! (A feature that, you may have noticed, was virtually 100% copycatted from rival platform Snapchat, which Instagram unsuccessfully attempted to buy. But that’s a different story.) The bottom line is that Instagram stories, released hardly a year ago, have rapidly become one of the most popular features of the site. And this growth in popularity shows no sign of slowing. If you are not yet participating in Instagram Stories, the time to start is probably now.
2. Influencer Marketing Will Become More…Influential
The biggest names in social media keep getting bigger. Influencers continue growing their audiences and developing better content, wider reach, and more sophisticated marketing strategies. Because of this, building relationships with relevant influencers in your industry is more important than ever. Content sharing, blog commenting, and other forms of influencer relationship building should all be on your agenda for 2018.
3. Gen Z Shifts the Paradigm Toward Visual Content
In its earliest days, social media was virtually synonymous with microblogging — short and sometimes quite personal blurbs of text, such as Facebook statuses or even Tweets. With every passing year, however, the popularity of text-based content declines in favor of visual mediums such as video and photography.
Experts have given a wide variety of explanations for this ongoing phenomenon — some attribute this change to algorithm updates by Google and Facebook, while others claim it is simply a reflection off human psychology. One factor certainly in play here? The rise of Gen Z. (Born roughly 1995 – 2010.) This cohort has been shown time and time again to be exceptionally interested in visual content above all else — and their buying power is on the rise.
4. Live Content Rules
Who doesn’t love live entertainment? Facebook, Google, and many of their competitors are promoting their new live video platforms hard because they know that sooner rather than later, these technologies will dominate the social media scene. Getting a head start now is probably a wise move for virtually any business or organization.
5. Twitter Will Continue to Shake Things Up
2017 was a disappointing year for Twitter — which, in case you have been living under a rock, is one of the biggest and most influential social media platforms in the world. Considering their power and influence, Twitter certainly isn’t going to lose relevance without a fight! Already, Twitter has committed to a dramatic change when they doubled their character limit. Expect more radically groundbreaking moves of this sort in 2018, as well!
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