Looking for new ways to up your social media game for the new year ?
Here are top three social media trends that can be used for small businesses in 2019!
1. Video Content
Video continues to grow in social media and it’s expected to dominate the market in 2019. According to some experts, 80% of what we consume online will soon be video content.
Videos are the most powerful way to evoke emotions online and demand more consumer attention than any other tool. Also using more video content in your strategy will help improve your SEO and customer engagement.
One of the reasons that videos have become more and more popular is that it’s getting easier to film, even on a rather good production level. As with the increasing consumption and production of videos, technologies are leaning more and more towards favoring the video-marketer.
Another trend for video content is streaming live videos that has now taken over Facebook and Instagram. The interactivity of live videos makes it a powerful tool for marketers to engage with their audience and strengthen the relationship between a brand and its followers. Also live streaming helps marketers to give potential customers an intimate look at what’s going on.
Some ways to add video content for your 2019 social media strategy;
– Creating video content in-house (backstage or “how to” videos)
– Running video ads on Youtube and Instagram
– Streaming live videos from events or interviews
– Partnering with an influencer for paid product placement or endorsement in their videos
2. Social Listening
Social listening (monitoring) is finding all mentions of a brand or related keywords across the web and social media platforms with the primary goals of customer service and reputation management. It includes finding untagged brand mentions on social media, mentions of industry keywords that signal the interest to buy a product, mentions on blogs, forums, and news sites.
More and more brands start to use social listening as they discover that they can reach more people looking for their type of products or services. Given that people sharing their frustrations, ideas, and recommendations online are not about to stop, social listening usage will continue to grow, and expand to include new possibilities.
A good way to perform social listening is actively monitoring review sites like Yelp, TripAdvisor, Google Local, Facebook, and a variety of others. These customer review sites allow users to rate and review local businesses and have word-of-mouth power that can draw in or drive away potential customers.
Businesses can engage in conversations and interact with customers on these sites and when customers see a business actively listens, they become more comfortable sharing honest feedback and recommendations. Those suggestions could help businesses experience faster growth and more satisfied customers.
If you’d like to start with social listening in 2019, check out this list of tools.
3. Micro Influencers
Micro-influencers are brand advocates who have a deeply engaged, niche audience.
Brand advocates could even be found among employees and current customers. As people trust advice and recommendations from other people that they know and trust micro-influencer marketing has become more important for businesses. Micro-influencers typically have between 1,000 and 10,000 like-minded followers and they do offer opinions that are deeply trusted by their followers.
Micro-influencer marketing can be a game changer for businesses of all sizes, and it’s often the fastest way to brand awareness, amplification and a true connection with your target audience.
Choosing the right influencers is key to success, as well as a well thought out program to maintain relationships, set goals and measure results. It’s not as easy as throwing a few bucks at an influencer and expecting overnight success. Be ready to work.
In the past couple of years, social media influencers have become a major trend. And as the number of social media influencers has grown over time, prices for their services have also skyrocketed. As a result more businesses look at other alternatives, including micro-influencer marketing.
Contrary to major influencers, micro-influencers exist in every marketing niche. They have followings of fewer than 10.000 people, but most of their followers are genuinely interested in what they have to say. And they’re very engaged – micro-influencers are often considered experts in their niche.
These smaller names are not massively targeted by advertisers, so they are trustworthy and down-to-earth. The marketing potential is very high and marketers are about to recognize this in 2019.