Throughout the year, the social media landscape has witnessed many changes. From new social networks making it to the fore to major revamps to the regular ones, the social arena appeared to be very busy all this year. As we are leaving for the next year on a fresh note, we will have new social media challenges to meet.
Top Social Media Trends to Follow
The article sails you through 5 social media trends of 2019. Having a better understanding of these trends will help you make the required changes to your social media marketing strategy in the coming year.
1. Eminent Spread of Messaging Apps
Trends show that users have largely turned to messaging apps this year. They overpowered the reach of social media apps. And if trends continue, messaging apps will dominate the social landscape in 2019. Messaging apps are now the best bet for marketers because of their ability to create real-time and relatively quicker engagement.
Social messaging apps like WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger WeChat, etc. have almost captured a big chunk of the messaging market. They continue to add advanced features like Stories, news updates, and automated bots to the platform to broaden their reach.
Leading messaging app WhatsApp is already tapping the potential instilled in messaging by allowing business accounts to engage customers right from the platform. It’s evident now that big brands and publishers have plans in place to tap into the latest messaging trend.
2. Trust and Loyalty will become the Buzzword
Growing trust deficit and privacy concerns turned out to be the top reasons why people switched to messaging apps from social networks. Recent data breaches reported in Facebook and then in Google are two instances that led companies to rethink mechanisms to build trust with the audience. Having learned lessons from recent data breaches, brands, and publishers will have to be transparent and truthful with their audiences.
3. Focus on Specific Channels
As the paradigm of social media is heading to fiercer competition, it’s a wise idea to stick to the best-performing channels for your business. Long before when Facebook was the only platform with a massive user base, brands looked at Facebook for their marketing and branding initiatives. Now, the social ecosystem is entirely changed with a multitude of social networks where your niche audience can be found.
In this scenario, you need to focus on those channels where you think your potential customers are. It’s a better practice to follow your niche audiences that are relevant to your business. It’s futile to broadcast the same message to all platforms. You may feel it is like limiting your reach but focusing on platforms with the best ROI works. For instance, if Vimeo brings the best audience engagement and ROI, stick with it. Increasing the ad budget for YouTube won’t be of any help.
So the idea is to audit your brand performance on all social media platforms and set goals. This way you can march in the right direction.
4. Live Streaming Videos and Podcasts, and will add Value
With the advent of Google’s YouTube and Facebook’s Live, social media brought video content to the mainstream. Now, millions of videos and live streams are being uploaded daily on different video streaming platforms. The growing popularity of video content is pushing brands to tap the opportunity vested in it.
To allow video content consumption on their platforms, Social networks have even made necessary algorithm tweets. This is to make sure that video posts and livestreams appear more frequently on user’s feeds.
Soon, podcasts will be a dominating tool for marketers who seek to build their brands and spread the business message. Most podcasters still focus on the content they convey, instead of delivering a blatant sales pitch. This is why they are still relevant and resonate well with users.
Conclusion
It’s only a matter of time when Augmented Reality aka AR and Social media mix will bring great results for marketers. In 2019, we are expecting even more applied use of this combination to unleash opportunities. Brands have already started using AR to facilitate seamless customer experience. Indeed, AR has capabilities to make the brand message engaging, and more actionable.
Social network giant Facebook is investing in big-time AR ventures. It’s itself an assertion of how serious they are about AR. Facebook’s messenger app is already powered with AR Camera effects for engaging messaging and customer experience. Brands aren’t leaving any stones unturned to capitalize on the AR trend to improve customer satisfaction.
Tarun Gupta, CEO of Brainpulse Technologies, is a prolific author and digital marketing specialist. His insightful writings span SEO, content marketing, social media strategy, and email campaigns, offering invaluable expertise to businesses worldwide. Tarun’s contributions continue to shape the digital marketing landscape, guiding success in multiple niches.