Social Listening
Engaging with your audience is an essential part of marketing, but listening to what your audience is saying is becoming a growing component in social strategies. Social listening involves analysing all mentions of your brand and relevant keywords, including untagged brand mentions on social media and further afield as well as keywords that indicate an interest in purchasing a product or have a query on a service. Social listening is expected to expand further than customer services and reputation management, with businesses using listening for lead generation and selling as they become more aware of people looking for their exact services on social media.
Video
Video content is incredibly popular on all platforms but is expected to dominate the market once again in 2019.The trend of live video is expected to take prominence with its increasing popularity on Facebook and Instagram. The ‘going live’ concept is attractive and engaging to users, making your brand seem more authentic, trustworthy, and allows you to interact with your audience instantaneously.
New Social Channels
It’s very easy to forget that the staple social media platforms we have today were once not part of our everyday lives, it’s also easy to forget that these platforms, for all their popularity, could be suddenly left by the wayside. Social media platforms are being created, developed, and enhanced constantly, bubbling under the surface waiting for mainstream success. Platforms such as Vero and Tik Tok are set to dominate the agenda in 2019 according to experts. These platforms may currently be unknown entities to the masses, but if you begin to experiment and utilise these platforms, you’ll be on the crest of the wave when the platform eventually finds success.
Micro-influencers
Influencer marketing is now an established element of any brand’s strategy, but the enlistment of celebrity or major influencer as your brand ambassador continues to be a strain on your finances. The rise of the micro-influencer is set to make as big a splash as the influencer mega hitters, garnering as much interaction for a more affordable price. Influencers with less than 10,000 followers are viewed more as relatable, authentic, and ‘normal’ who have more engagement and interaction with their audience. These influencers also tend to be more knowledgeable about their niche, making their followers more likely to trust their recommendations.
Stories
Stories have grown beyond its Snapchat origins, with Instagram, Facebook, YouTube and now LinkedIn adopting the story format and arguably making it more popular than it ever was. It’s believed that 400million Instagram users are consuming stories daily, numbers that can no longer be ignored by businesses. Stories are easily made and give you the opportunity to interact and engage with users, as well as personalising your brand to make you seem more authentic.
AI Customer Service
Excellent customer service is the minimum that is expected of a business, but as demand grows and social media enables customers to reach companies more easily, expectations of the response time to queries is exponential. Chatbots are becoming more frequent to deal with the demand and is proving a great tool for additional customer support. Though some remain unconvinced on AI customer service, businesses are spending more time and resources to make their bots more responsive and authentic. Bots are always on hand to quickly answer common questions, with expansive customisation to deal with scenarios specific to the individual, overall making a more seamless experience for the customer.
Music
Though music and social media are well integrated in many aspects, 2019 is set to see the two industries become inextricably linked.Music streaming platforms such as Spotify and Apple Music already utilise social media well, with the music your listening to easily shared and new features such as Instagram’s music stickers becoming more prominent.The music libraries of platforms such as Tik Tok are set to increase to allow users to utilise modern music in their posts, with social media becoming music-licensing platforms to stay relevant to a younger demographic and keep established users interested.
User-Generated Content
Crafting original content for your social media channels is a draw on your resources and doesn’t guarantee engagement with your audience. Relying on user-generated content is proving to be the way forward. Engaging with your audience by sharing their content will help grow your reputation and client base while giving your audience a sense of connection.
Long-Form Content
Word counts have long dictated how prominent an article is in the rankings of a search engine, but it is expected that long-form content will give businesses the SEO edge in 2019. Though articles aren’t penalised for their length by the Google algorithm, it’s known that a quality article that’s 2,000 words is likely to outrank one that’s only 500 words. More businesses will begin to embrace long-form content that is rich with information and insight that will make the customer want to click and for Google to favour you.
Shoppable Posts
Tagging is always advancing to make posts a more interactive experience, it’s now advanced to the point where you can now simplify the purchasing process for your customers. Instagram and Pinterest have recently introduced shoppable posts, giving you the ability to tag specific items with their price and availability. Such advancements are set to radicalise how we shop online and prove to be an invaluable tool for your e-commerce strategy going forward.