The world of social changes every year, bringing in new trends, changes and rules that you need to follow to keep your customers engaged and interested in your brand.
Here are some of the most exciting and upcoming social media trends of 2019 for you to keep an eye on.
Influencer Marketing
Micro influencers are taking over
Influencer marketing has been a vital part of social media marketing from quite a few years now. But as social media marketing is changing, so are the dynamics of influencer marketing. Micro influencers (As predicted by 42Works TWO years back) have emerged as the dark horses of the influencer marketing race.
Just a few years ago, celebrities were influencer marketing’s favorite child. But higher the reach of mega influencer, painfully higher is the expense.
A recent study from Rakuten Marketing suggests that the going rate for a mega-influencer on Snapchat is now £53,000, YouTube is soaring at £67,000 and Facebook’s gonna cost you £75,000. If this hasn’t made you break some sweat, Selena Gomez, Instagram’s highest paid celebrity influencer of 2017, earns $550,000 per post.
PHEWWW!
Enter, Micro Influencers
Unlike the typical celebrity or experts, micro influencers are social media users that have genuine interest or work in the content they share. These influencers might have lesser reach than their million-plus peers, but they drive 25% to 60% engagement on all their posts bringing 6.7 times more efficiency than influencers with large number of followers.
Even big guns of the internet are utilizing these users to grow their revenue.
Google partnered with @TheSorryGirls to help promote their new Google PixelBook. The duo ran a promotional laptop giveaway with Google in November 2017 that leveraged the drawing capability of the laptop within the photo.
This post really got their engaged audience’s creative juices flowing – the results were outstanding! To date, the Instagram post has generated 11,137 likes and 7,916 comments for an out of this world engagement rate of 59.4%
Spotify has partnered with many micro influencers over Twitter to promote their “Discover Weekly” algorithm.
Social Selling
Social listening is a brand savior
The world of social selling has changed.
The art of establishing social connections have notched a step ahead to lead generation and solving customer problems which is called social listening.
Social listening is the process of monitoring social media platforms to find all mentions (tagged or untagged) of your brand, product, industry and even competitors.
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.
Video Content
Live videos are all over the social media.
Every year, video content continues to grow, and in 2019, video content is expected to once again dominate the market. In fact, according to some experts, 80% of what we consume online will soon be video content.
This is especially true for live videos. Having always been popular on YouTube, the trend has now taken over Facebook and Instagram, to the point when we get notified when someone is going live.
The authentic and ephemeral nature of live videos seems to make them especially attractive and meaningful to social media users. Live videos increase the perceived trustworthiness and relevance of a brand, and it’s a trend that you don’t want to ignore.
There are currently more than 400 million people consuming Stories on Instagram on a daily basis, while Facebook is trying to integrate Stories to our daily routines.
Advertisers have already realized that Instagram Stories ads can be very effective, with Snapchat and Facebook following up with their current hype and demand.
Change is the Only Trend that Dominates Social Media Marketing
Given the pace of evolvement, 2019 will prove to be a big year for social media marketing and managers.
The trends are just a few steps you can add to your social media strategy to gain more trust, engagement and involvement from your followers. Although there is always a long way to go, these trends demand brands to accept the change and progress as per their audience’s needs.
