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Social Media Trends: Why it’s Important to Stay Informed

Posted: December 13, 2018
By: Janet A Johnson

Every year we see innovations, strategies, and ideas come up in various industries. This is particularly true for a rapidly growing market like the social media industry. To stay ahead of the game, it’s important to keep up with the current social media trends. So, let’s talk bots! Juniper Research recently shared that the use of chatbots is projected to save banking and healthcare businesses a whopping $8 billion every year by 2022. The fact is,  bots have already become a game-changer in digital marketing and as digital transformation continues to progress, we will continue to see changes that impact the way we use social media to grow our businesses.

Advantages of Following Social Media Trends

So, Let’s cut to the chase! What do you stand to gain by following news and trends in the social media space? First, let me just say that it’s important to maintain a social media presence to grow your business. The knowledge of news and trends in the social media world will help you and other social media managers move businesses forward. You see, nowadays, it is not enough to know the ins and outs of your business. If you cannot follow trends and recognize the opportunities they come with, it is only a matter of time before it tells on the success of your business.

Now, let me ask you what comes to mind when you see that by 2022 chatbots will save about $8 billion in the healthcare and banking industries? Note that this is an increase from $20 million in 2017. This tells you that investing in the use of chatbots now will give you a head start from your competition. This leads to an increase in your profit margin.

The bottom line is, getting information on the latest news and trends in social media, and then applying them to your business will also help increase your conversion rate. Your conversion rate refers to the number of visitors on your site that take desirable actions, and it is directly linked to the success of your site.

Now, let’s look at some of the current trends in social media and how you can take advantage of them.

Social Media Trends and What They Mean To Your Business

There are numerous social media trends around today it is almost impossible to cover them all. Therefore, we are looking at 4 of these trends and how you can take advantage of them.

Video Contents are Thriving

The year 2017 was a really big one for video contents, as we saw a remarkable increase in its use especially for social media marketing. This continued in 2018 and promises to continue in 2019 and beyond.  The proliferation of users on social media platforms like Instagram and SnapChat has also contributed to this boost in video contents. Since the launch of Facebook Live in 2015, its search popularity increased by over 330% in just two years.

What’s more? Research has shown that about 82 percent of consumers prefer watching live videos to reading posts. This tells you that your consumers are more likely to check out your video contents than the written ones. No wonder many social media platforms like Facebook that didn’t offer live streaming a few years ago now do.

Influencer Marketing is Picking up

“An Instagram user with 100,000 followers can command $5,000 for a post made in partnership with a company or brand,” (Clare O’Connor, 2017). This statement basically covers how influencers are affecting social media marketing. Using someone with a strong influence on social media is now quite an excellent strategy, as you can take advantage of the person’s large audience. An audience that you probably don’t have access to.

This trend is also directly tied to the fact that social media marketing is starting to move away from the “free promotion” that many once considered it as. Nowadays, you need to spend a bit of cash to maximize the potential of social media marketing. Jonathan Foley, the CEO of WULF Marketing and the founder of @Societyfeelings and @Positivity, opined that brands should start investing in building their own social network pages, to own as many audiences as they possibly can. “Today, Facebook and just about every social media platform have become pay to play,” (Jonathan Foley).

This is the Era of Chatbots

As stated earlier, the use of chatbots is now one of the biggest social media trends today. It is very popular because it helps boost customer relation management. Social media brings businesses to their customers, using chatbots is like adding enhancers to the mix. It allows you to make real-time engagement with your customers.

Chatbots can help provide around-the-clock service to customers, which is one of the key factors to customer satisfaction. Also, it is a lot more cost effective than hiring employees that will attend to consumers 24/7.

Social Mobile

Let’s do a quick survey. What are the chances of anyone reading this having a smartphone? Pretty high right? Well, Statista seems to agree with a forecast of the number of smartphone users rising from about 1.6 billion in 2014 to about 2.9 billion in 2020.

Mobile users should be your key priority because social media platforms are shifting their focus to this audience. There are even some social networks with mobile-only apps, so you can only reach their audience through their mobile devices.

Final Thoughts

I think it is quite clear that it is really non-negotiable for you to monitor social media trends and incorporate them into your business strategy. It doesn’t cost you much really, and you have numerous benefits to gain. Of course, there are many other current trends in this industry, so you should not restrict yourself to just these four.

It’s up to you to key your business into the benefits of following these trends, and then you can start reaping the numerous benefits.