Happy New Year everyone!
I hope you had a brilliant Christmas. I spent the festive period having a much-needed rest, spending time with my family, friends and our precious pets and painting the downstairs of the house as renovations continue apace. I’m sure you can guess which of those I enjoyed the least!
As you know I love reading and researching, so in between the above I have been looking at social media trends for 2018 and what is predicted for 2019.
Hootsuite seemed like a good place to start, as their annual report specified five key areas to focus on for the year ahead, so I have read it and summarised the main points below. Enjoy!
1. Rebuilding trust
A huge number of people queried the privacy, accuracy and ethics of social media platforms during the last year following a controversial and turbulent time for Facebook, with the well documented Cambridge Analytica scandal, and Twitter who tackled bots and fake accounts.
The result, according to Edelman’s 2018 Trust Barometer Report, is that a whopping 60% of people no longer trust social media companies.
Get ahead by continuing to focus on interacting and engaging with your audience, rather than maximising reach.
Developing relationships with smaller, more valuable groups through providing relevant content will be of much more benefit to all parties.
Don’t rely too heavily on endorsements from media and celebrity influencers as users have grown distrustful of them. Look for other, less well-known influencers who have a smaller but more engaged audience, and don’t forget your employees can share content with peers too.
Facebook
Facebook groups can be a powerful tool, as they bring together a niche audience rather than the more general followers on your page.
Increasing trust through demonstrating expertise in a subject also remains a great way to build relationships. For Facebook, ‘Live’ remains the best way to do that, but if you’re not willing or able pre-recorded video will be good for those pesky algorithms too. You could run a weekly / fortnightly / monthly Q&A session as a starting point, and don’t worry about it being scripted or perfect – authentic is much better!
Instagram
Develop a community by creating a short, easy to remember branded hashtag to include on your posts. Encourage followers to upload content using the same hashtag so people can see your brand or goods in action with real clients or customers.
Twitter
Create or participate in a Twitter Chat. These are held at a specified time each week and to a theme, and a good example is #HorseHour which is for equestrian professionals and enthusiasts who come together every Monday night from 8pm to 9pm. Simply include the hashtag in your tweet to join in, and post and any point during the hour. Be sure to respond to other people using the hashtag too to make sure you become part of the conversation rather than just broadcasting.
2. Storifying social
Isn’t storifying a FAB-U-LOUS word?
But what does it mean?
Some social media platforms now have a ‘stories’ feature where you can upload a short video or image which usually disappears after a set amount of time, or a certain number of views.
Quick to consume and create, and perfect for smartphones, stories are less-polished in nature than the usual video content so usually take far less time and budget.
Instagram stories are predicted to surpass feeds as the primary way people share content in 2019. This is huge news so I, like many others, will be having a rethink of my plans for the next year to allow for stories which give a real, fun and genuine snapshot of content for the smaller brands I work with.
By stories I mean...
Facebook stories
Instagram stories
Your WhatsApp status
Facebook messenger stories
Snapchat (all of it!)
Get ahead by using the tools available to reach your target audience.
Stories generally appeal to a younger audience so, if that’s the market you’re targeting, give them a try. Just beware of ‘shiny object syndrome’ and if you don’t think it will help you to communicate with your target audience either don’t do it or do it sparingly so you’re not wasting your time and possibly losing followers.
That said, being an early adopter often shows expertise which can put you ahead of the competition, so why not try it and see what the response is? The Guardian did just that and they discovered that creating spontaneous content rather than highly produced and scripted stories performed much better and gave them a higher ROI. Is that a surprise to you? It was to me and has certainly changed my perception of what a typical Guardian reader looks like!
There are heaps of guides online to help you use social media tools, but below is a bit about Instagram and Facebook stories as they seemed the best place to start.
Instagram
Stories are enormously popular on Instagram; with double the number of daily users compared to Facebook.
Instagram stories disappear after 24 hours, but they can be saved to a ‘highlights’ file where they can be displayed as long as you wish, along with a cover image. You could use this feature for special campaigns, or videos which you would like more exposure for.
You could start with showing followers behind the scenes of a manufacturing process, the set up of an event or ask an influencer to host a takeover for the day.
Videos can be up to 15 seconds long and you can record them or take photos using the stories camera or upload content from the last 24 hours from your camera roll.
You can include hashtags in stories, and search other stories for hashtags too, and verified accounts can add a swipe up feature which leads to a website. You can also tag other accounts and locations, as well as doodle on images, use filters and add stickers. In other words, you can let your imagination run riot and show your personality off nicely!
If you want to add a hashtag but don’t want to ruin your image, you can alter the size of the text, position it against a background and change the colour of the text to match. That way it may come up be searches but not be visible.
Facebook
Facebook stories have taken off far slower than Instagram stories, but if you fancy being an early adopter they are definitely worth considering as they appear at the top of the newsfeed which may help you stand out.
They also disappear after 24 hours or when they have been viewed by the same user twice. The in-app camera allows for all sorts of fun overlays and filters, and followers can respond to you via direct messaging, which is the same as Instagram. You can also send your story via direct message if you wish.
Don’t forget to always shoot your videos and take photos vertically as that is how they will be watched on a smartphone. Like Facebook Live, stories don’t need to be perfect – the rawer and more real the better!
3. Closing the ads gap
There is now more competition than ever for paid ads on social media platforms, meaning marketers have had to up their budgets and their game to see results. Prices are increasing, yet frustratingly it’s become harder to get noticed.
Get ahead by being more savvy with your targeting and more creative with your content, as successful ads require these as well as budget.
Identifying and knowing your target audience for each campaign is a key to success. When you are creating ads consider factors such as who you are targeting (age, location, gender etc), what interests they have, what they do for a living, who your competitors are etc. and tailor the content accordingly.
Creating engaging content has been talked about for a number of years now, and it is still an important factor for posts you are allocating budget to. Make sure you consider what will inspire your audience to engage with your ad over the digital clutter users are faced with, and perhaps consider outsourcing to improve quality.
You can test your ideas on your existing audience first by gauging reaction to ordinary, non-paid posts or repurpose content you have previously created if a particular post has gained a good reaction from your followers. Chances are if something resonates with your existing followers it will be engaging to new potential customers with similar profiles.
Each campaign should be measured against your aims and objectives. For example, if you’re looking to increase awareness of your brand you might measure impressions. If you want people to visit your website clicks will be most important, and whilst impressions might create awareness if lots of people see the ad but don’t click on the link it might be that your targeting or content needs a tweak or two.
4. Cracking the commerce code: Improved social shopping
New and evolving technologies are bridging the gap between social media and commerce, meaning direct sales may be becoming less elusive.
Get ahead by using Instagram and Facebook tools, and incorporating video.
Instagram’s shoppable posts (approved business profiles only) include a clink through to a product without ever leaving the platform, and Facebook has a shop function for pages, plus a marketplace which has streamlined the process of listing items individuals have for sale.
If you read my algorithm article, you will know the importance of video content. Marketing company BrightCove found that 74% of 5,500 consumers studied drew a connection between watching a social video and making a purchase, so think about how you can use video to showcase your products or services; showing how they will fit into potential customers’ lives with demos and building trust with video testimonials.
You can include employees and/or suitable influencers in your videos but remember to think about how potential customers will use your products so you can show them in a way they can identify with.
Also consider answering any questions you think they might have within the video so they don’t have to spend time carrying out research before they decide to buy. Lastly, make sure you include a call to action or similar so customers will quickly and easily be able to buy from you.
Promotions and giveaways are a really good way to increase awareness of products, either on your own platform(s) or those with followers who are your target audience such as consumer magazines or retail stores who are stocking your goods. Just make sure they meet the platform’s guidelines for promotions.
5. Messaging eats the world: Customers demand better 1:1 social experiences
Did you know that messaging app users exceed traditional social media users worldwide, as people spend more time on messaging platforms than sharing news on social media?
This is having a huge impact on customer expectations, and I know from a previous role the number of people messaging the company on social media and live chat grew enormously, as did the variety of questions they asked; from how much a product was, to dates of an event and everything in between - it was much quicker and easier for them to message us their query and for us to find out and provide the answer, than it was for them to find the relevant page on our website, or research which specific staff member they needed to phone or email.
Get ahead by considering how you can build personal relationships with potential and current customers.
Make sure you have Facebook’s messenger service enabled on your page and set up an automated response which might include a short greeting, office opening times or a link to an FAQ page on your website. You can also message people who comment on posts to move the conversation from a public to a private place if, for example, you wanted to ask the person’s phone number or email address.
It might be worth experimenting with Facebook messenger ads, but just be mindful that due to the personal nature of these ads (compared to a website banner or news feed ad) they must be valuable and unobtrusive; not used as a way to send unsolicited messages.
Add a plugin to your website to direct customers to contact you if they’re already looking on your site, and if you’re really techie you can investigate bots or in-app assistants to automate part of the process, leaving humans to deal with more complex queries. A number of large companies have automated the messaging service, including KLM Royal Dutch Airlines which responds to 30,000 social media conversations in twelve different languages in an average week.
Contests are a great way to connect with new and existing customers, and campaigns can be run through messaging apps. For example, Coca Cola ran a competition where customers could send photos of their bottles via messenger to be in with a chance of winning a prize. As previously mentioned, just make sure any contests are run within the platform’s guidelines.
I hope that has been useful to you, and best of luck for a successful and social 2019!