According to smart insights report, the number of social media users worldwide has increased to 3.484 billion. Undoubtedly social media has grown into a great marketing tool for both startups and enterprises. This is why it’s important for you to stay updated with these latest industry trends and keep tweaking your social media marketing strategy. So, here I have collected some insights on social media trends from market leaders, let’s dig in to see what works best for you and your team.
Direct Messaging Campaigns
Matt Erickson, Marketing Director from National Positions and his team have been testing direct messaging campaigns through LinkedIn. In essence, they are taking old school direct email campaigns and leveraging them via direct messaging.
However, we are doing our best to refrain from the "spray-and-pray" tactics with highly targeted prospects with contextual-based messaging. Ultimately, we are using a "targeted-networking" approach. We are not aiming to just regurgitate our company information. Instead, we are building our networks and getting on decision-makers' radar for the future by offering advice, first and foremost.
This approach (when done correctly) will take more time, but combining old networking tactics with updated communication strategies gives them a direct line of communication and helps position them for when the client may be in need of the solutions that they are offering.
Run a Giveaway Contest
Allison Hott, Content Marketer, from OptinMonster considers running a giveaway to drive more traffic to your site, increase engagement, and grow your social media following and your email list.
Everyone loves the chance to win a cool prize so a giveaway will create a lot of buzz online.
Just be sure to use an online giveaway tool that will help you reach your goals. For instance, with some giveaway tools, you can give users extra contest entries for completing actions such as joining your email list, sharing your giveaway on social media, or following you on Instagram.
Stop! Publishing the Same Content
Alex Panagis, from scale math, forbid companies to publish the same content across all social channels. Although automation has grown in popularity over the years but it has ruined Twitter, this is slowly proving to not be effective. Simply tweeting out links from an RSS feed or sharing the same content across multiple platforms just doesn't work well.
Companies and influencers who want to stand out and get the most engagement don't do this, so we're slowly and unsurprisingly seeing businesses start going easy on the automation again. After all, if you are trying to connect with people, doing it automatically isn't the way.
Unfortunately, I do think that this could have a negative impact on a number of SaaS companies that have built upon this concept of sharing content across multiple social networks and continue resharing the same message over and over again.
Live Stream your Events
Karen Gordon, VP of Growth for Goodshuffle Pro, an event software company in D.C says, that:
Out of the box marketing strategies are great for drawing attention to your brand and standing out in the crowd. One great tactic is live streaming events-- we attend a bunch of trade shows and conferences throughout the year, and an effective way to make followers feel as if they’re there with us is live streaming via Facebook or Instagram. If they’re currently on the app, your followers will get a notification that you have started a live stream and they are prompted to click on the link. This will expand your reach and further draw followers into your sphere.
Post a Survey or a Quiz
Another way to increase user interaction with your account is by posting a survey or quiz in either a generic post or on a story. Many social media apps have features that make posting these quick and tracking results easy. Followers have fun playing a “game” as well! We’ve also found that participating in webinars and podcasts is a great method for broadening reach, especially when we can promote to our followers and write blog posts on the content.
Run an Exciting Challenge
Morgan Taylor - Finance Expert & CMO of LetMeBank.com bets on launching a fun challenge. Everyone likes a fun challenge. It's been used to get people to give to charity, to promote awareness, and simply to engage with different brands.
Challenges are all about getting someone to participate and by doing so, becoming more engaged with your brand. It's a combination of the call to action and association tools.’ If you can get people involved with something, they will not only feel motivated, but they'll also associate that something with your brand in the future.
Mutual Partnership Campaigns
According to Nate Masterson, CMO of Maple Holistics:
Collaboration software companies like SelfMade pair similar businesses together for mutually beneficial partnership campaigns. It's not too often that marketers get to team up with their peers from other companies but the results have shown to be promising. First, companies build a profile, including their target audience and what they offer. Then, like a dating service, you get to view potential partners and organize a successful social media campaign that benefits both parties.
Most users stay simple with Instagram giveaways on each other's pages but there are plenty of other options like collective ad buying, co-branded products, and posts for posts. This innovative way of having budding businesses work together is brilliant and effective.
Optimize your Youtube Channel
Your YouTube channel is not going to automatically show up in top search results with little to no optimization. Behind Google, Youtube is the second largest search engine. Optimizing your channel will directly lead to a better SERP ranking.
In order to obtain some real marketing success, you need to approach things in a different manner. Google owns YouTube so it is safe to assume that it ranks content according to complicated machine-learning algorithms. A lot of factors go into determining whether a video is high-quality or not. Also, make sure that you are following new design trends to stay ahead of the curve.
Using these approaches, better plan for what’s ahead.
Till next time, Ciao!