Here at Social Media Beast it’s important that we’re always on top of the latest in social media and technology for our clients. Make sure you’re ahead of the curve with these popular trends.
Video & Visuals
It’s no secret video is popular but it’ll start to dominate as the social media content format of choice. Over the past couple of years we’ve seen visual platforms like Pinterest and Instagram skyrocket in popularity. Even more recently, videos have become more popular on platforms such as Facebook – since they are the easiest way to share an experience. It has become increasingly popular to create videos that are more relaxed and natural without a “produced” feel to them. Social media audiences find the spur-of-the-moment videos created on a smart phone more relatable and engaging.
Niche
If you think about social media, you might realize you spend more time using it as a way to connect with smaller groups and communities, such as Facebook groups. With the increasing challenge of getting noticed in Facebook’s crowded news feed, more and more people are turning to more focused social media networks, such as Snapchat, that allow users to target a specific social media audience. According to Social Media Today, Snapchat is growing at a rate of 56% a year. Everyone craves an authentic community, which means more and more people are flocking to those Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, group boards on Pinterest and yes, even Google+ communities. That’s because the best communities are those that focus on sharing content and helping each other instead of being about promotion. If your brand can build trust as someone who brings people together and guides them to share and support each other, you’ll build relationships with the people who matter most to your business without giving “reach” a second thought.
Influencers
Have you ever looked at the people you follow on Instagram? Do so and you may notice YouTube and Instagram users are achieving celebrity status, and brands are taking note. There is a boom in brands partnering with influential Instagram users and YouTube stars that create content around niche topics like fashion, luxury lifestyle or travel. With 74% of consumers relying on social media to inform their purchasing decisions (Simply Measured), brands are starting to pay influencers to publish a photograph of their product on Instagram and/or mention the brand in YouTube videos. Or they even pay them to take over their Instagram feed for a few posts or several days. According to an article by WERSM, using influencers sharing your content can lead to 3 to 10 times increase in conversion rate! We’ve all known for a while that celebrity endorsements and influencer marketing is effective, but as regular everyday people start to build audiences that rival pop stars and models, brands will start to realize how powerful these Instagram and YouTube influencers can be.
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