Social Media Marketing Trends to Watch in 2017

Social media networks have now become an important part of our everyday lives. No matter if it is Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, or Instagram, the connection of people and technology is resonating with our tribal curiosity and creativity. In reality, technology is becoming more human.

Social media channels and smartphones are the perfect storm. We are now captivated and captured by both technologies. They are impacting our daily lives – how we work, play, socialize and perform any action.

So, what are the latest social media marketing trends these day and what they have in store for us as entrepreneurs, business owners, online marketers and most of all, as passionate and complicated humans.

The Rise of Chatbots

Chatbots are artificial intelligence powered robots or you can say conversational agents that are tailor-made to resolve customer’s issues with an intelligent conversation without any human involvement.

In this age of machine learning and artificial intelligence, it’s all about embedding human intelligence in machines. Facebook chatbots are rapidly gaining massive popularity and are providing a new tool for digital marketers to leverage. These chatbots are the incorporation of automatic chatbots within chat apps such as Facebook Messenger, Slack or more.

Chatbots help bands to automate tasks and help in retrieving the important information. They are gradually becoming a crucial way to improve customer experience by providing excellent customer support service and real-time interaction.

In this age of instant gratification, customers are looking for immediate response to their comments and queries. The chatbots are designed in a way that they are able to respond to answer all the queries raised by customers, without human interaction. In addition, they can help in creating a strong relationship with current and potential buyers, without spending a lot of money.

Expiring Content

Capturing the interest of audience is a battle between brands with sufficient budgets and tech-savvy marketers with little budget. The challenge for businesses these days is to stand out and gain attention of users. Now traditional marketing tactics don’t work like they used to do in past.

But Snapchat, the most famous social media platform these days, has decided to work on an entirely different approach. Make content disappeared.

This approach brought the sense of urgency among audience. Users now know that they had a very short amount of time to read or view content before it expires.

This algorithm allows users to watch 10 seconds videos that are disappeared after one view and then it extended to Snapchat stories which last for 24 hours.

Instagram observed this marketing tactic and introduced their own Instagram Stories.

If truth be told, expiring or disappearing content is now part of the ever-changing social media landscape. It’s a new social media marketing trend that brands need to try and test for your upcoming digital marketing campaigns.

Getting Organic Traffic is Important

In past, gaining attention was so easy and straightforward. You easily got likes and shares on Facebook and made followers on Twitter. But now, it is not the case.

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and other social media channels are removing sequential timeline updates. Now brands can get online visibility only when they are ready to pull out the credit card. In fact, social media marketing is just becoming another paid media.

So, this will make more and more marketers to go back and follow the digital basics. They need to:

•         Optimize for search engine ranking pages so your band rank on the first page.
•         Creating a list of subscribers so you can reach your audience without using any Google or Facebook algorithm blocking or filtering your content and updates.
•         Working harder to come up with marketing tricks that include growth hacking – a new science of marketing.

So, it’s not necessary to open your wallet for social media marketing every time, it’s time to pursue a multi-channel strategy and get website traffic organically

Automation is now very important

With the rise of social media networks, digital marketing has become complicated and messy endeavor for many marketers. Managing every social media platform has now become important for brands to stay on top of customers’ mind.

This is the reason, apps such as Hubspot, Buffer, Markteo and different other marketing automation software are now become essential for any business no matter, small, medium or large.

These automation tools are smarter, intuitive and affordable for many marketers. If your startup is not using any of these automation tools, think about it otherwise your customers won’t think for a second to prefer your competitors over your brand.

Personalization is becoming Key

As social media tools are becoming smarter and customers’ resistance to paid advertising grows higher, the need of personalized and relevant content becomes more important than ever.

Facebook retargeting and adverts driven by determining by where the visitor have been on the web and their interests are becoming the smart digital advertising tactic for remarketing campaigns. It delivers relevant, personalized content that converts at a much faster rate.

Digital marketing automation and remarketing techniques allow marketers to send the right content to the right customer at the right time. Relevant and personalized content is king for capturing audience attention in this noisy world of data clutter.

Video Streaming

Live video streaming is an amazing way to engage with your audience. This trend is changing how we share our experiences, stories, life events no matter personal or business. Video streaming can also help brands to build trust and credibility online with authentic and relevant content.

Influencer Marketing

Bloggers create content on food, web design, fashion, mobile app development and thousands of other topics. This way, they build loyal followers and fans on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media channels. They construct credibility and build trust via their authentic content.

Influencers and thought leaders who have built reach globally are the new way to target customers. Brands are now focusing on influencer marketing to reach their potential customers and brand admirers.

Artificial Intelligence

As the data volume increases exponentially, the need of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools with big, powerful processors is getting higher. Artificial intelligence is being used on Google, Facebook and other social media networks that we don’t even bother to notice.

•         LinkedIn uses artificial intelligence to provide better and relevant job matching between companies and candidates
•         Pinterest uses artificial intelligence to boost image search and recognition
•         Facebook tag feature with facial recognition, newsfeed algorithms, friends are all done by artificial intelligence algorithms.

As online marketers, you need to stay updated with these technologies and trends emerge in digital marketing to grow your brand.