According to an estimation, it’s believed that in 2020, almost 3.5 billion people will be using social media platforms across the globe. Whops, that’s huge. It brings it to nearly 40% of the population of earth active on various social media networks. With this figure in hand, there’s no surprise why businesses invest so much on efforts and money in promoting their channels.
However, apart from every fact and truth, it’s also true that the landscape of social media is fluctuating quickly. That’s one of the significant reasons why it’s essential to be updated with the latest trends to make sure that your strategies provide fruitful results.
Of course, 2018 was a busy year for all the businesses active on social media. So, whatever the legacy last year has left, you’ve got to collect the bits and pieces from it.
How to Do Social Media Marketing in 2020 – A Guide for Marketers
Here are some of the prominent trends that you must add to your social media marketing strategy in 2020 if you, as marketers, want satisfactory results.
1. Engagement Holds Substantiality More Than Ever
In early 2018, when Facebook updated their algorithm, they broadcasted that they’d be concentrating more on meaningful interactions. With this, their algorithm began preferring such content that ignited a sincere conversation.
As obtaining organic reach has become difficult, the only easy way to survive the battle is by creating such content that is:
- Appealing
- Interesting
- Engaging
In 2020 and upcoming years, no short-cut would suffice when it comes to user engagement. Just by encouraging the target audience to comment, like, or share your post wouldn’t be enough. Therefore, it’s high time you must start pondering over the right strategies to increase the followers.
2. The Rise of Influencers
Amidst several other things, influencer marketing is seemingly becoming a significant element. From a subordinate marketing technique, it has become a $5-10-billion-dollar industry today.
Brands are always on the lookout for best influencers that can bring their campaigns in front of a broader audience.
The more influencer marketing gains hype, the expensive it’s becoming for small as well as medium-sized brands to hire them. That’s where micro-influencers come into the picture to bridge the gap.
Although these micro-influencers might not be famous enough to help you as marketers grab celebrities in the form of customers, however, they can be competent enough to bring a considerable change into your social media following.
Provided that you’re working with the correct influencer targeting your set of audience, and making sure you’re creating only high-quality user-generated content, even if they have 40k followers would be enough for you.
3. The Relationship of Customer Service and AI
Lately, you may come across several brands adopting automated messaging and bots in their customer services. To add more to it, social media has eased out the process for customers to get in touch with a band. It merely means that today, your customers are awaiting quick and prompt replies over social media, irrespective of their query, and doubt.
Gradually, the adoption rate of chatbots is also increasing, courtesy to programming and intelligence integrated into bots to provide a seamless experience to customers. Moreover, even brands are investing their time into altering and customizing bots in a way that they seem more authentic and reliable.
AI also plays a significant role when it comes to answering common questions asked by customers. It is a technology that’s helping brands save time as well as provide the utmost satisfaction to their customers. So, if you haven’t adopted it yet, maybe it’s time to do so.
4. Stories Are Everywhere
The origin of stories came from Snapchat, where the visual content remained up for 24 hours and disappeared automatically after this timeline. And, soon enough, this trend was adopted by Instagram, followed by Facebook and several other social media platforms.
Despite the struggle that Snapchat is facing to remain relevant, other platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, LinkedIn, and more, are incredibly successful with their stories.
Currently, Instagram has 500 million people keeping track of stories every day. And thus, being an advertiser, you must realize the effect that this element can bring into your business.
5. Live Streaming, Podcasts, Videos, and Giveaways
Of course, long-form blog posts are still going to be active and engaging in 2020, given that they’re formatted well, and the content is appealing enough. However, the concept of content consumption is going to be transformed tremendously.
From written-text, your audience is moving towards visual and audio content. And, to keep up with the pace, you must do so too. Right from the broadcasting of YouTube channels to the introduction of IGTV, social media are all about focusing on video content.
Furthermore, there were even adjustments in the algorithm of Facebook that placed video posts frequently on the feeds. More and more brands are experimenting with this new addition as well. If you haven’t tried it yet, you can begin with:
- Short videos.
- Long videos.
- Vertical videos.
- Live streaming.
- Social media giveaways.
Marketers are even working for their hands-on podcasts, either for their business or personal branding. As long as you’re providing entertaining content, you’re sure to stay longer in the market.
6. Not Putting All the Eggs in One Basket
With every passing day, the marketing of social media is becoming competitive. And, those who’re successful with tactics and techniques have already realized that they shouldn’t be focusing on every channel. But only the ones that are best-performing for their business.
Gone are the days when you were compelled to join platforms only because everybody was doing so. Today, it’s essential to choose such platforms where your niche audience is available.
Even if you have to restrict your presence to two platforms, it’s completely fine, until or unless they’re bringing you a fantastic ROI. The more distractions you’ll have, the more you’ll lose your focus. So, begin by analyzing your audience and where they’re present. After that, set your business goals and start your social media marketing.
7. Try Ad Saturation
Since the last few years, social media advertising has been consistently rising. It’s easier now to create advertisements on different channels, and you get to decide the type as well as the objective of the ad.
Accordingly, 57% of millennials, 41% Gen-Xers, and 45% of Gen Z claim that the ads they see on social media channels are more relevant to their requirements.
For sure, brands have been garnering a lot of success from paid social media ads. There’s no denying the fact that the market of ad budgets is growing tremendously as well.
For instance, the level of engagement that Instagram provides is quite enough to compel marketers to bid higher on both stories and feed. In turn, made this platform a great alternative to Facebook for paid ads.
In 2020 marketers might see even an additional increase in the budget spent over ads. But, make sure that you aren’t relying on one platform, be it for paid traffic or organic. So, always keep diversity in mind.
8. The Growth of Messaging
The usage of messaging applications is a trend that’s going to dominate 2020 enormously. What makes this aspect more interesting is that there’s a desirable engagement for brands that are looking forward to comprehending how their target audience is taking specific actions on these apps.
With the advent of Viber, WhatsApp, WeChat, Telegram, and more; the messaging market has been introduced with additional features that take this game beyond messaging. Right from news updates to bots, these apps come integrated with several powerful features.
So, you can figure out how to reach out to people available on these platforms. And then, you can keep them updated on your latest products, services, offers, and target audience through these apps.
9. Look Out for Data Breaches
One of the significant reasons why these messaging apps are gaining more hype is because people are starting to lose their trust in social networking platforms. Take Facebook, for example. Last year, there were several uncomfortable revelations made regarding how this prominent site was leaking data.
If you want to stay there in the game, you must take privacy concerns seriously. Several social media platforms are learning how to be mindful of the data in a hard way.
As a brand, you must tackle these growing concerns by establishing a long-lasting trust among your audience. Whether you’ve made any changes in your policies or committed a mistake, being transparent with the customers is the key to success.
And, those who are loyal to your brand will always stick beside you, irrespective of the situation.
Final Words
Undoubtedly, 2018 was a big year for social networks with several additions and predictions for the forthcoming years. Today, social media marketing has grown up to such a stage where it primarily focuses on ROI, entrusting relationships, and transparency.
The only way through which you can make a stand here as marketers are by understanding your target audience. Executing profound research, creating a precise strategy, and allocating a minimum budget for ads.
So, now that you’re ready as marketers begin with your research and gain as many benefits as possible.
