Social
media marketing has proven to be a very powerful business tool; and its
effectiveness is increasing all the time due to its continuous evolution. If
you want to be recognized among the masses, it's important to stay on top of
emerging trends.
Even more
importantly, knowing how to use these trending methods to your advantage will help
you gain exposure to new clients while keeping past clients up to date and
establishing yourself within your industry.
Lucky for
you, several researches have been done and data have been collected, analyzed
and now all you need to do is to take advantage of these new trends. In this
article we're going to address the four newest social media trends that you
should be using right now, as well as how you can make the most of them:
1) Long-form
content publishing on LinkedIn.
With 347
million users and growing, LinkedIn is a golden social media opportunity for experts.
LinkedIn not only connects you with past and present clients, coworkers and
industry peers, but it also offers the unique opportunity to publish original
long-form content and grow your reputation. Posted content is featured
across the site through Pulse, a curated news feed. You may think of LinkedIn's
posting platform like a blog; the best part is you don't have to do as much
work to get your content in front of people.
Long-form
content publishing on LinkedIn is pretty new. It started in 2014 with a group
called LinkedIn Influencers. The Influencers are a hand-picked group of
industry leaders selected to spark discussion on topics ranging from leadership
to career advice and finance through what are essentially blog posts. Publishing
is now available for everyone to use, and the beauty of Pulse is that articles
written by Influencers like Arianna Huffington and Bill Gates are sprinkled
among posts written by people like you.
You can
write about your industry experience and what you've learned on the job or
share research or emerging trends you've noticed. Providing relevant advice and
information for clients is also helpful. Every post you write will be connected
to your LinkedIn profile, so it also serves as an extension of your resume.
2) Native
video posting on Facebook.
Facebook's
recent push to entice users to post native videos; videos uploaded directly to
Facebook for sharing shouldn't be ignored. Video posts average 62
percent more engagement than photos. If it's a native video, autoplay is
enabled in the news feed. You can still share videos from third-party sites
like YouTube or Vimeo, but they are visually downplayed in the news
feed.
That
means that as users scroll through the news feed, they will see the videos you
have uploaded directly to Facebook, which will automatically play when they
come on-screen. Users had been quickly scrolling through, they may scroll back
to watch more as their eyes naturally catch the sudden movement of the video
and their curiosity is piqued. This removes the opportunity for a user to exit
to a third-party site like YouTube where distractions are aplenty.
Native
video is a new way to increase your organic, unpaid reach on Facebook. Videos
that are entertaining or provide useful information are likely to be shared,
extending your reach.
3) Emoji hashtags
on Instagram.
Emoji, or
picture letters are those little stickers popping up everywhere online and on
our smartphones. We all have seen these yellow smiley faces, hearts, dancing
ladies, ice cream cones, monkeys, and the list goes on and on.
Just a
few years ago, using smiley faces in an email would toe the line between
friendly and unprofessional. According to scientists, those emoticons, now
replaced with emojis, are here to stay because our brains have learned to
respond to emojis in digital conversation the same way we would a human face. Tone
and expression that can sometimes get lost in the written word can be perfectly
conveyed and understood through emojis.
According
to Instagram, reports stat that nearly 50 percent of all comments on
Instagram contain emojis. As emoji popularity has gained steam, Instagram made
a move that is changing the hashtag game. You can now emoji hashtag. Hashtagging
is important on Instagram because it's how your photos are found by those
beyond your core group of followers.
A clear
example on how businesses can thrive using emjoi hashtagging is Starbucks. Iced
coffee on the beach gets # (wave) and a trio of summer
beverages is treated to # (sun). The sooner you hop on this trend,
the sooner you’ll be seen.
4)
Targeting your promoted posts on Facebook.
In 2012,
a Facebook page's organic reach through posting was about 16 percent
of total page likes. These days that percentage is lower. Why? As a result of
the growth in the number of users, pages and aggregate posts, an average user
could potentially be exposed to as many as 1500 posts a day if everything
everyone posted made it to the news feed. But Facebook whittled that number
down to 300 because that's a more realistic number of posts for people to see,
which is nice except it also means fewer people see your posts.
However,
the silver lining here is that this is a smart move for the users of Facebook.
If the News Feed was made up mostly of posts from businesses, Facebook would
have a hard time getting users to come back. This also opens up a better
opportunity for businesses to reach more specific audiences.
Targeting
is available for both organic and promoted posts. When you target your efforts,
you can choose by geographic area, interest, age and gender, as well as people
who like your page and friends of people who like your page. You can even
upload a list of contact emails.
When you
strategically focus on your target audience, you'll see a higher rate of
engagement and in turn you will experience a higher rate of conversion. Good
posts to promote are posts that have seen high engagement organically, which is
a good sign they will take off even more when promoted. You
should also share articles about yourself, milestones and offers. These types
of posts are perfect for drumming up new business.
When it
comes to promoted posts, a little money can go a long way. After you've identified
your target audience and how long you want to promote a post, you'll need to
decide on a budget. Based on all the factors you've entered, Facebook will give
you a range of how many people your post will reach before you purchase. Using
Facebook's Insights feature allows you to track the progress and success of
your post.
The bottom-line,
social media is changing at a rapid-fire pace, but thanks to industry experts,
the learning curve has been lowered. There are a lot of new trends out there,
but the four you should focus on right now are:
·
Dipping your toes into
LinkedIn's long-form publishing for added exposure.
·
Taking emojis for a test
ride and using them in your Instagram comments and hashtagging for a stronger
emotional connection and more visibility.
·
Posting engaging and
informative native video to Facebook.
·
Promoting your next big
Facebook post.
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