Social Media and Content Marketing Trends You Want to Be Using

It’s a constant challenge to keep up with the latest trends in content and social media marketing. You can’t just develop a strategy and expect it to work long term. It takes a continuous effort to adjust the strategy to keep it effective and get a positive ROI. Tracking emerging trends to stay on top of social relevance is key to doing that.

We’ve listed four social content marketing trends here for you to track your social activities.

Social Listening More Important for Guiding Strategy, Finding Lead Gen Opportunities

Social listening is the process of monitoring digital conversations to understand what customers are saying about a brand and industry online. Marketing teams primarily use social listening for community management, such as identifying customer pain points and providing direct consumer response to questions, complaints, and comments. It is also used to surface feedback that could help to differentiate their brand, product, or service.

A study from Clutch shows that 1 in 4 businesses use social listening to improve their products and service. 42% try to improve customer relationships, while 86% monitor ongoing customer requests, issues, questions and concerns.

There are important conversations on social media, allowing social listeners to gather critical information about consumers. You can prospect for leads, gather feedback data and develop social campaigns around those social conversations.

Don’t limit your social listening to the typical platforms of Facebook and Twitter. Instagram, YouTube and Reddit are also sources to gain important insight.

Snapchat, Instagram Stories and Other Ephemeral Content Come to Center Stage

“Ephemeral content” refers to social media posts that disappear after a limited time. Take Snapchat posts, for instance. They disappear quickly after viewing.

Although these types of platforms can be more difficult to track, they are a key component of the younger demographics market. In fact, Pew Research reveals that 78% of 18-24 year olds use Snapchat every single day. 71% of these users visit the platform multiple times daily! Similarly, Instagram has enjoyed an increase in daily users from 51% to 60% since introducing their “Stories” feature.

For businesses to use these forums effectively, they need to understand why people are using them. This ephemeral content is more casual, so sharing human interest and exciting temporary events is ideal. Some examples of ephemeral content that works are:

• Promotional discounts or events that end after the post disappears
• Special offers personalized towards a specific follower group
• “Slice of life” moments during your operations, such as a hearty “good morning” or a picture of a butterfly landing on your windowsill
• Geofilter marketing, which can be used to create gamified promotions

More Companies Looking to Partner with Micro-Influencers in Their Niche

Influencer marketing is a form of marketing in which focus is placed on influential people rather than the target market as a whole. It identifies the individuals that have influence over potential buyers, and orients marketing activities around these influencers.

Influencer marketing is becoming a very lucrative way to improve how others see your brand. Recommendations from accounts or followers that have clout and get attention can help tremendously. These followers are not actual celebrities, but are “micro-influencers”, typically with less than a million followers themselves and higher engagement rates.

Millennial Demographics Mature, Demanding More Nuanced Segmentation Strategies

Like it or not, those millennials are a very large part of your target audience. Those individuals between 25-34 years old have differing interests, values and purchase motivators that need to be addressed.

You’ll need to research the specific types of causes and values your millennial audience cares about. Gathering social data on your audiences’ demographics and interest categories can help you create more accurate segments that mirror actual traits, not generational stereotypes. This will allow you to create accurate personas for your customer base.

“If you’re creating a campaign for a brand or product, it’s imperative to know who you’re speaking to, which users will be most engaged, and the users who will drive the success of this campaign,” urges Yuval Ben-Itzhak, CEO of Socialbakers. “In the past, this was done by guesswork or agency studies, but today it’s almost happening in real time.”

Let St. Louis SEO for Growth Help You with the New Social Media Marketing Trends

You can’t remain stagnant in the online marketing arena. You need to make sure your strategy remains fresh. Developing true relationships and inspiring behaviors among your audiences is the best way to achieve social media marketing success in the current times.

St. Louis SEO for Growth can help you devise or update your marketing strategy to keep up with the ever-changing social media marketing landscape.