Effective Social Media Marketing Trends to Shape 2018

Reaching to the audiences is much easier now! All thanks to the advent of social media marketing channels. The trends are evolving every single day offering a lot of innovative techniques to extend the brand reach. Well, social media marketing techniques are constantly changing and the previous year was a great example of the same. Some of the most influencing global brands took some exceptional social media marketing strategies to gain engagement.

Facebook adding the story element to its feed (that was of course inspired from Snapchat) was an exceptional movement that surely earned the applause for the social media giant. As more and more brands are expanding their reach with social media marketing strategies, the competition is really getting tougher each day. So, there is an urgent need to know the most valuable trends that will become prominent in 2018.

Here come the trends

Augmented Reality & Virtual Reality Will Grow Prominently

The rise of Augmented Reality can clearly be seen in the mobile gaming that is expected to grow towards the social media platforms very soon. These exceptional platforms are sure to find effective ways to incorporate AR and VR benefits in their platforms.

Snapchat has already started its journey with Bitmoji to allow users to project their animated version into the real world doing random things. Pokemon Go is another exceptional social media marketing example of innovative technology integrated successfully into a gameplay. Even iPhone 8 and Google Pixel have incorporated AR into their mechanism.

Chatbots in Customer Service

Chatbots have moved way ahead of being a clumsy mechanism and have totally come into the mainstream at least for major technology brands. They are the bots that have all the potential to provide instant services to customers’ queries coming from across the globe. If the chatbot testing with major brands remains successful, there will be machine-generated content made available for the customers, as per a prediction by the Gartner.

Chatbots offer ease to businesses to connect with the brand audience. They are designed in a way to offer a personal assistant to the customers. These bots are smarter enough to assist customers with their queries.

Live Streaming Will Change The Game

While live streaming has become an important part of Facebook now, brands are also focusing on the same to gain customer engagement. The year 2018 will see a major change in the live streaming technology with some of the major brands integrating the same into their channel specific branding.

Harnessing the effectivity of live streaming into branding will help brands to enrich their content plans. And like Facebook, other social media networking sites are sure to capitalize on the benefits of live streaming in near future.

Ephemeral Content to Offer Enriched Engagement

Giant social media sites including Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat have played a major role in popularizing ephemeral content. Ephemeral content remains for 24 hours and then disappears forever. Brands are now using this social media marketing strategy effectively to socialize their brands on different channels.

Specific content in your social media marketing strategy allows you to be more specific and authentic as well. Because of the nature of the content that disappears after 24 hours, making the brand followers take fast action with some of the effective strategies is easier than other practices.    

Online Hangouts to Be The Norm

Online hangouts is becoming much more prominent these days. Because we lack time to actually go out and meet people, several brands have created a virtual world for people to hang out there, Houseparty, the group video chat app offers a way to take group chats to the next level.

It offers the ease to meet new people and hang out with them in the virtual space. Because of the same reason, Facebook is reportedly working to explore the ways that could add similar functionality into its live streaming video.

Also, See: 5 REASONS WHY YOUR SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING CAMPAIGN MAY NOT BE PAYING OFF

HOW TO USE QUIZZES IN SOCIAL MEDIA MARKETING TO QUALIFY LEADS 

Influencer Marketing Will Take Over

Influencer marketing is not a new thing now. However, it is growing prominently for a number of brands across the globe. Due to the vast majority of marketers wanting to tap the benefit from the same, the influencer marketing has become a prominent tool for brands to focus on.

As influencer marketing utilizes the brand value of prominent personalities rather than being product-specific, the trend actually buys engagement for the product. The future of influencer marketing is believed to see brands turn into real experts. The potential is only going to increase in the upcoming years.    

The Upshot

The strategies listed above are going to be very much specific in 2018. The previous year has already seen some of the most prominent changes in the social media marketing strategies from influencing brands. As the previous year has already ended, it is now time for brands to reconsider their social media marketing strategies to gain major benefits. Try using any or all of the above listed social media marketing strategies to get major engagement from the audience.