4 Social Media Trends That are Taking over 2018

As we’re all aware social media has significantly changed over the last 10 years and it’s fair to say that technology has had a huge impact on this.
Our London social media management and marketing experts are always keen to keep their fingers on the pulse of technology.  As with everything else in our posts, we can supply our expert knowledge – simply head over to our services and pricing page or get in touch to find out more.
Technology is ever changing on a day to day basis and as the world evolves around us so does social media and its impressive capability to shape our future.  In the last year alone the evolution of social media included several new features to all social media platforms catered to consumer preferences, business preferences and more importantly brand opportunities.  These small and big changes made a huge impact to the way B2B and B2C companies interact with their social media strategies.
It’s not always easy to determine what social media marketing trends are going to take off, however there are some trends that are just so inevitable that you would be ignorant to think that they would not benefit you and use them to your advantage.
At the end of last year we saw the introduction of Instagram Shopping, a new feature that allows eligible and approved businesses the ability to tag up to 5 products per post, thus allowing users to easily access product information and make direct purchases.  Though only currently rolled out in the US it is a huge milestone for business retailers and has had a significant impact already, with over 1,416% in traffic growth and 20% in revenue growth.
Social marketing trends can sometimes only last for a short period of time but we are going to go through four social media trends that we believe are going to reach their peak and have a lasting impact in 2nd half of 2018:

1. Higher Engagement Rates Between Brands & Customers

   It’s amazing how many businesses ignore social media messages or fail to respond in a timely manner, yet consumers are happily sharing their thoughts and views of a particular brand.As mentioned before social media customer service for both businesses and consumers has evolved from what it first was 10 years ago.  Consumers are actively trying to engage with brands on a more personal level to the point where they will mention a brand to show their appreciation.  The thing is, as much as consumers love to mention a brand and show some appreciation they also enjoy getting feedback or a response from the brand itself.
   Appreciation is a two way street and brands are finally realising the huge impact of social media engagement and its benefit of creating long lasting relationships as well as ROI (return on investment).
   Brands are still not quite there yet, but over the last year we have seen a rise in social media engagement and we can see this significantly increasing throughout 2018.
   If it hasn’t been said a thousand times before we’ll say it again, a happy customer is a returning customer.
   

2. Customisable Chat-bots

   A Chat-bot is a computer program which stimulates a human like conversation mainly used for customer service amongst many other purposes.
   As mentioned earlier in this post, the social media engagement rate is on the increase which is great news for everyone in every niche business.  But what happens when you get inundated with thousands of messages across the board?  You simply may not have enough man-power to respond and this can become a huge problem that brands do not want to face.
   The answer to this is “Chat-bots”.  Like anything new in technology – businesses tend to be quite sceptical especially if it can in any way directly affect your business – especially in a negative way.
   No one wants to be the guinea pig and trial it first so often new technology can sometimes have a slow reaction rate.
   Chat-bots have been around for a while but businesses started to adopt them from around 2014 and increasingly more in 2016 & 2017.   Facebook introduced chat-bots in early 2016 starting with 30,000 bots increasing  to 100,000 by September 2017.
   As chat-bots become increasingly popular, companies are starting to implement customisation of chat-bots so that it is tailored to their specific requirements making chat-bots a viable and logical choice for businesses social media management solutions.
   

3. Brands Relying on Social Listening Tools

   Social listening is a key sub category of social media marketing that allows you to monitor relevant information to your business such as brand mentions, competitor information, product related information and anything else specific to your brand.The idea behind social listening is to use the gathered information to your advantage and turn them into actionable opportunities.  This is a great way to cater towards a better customer experience and improve business marketing strategies.
   Here are some of the reasons why:–
   Enhanced Customer Care:
   It’s old news that more and more consumers are turning to social media for personal engagement, they would rather get an instant response than waiting in a queue on the phone.
   Now imagine being able to answer peoples questions before they ask by tracking what they are saying through social media.  By doing this you are catering to consumers needs in turn enhancing their social media customer experience with you.

   Engaging Content:

   It’s not rocket science, for a social media marketing strategy to survive you need to produce engaging content.
   Using listening tools gives you opportunity to identify what is trending and what is important to your niche target demographic.

   Using it to your advantage to find out whats trending and specific keywords people are associating with your brand means you can then create the best content both on social media and on your personal website.  Giving people what they want is the key here and any social media manager or marketer should be doing this by second nature.

   Improved Social Media Marketing Campaigns:
   Marketing campaigns should be kept up-to-date on a regular basis, and this can sometimes be hard due to the ever changing world around us.
   Social listening allows brands to create new opportunities and work out what the latest trend is at a much faster rate than hearing through the grape vine.  You can then use this to tailor your marketing campaign thus staying in the loop and keeping up-to-date.
   Social media marketing managers will especially enjoy this data that is now to hand and can really customise and tailor their marketing budgets and plans accordingly.
   

4. More Augmented-Reality & Face Filters:
   

   Over the last few years face filters (AI lenses) have grown increasingly popular, with Instagram and Snapchat being the biggest competitors within the niche.Recently Instagram ventured out and introduced the new Stories feature which allows users to share a mixture of photos and videos of their day which results in a slideshow format.
   Of course upon introducing this feature along came extra face filters.  Instagram stories has in excess of 250 million daily users in comparison to 173 daily users for Snapchat.So why does this interest you?
   These face filters may seem merely ridiculous at times however, Snapchat has already introduced social network advertising capabilities.  Advertisers can now build custom face filters for their users creating a bespoke user experience. With that being exciting news, these can prove to be quite costly and will only last for a short period of time.  Instagram has not yet rolled this feature out but our predictions are that they will not be far behind – expect to see more social media advertising opportunities on Instagram before 2018 is up.
   With the rise of augmented reality technology and facial recognition features it’s safe to say that social media networks are definitely going to join the club and introduce many new features giving niches and brands the opportunity to evolve their social media management and marketing strategies to their advantage.

Our London, UK based in-house social media managers and social media marketers are already looking to implement these 4 trends into our client’s strategies.
One of our existing clients is leading the charge with chat-bots in particular in relation so social media management.  We have deployed over 500 chat-bots for them which have been compiled using the data collected in the last 5 years of working as their social media customer service and management.  Together we are now monitoring and managing this process and can already see the huge increase in statistics that show just how beneficial this will be to their business.
Whilst this was the correct strategy for their social media marketing, it would not necessarily fit into every other niche industry’s social media management plan.  If you would like to speak more about chat-bots or other strategies take a look at our social media management plans or get in touch with us today and speak to an expert from our London offices.