The advent of the COVID-19 crisis in 2020 made many people become even more active online. Both businesses and consumers alike were forced to conduct their dealings online. Living a digital life for a whole year undeniably made social media become an even more fundamental part of everyone’s free time.
Brands are consistently moving to social media apps to meet their consumers, connect with potential customers, gain feedback, and interact with their consumers. But since this tactic is being utilized by many different brands, how do you stand out from the rest?
To answer your question, we’ll provide you with five tips a social media marketing firm needs to utilize to stay ahead of the curve for social media trends.
Create Different Types of Content
Content can be created in many different forms. However, there are three main elements you need to consider when creating content for present-day social media. Utilizing these elements is bound to help you gain more traction, engagement, and followers on social media.
Element 1 – Video
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth ten thousand more. Whether they are short or long form, vertical or horizontal, VR, mobile, or live, videos are here to stay and they’re fast becoming an important part of every marketing strategy.
Many consumers devote their time to watching videos online thanks to social media apps like TikTok and Instagram. You need to make sure your social media marketing firm includes videos in your marketing strategies. Also, your audiences should be able to consume your content natively. Therefore, ensure that you utilize the channels where they interact with your brand.
Element 2 – Audio
Our social media marketing firm considers audio content as one of the most underutilized mediums that brands use to connect with their audiences on social media. People listen to podcast as much as they use Facebook. You can use social media apps like Twitter Spaces or Clubhouse to connect with your audience.
You can also look for opportunities to get interviewed as a guest on a podcast or become a co-host. Music is another good way to utilize audio for marketing. The kind of audio strategy you choose will depend on what’s more natural for you and/or your brand.
Element 3 – Static Content
Make your texts more exciting by adding other elements such as smileys, memes, pictographs, and more. Twitter, a social media app, even makes custom emojis for important or historical happenings around the world, including entertainment, sports, and elections.
Many brands are getting more comfortable with using emojis in their email subject lines and advertising content. You can decide to use the traditional smileys of the 1,281 characters in Unicode 8.0 or go the IKEA route by creating custom emoji keyboards that fit your brand.
Interact and Create Value
Many brands and marketers are of the belief that social media should be a way to redirect customers or potential audiences to their websites. As a professional social media marketing firm, we believe that this isn’t the only thing social media is useful for. Instead of utilizing social media as a redirection tool, we encourage our clients to interact with their target audience while ensuring that the content they provide on these channels offers immense value.
Make sure your content aligns with the organic content on the social channel. For instance, you can create unique and creative videos that talk about how to use your product for TikTok rather than write a long-form description detailing how to do the same thing. The reason is that the organic content on TikTok is video. Writing long-form content disguised as description won’t work efficiently on the platform.
So if your audience is on a platform that consumes texts, create valuable text content. If they’re on platforms that utilize audio, then your content should be audio. As a social media marketing firm or a marketer, it’s essential that you use the unique characteristics of the social channel to influence creativity rather than seeing them as a means to an end.
Always Choose Targeted Reach Over Mass Reach
Social media channels are improving every day and one of the major factors contributing to their improvements is their algorithms. Each social media channel provides an algorithmic feed so that each user can enjoy tailored content from their favorite accounts. What this means for businesses is that your high follower count won’t automatically translate to high engagement or views.
So how do you reach your target audience?
The best method a social media marketing firm or marketer can utilize is targeting your intended audiences via paid and organic targeting options. Plan your content around the characteristics of your audience, such as the channels they use, the kind of posts they engage with, the time of the day they’re likely to be available, etc.
Use paid targeting options to retarget audiences on platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter that have shown interest in your products or services. You can figure out who they are by looking at those that downloaded your gated content, people who frequently engage your posts, or potential customers who have visited your website. You should also create unique content that’s solely for these audiences who are midway through your marketing funnel.
Leverage Who Your Audiences Trust
There’s no denying the fact that consumers tend to trust people more than brands. In the world of social media, there are people called influencers that are trusted by many consumers. Unlike your brand representatives, CEO, or paid celebrity spokesperson, influencers don’t have any attachments to your brand. Consumers see them as normal persons, like themselves, who have used a service or product and is giving their review.
A strong influencer campaign can usher in a new perspective amongst your consumers, thereby allowing you to attain new heights in audience reach. Most influencers control the content and the medium on which the content is shared, which might make it difficult to work with them for the first time. However, it’s important that you trust the influencer you employ.
Outline your expectations and goal before a campaign and discuss the expected outcome with the influencer. Always keep in mind that an influencer’s audience is their main priority. Keeping their message as true and authentic as possible is the key to their success, which in turn, translates to the success of your campaign.
Share Stories With Your Audiences
Social media stories have grown to become an integral part of social media marketing. Stories can include videos, texts, pictures, and other static content. They are directly at the top of every feed so you’re bound to get more views or engagement. While they don’t really guarantee views and engagement, being at the top of every newsfeed increases your chances.
Conclusion
Staying ahead of the curve for social media trends depends on how you utilize these tips above. Not all of the strategy above will work for most brands. While some brands may lean towards video creation and social channels like TikTok, others may find targeted ads on Instagram and Facebook to be the ideal option. Consulting with a professional social media marketing firm will help in pointing you towards the right direction.