Social Media 2020: What’s New, What’s Not

Social media marketing is an important aspect of a digital marketing strategy. It’s an easy, inexpensive, and highly successful way to brag about your business, product, and service, which improves your brand and your bottom line. The most popular social media platforms are Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, Snapchat, and Pinterest. Up and coming social media platforms to keep an eye on are Digg, Blogger, Reddit, Wikis and Stumbledupon.

Constantly evolving, social media marketing strategies need constant updating to meet the demands of today’s markets, no matter what the industry and no matter what the product. This year, some interesting new strategies are emerging while others are being left behind, and it’s crucial to your business’ success to know which is which.

Social Media Strategies to Ignore:

• Using the same post across multiple social media platforms. Consumers today want hyper-personalized content and the best way to engage your followers is to provide them similar content but in a way that is suited for their preferred social media platform.
• Revolving your social media around only your brand and your product. The beauty of social media is that it allows you to make the essential connections today’s consumers demand. Social media, then, must not only be about you. Engage your followers, ask them questions and aim to answer them with great content. It is still considered marketing (and great marketing at that!) if you make it relatable to your brand identity or the products you offer.
• Not using social media for customer service. Relationships are at the heart of marketing and so is social media. It makes sense, then, that social media should be an easy way for customers to reach out and build those conversations they need to maintain their loyal relationship with you.
• Using social media as a side feature to your marketing strategy. In today’s market, social media marketing is a necessary part of any digital marketing strategy. Not giving social media marketing your full, undivided attention in its own right will ultimately damage your brand and your business.
• Buying likes or followers. Buying followers gives you just that, followers. But those followers won’t be interacting with you, giving you feedback, comments, or reviews, and are unlikely to purchase from you. Quality followers are much more than quantity.

Social Media Strategies You Shouldn’t Ignore:

• Use Influencers: If your brand isn’t using influencers as part of your marketing strategy, you need to start. Don’t go for big time celebrities though. Small “micro-influencers” (those with 10k-50k followers) have a more personal connection with their followers and a significantly higher engagement rate that those with 500k+ followers.
• Video Marketing: Another must-do in today’s social media marketing world is using video. It’s an entertaining and interactive way to connect with your followers and has shown to be 600% more effective than print and direct mail marketing combines.
• Know your audience: Making your brand and your product relatable to your target audience is an absolute must in today’s market. To do that, use the analytics tools available to you to get to know who your customers are in as much detail as possible. You really can’t go wrong with too much information!
• Use strong imagery: 19% of all online searches will have a related image, so having high-quality imagery for all your online content is a real must-do in any successful social media marketing strategy.
• Take advantage of artificial intelligence. Chatbots, AI-driven voice and images searches, SEO and customer analysis, and other artificial intelligence technologies are a great way to create a better and more personalized customer experience and greater return on investment for you.

Using social media should be an integral part of your marketing strategy so that you can tell others about your incredible company, amazing product, and impressive customer service. If you’re unsure where to begin or feel like it’s too much of a commitment for you to take on yourself, give us a call here at Peppermint. As a leading social media marketing agency can take care of everything, from beginning to end to build your community, increase your brand recognition, and create lead generation with quality, bespoke content, management of your accounts, and on-going analytics for continuous improvement.