9 Social Media Marketing Strategies Professionals Can’t Ignore in 2018

Social media is good news for businesses to freely advertise and reach out to their target market. Businesses only need to buy social media services, and online marketers will then do the job. Articles or advertisements featuring products or services are easily published online and read by everyone who can practically access the internet. Voila! They have just saved themselves a stash of cash for other traditional forms of advertisement.

However, due to the continuously increasing number of competitors, it is becoming harder for brands or different businesses to catch audiences whose attention spans have now reportedly dwindled to 8 seconds. If you are one in the seemingly tighter competition, how can your business not be left out of the current marketing trend?

Here are The Top 9 Social Media Marketing Strategies Professionals Can’t Ignore in 2018:

• LIVE STREAMING (Facebook Live, YouTube, etc)

Who else would you ask if you want to know what the consumers want? Consumer themselves! And how are you going to create such interaction and elicit a fast response from them? Try live streaming!

A recent study conducted shows that 78% of netizens are watching Facebook Live videos. It is pivotal in marketing to determine and be abreast of consumer trends. Live streaming is the perfect way to interact with the target market, and it also helps develop existing products or services and expands the range of what is being offered.

You wouldn’t even need to buy social media services for others. You can just do live streaming yourself!

• PERSONALIZED MESSAGE

Don’t you get touched when Facebook greets you a good morning— whoever and wherever you are? Mass marketing on social media is no longer as effective due to the influx of flagged advertisements everywhere. This is the reason why marketers are now utilizing personal connections to establish a more engaging promotion. It is much harder to gain a new customer than to retain one amidst the surge of similar offers. So, for the year 2018, create and maintain advertisements with personalized contents thru social media, email, and other types of online marketing.

• 6 SECONDS ADVERTISEMENT

An uninterested online user who merely wants to watch a video will just gruelingly wait for the availability of the skip button and will automatically click it once it appears. That’s why Facebook, Sundance, Fox, YouTube, and other advertising platforms are now embracing swift, 6-second ads which are non-skippable, thus the corresponding ad monetization. It can also hold the attention of an average online user with a short attention span as it hardly takes a lot of time.

• ASSISTANT WITH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AL) / CHATBOT(s)

Sure, you have instituted an amazing team that immensely contributes to your business growth. But what if the talent of your team members shall rather be spent in other key areas of your business like creating posts than actually optimizing posts to be posted at a specific time and date?

You and your checkbook can worry no more. You will not need to add another employee to your payroll! You just need to hire an assistant with artificial intelligence, and the posts you want to be posted at a specific time and date are automatically generated. You can even answer the queries of potential customers by listing a number of frequently asked questions (FAQs) with automated answers.

• INCREASE OF IN-APP FUNCTIONALITY

Social media platforms intend to keep their consumers from having to leave their site to learn further information in another. An epitome of this is Facebook’s newly introduced Instant Articles function. This permits people to circulate articles on Facebook, rendering the published article’s availability to be read on Facebook itself. Through this, users won’t have to go to other websites and can somewhat read the latest news and fascinating information on their preferred industries on Facebook.

• CATCHY SOCIAL MEDIA VIDEOS

A lot of companies buy social media services, and catchy advertisement videos are often included in the package. This is because most people prefer watching than reading since it requires less effort. This might have been patterned to the traditional T.V. commercials that involve an average of 30 seconds to 2-minute length of moving pictures. Only, it’s publicized thru social media. A lot of online shops get most of their sales through this as it has a certain appeal to netizens. If you are not using this as a marketing strategy, then you are having a really valuable tactic amiss.

• AUDIENCE INTERACTION

As mentioned above, customers are more inclined to be hooked if presented with a much more personal content. Chatbots are undeniably helpful if sellers or service providers can’t render an immediate answer themselves. However, there are still certain concerns that need to be addressed and questions that aren’t included in the FAQs section. Thus, audience interaction also plays a very important key in dealing with virtual clients. Instead of merely hitting the like button, why not transcribe an answer that may somehow address the same concern of other users? This also portrays your willingness to improve the products and services you offer by eliciting the demands of your business’s primary consumers.

• OTHER POPULAR SOCIAL MEDIA CHANNELS

With Snapchat and Instagram, you wouldn’t really have to buy social media services because guess what? They’re free! So, take advantage of these. Presently, Snapchat and Instagram offer timed videos and visual content.

Instagram Stories are now a trend and are used every day mostly for non-commercial purposes. Even famous celebrities tend to gather more followers thru their Instagram Stories letting the public see snippets of their life. Influencers in said social media see up to 10 percent of their audience open their Instagram Stories on a day-to-day basis, which is more frequent than Snapchat.  

However, Snapchat continues to dominate among millennials and generation Z. As these types of platforms increase, brands and marketers need to be more selective as to the ones they choose to utilize. Do research in terms of analytics and key features of different platforms to determine which suit the business’s needs and interests best.

• ONLINE REVIEWS

Prior to actually purchasing the posted products or availing the advertised services, potential buyers tend to search for feedback from consumers who had already availed and tested the brands. Though it may not be an obvious marketing strategy, especially for those receiving regular positive reviews, this actually contributes to the popularity and likability of the product or service online.

However, there are tons of sites that usually present testimonials from other customers that can be easily detected as a marketing strategy. When you check whether such person who gave this positive feedback actually exists, there’s no link to the profile of that person living much doubt in the room. That’s why it is essential to gather reviews from actual people based on their actual and positive experiences so that you can present appealing and plausible reviews.

Whether you plan on editing a catchy advertisement video or incorporating a 6sec ad into your marketing strategy, you want to commence employing assistants with artificial intelligence (AI) or chatbots. The AI will help appeal to the target market using personalized messages, so make sure you have crafted a concrete plan in place to implement these schemes.

Now that you know these 9 Social Media Marketing Strategies, you can start planning how to make what you offer at the top of the feed.