What’s #Trending with Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing can be intimidating at first, but keeping up with the climate is key! Here are some current trends to help you stay relevant. 

How do you stand out on platforms with the overflow of content that is being posted nowadays? Due to the extreme popularity and convenience social media brings, it can be very difficult to keep up and engross your audience. Social media also poses a challenge due to how fast paced and dynamic it has grown to be; trends come in and out quickly and staying on top of them is key to successful engagement.

Keep reading to uncover current movements in social media to benefit your business! 

Social media operating as a customer service resource 

Customers are no longer emailing or calling service lines with complaints, questions, or comments but going straight to social media! According to recent research by Twitter, 41% use this platform to contact customer service, 37% to voice an opinion on a product or brand, and 25% want to make a product inquiry.

With DM’s, comments, and tweets, users can now always have direct access to your business. While this can help centralize your customer service efforts, there is an added expectation from customers to receive a quick response.  

79% of customers expect a response to their social media response within 24 hours

One beneficial practice for social media customer service is utilizing chatbots to reply to clients beyond business hours as well as help with a speedy response rate. Chatbots are available on all major social media platforms- Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn and are simple to set up!  

While they can provide convenience and accessibility, solely relying on them is not recommended. Customers want to feel connected to your brand and will prefer talking to a customer service representative over a bot.  

Selling on Social Media

Social commerce statistics show that from 2021 to 2025, sales are expected to increase at around 30.8% per year

While the shop feature is not available on all platforms yet, this aspect of social media marketing is not to be overlooked. Streamlining your brand to multiple platforms can result in more customer awareness and engagement. With scrollable videos, how-to articles, customer and brand expert insights, and other interactive components, social commerce mixes static product pictures with moving images. Your client gets to experience and purchase your products all through the convenience of a simple swipe on their phone.  

Your Instagram search profile can work exactly like a website with a search bar, customer reviews, and the ability for customers to checkout right in the app. With Product Tags, you can highlight items for purchase directly in your images and videos so customers can easily tap on a tag to get more information. To encourage customer’s clicks and purchases, your business can also supply a promo code that will activate in your Instagram Shop profile.  

Within the past year, TikTok has launched its e-commerce service into the United States. Deemed TikTok Shop, it is offering three different ways for businesses to grow and increase revenue. It’s first feature is shoppable LIVEs in which merchants can showcase their products and allow users to buy them directly in the app

Secondly, TikTok encourages businesses to partner with influencers to receive more awareness and engagement. Lastly, TikTok Shop offers monthly campaigns that businesses can participate in to maximize long-term influence.

Source: https://shop.tiktok.com/business/en

Video Remains the Top Marketing Content Format

Video content, specifically short form, has influenced the marketing space in 2022 and will continue to in 2023. Short-form video content is any video content under 60 seconds and has become extremely popular due to its ability to captivate an audience.

In fact, 73% of consumers prefer to watch a short-form video to learn about a product or service.

Not only is it engaging to an audience, but it is also relatively inexpensive and straightforward to create. All a business needs to start generating this type of content is a smartphone and optional editing software. To fully captivate your market, it’s best to stick to short form content as there has been a trend of videos becoming shorter over the years. With the rise of TikTok, consumers are accustomed to receiving product information in 30 seconds or less. Keeping your content short will increase the likelihood of people watching the video fully leading to a higher retention rate and better SEO.

You’re all caught up… for now! In a world of constantly changing trends and fast-paced creation, it can be tricky to stay on top of it all. Staying aware and remaining open to change are ways to ensure your marketing does not fall behind. Still feeling overwhelmed? We specialize in marketing of all shapes and sizes- including social media!