The business plans we have for the year 2021 are disturbed by the pandemic but we still have hope to grow businesses on digital platforms. Different new trends have begun to emerge that will mature and reach their true potential. This article is certainly focused on the recent social media marketing trends to follow in the upcoming years.
Social Media have become a potential marketing platform in the last few years speaking digitally and now with features like AI incorporation, GPS integration, and the latest technologies, it is one of the top-rated marketing platforms.
Facebook with a user base of 2.7 billion is on the top while Instagram and Pinterest follow it down the row. A business requires a large customer base, and these social media platforms have tremendous growth as many small businesses are operating from Instagram and Facebook Shop.
Popular Social media platforms and some statistics:
In the ’90s when social media began to spread, it was only a means of communication. People used to make video calls to their loved ones across the globe and this is not the case now. They use social media to make purchasing decisions, around 70% of B2C clients are acquired through social media.
Everything has changed and from a report, 81% of the US population is using social media platforms and over half are registered on two platforms. So, regardless of which social networking sites you want to invest in, you have a high chance of reaching clients that you may not otherwise have reached!
Which Social Media platform is best for the business in 2021?
This can be a tough question since this question doesn’t have a single answer. The best social media platform to use will vary from company to company, depending on the products or services provided by user groups, and network flexibility. Each social media platform is specialized for various roles, information, and groups of people, just like each company.
That’s why we’re going to discuss top social networking platforms, so we can help company owners like you decide which channel would be the most profitable for you.
Examples of Social Media
· Facebook and Facebook messenger
Every small company ought to be on Facebook. Facebook offers small businesses a variety of ways to advertise their services, improve customer support, and raise awareness with more than 2.7 billion monthly users.
It can seem difficult to use Facebook for business because its rules and algorithms change frequently. With the correct tactics, however, Facebook is one of the best methods to reach a particular audience through paid campaigns.
After Facebook, Instagram has become the new home to brands. Instagram is now used for business by more than 25 million businesses worldwide. More than 200 million people view at least one business profile every day.
Instagram has become the new brand home, where interaction is high, fans are brand-loyal, and it is possible to achieve real business objectives.
A fairly unique proposal is offered by Pinterest to companies. It’s a place to communicate with friends and influencers, much like other social media networks. But it’s also a lot more than that as a visual search engine and productivity tool for planning your dreams.
Pinterest users are increasing every day. The number of Pinners using Pinterest per month increased 28 percent to 322 million monthly active users since last year.
· YouTube
YouTube can be a powerful small business marketing video site and for several forms of organizations, video is highly engaging and useful. Creating a YouTube channel for your organization gives your audience a single forum for sharing and engaging with your content.
The global reach of YouTube is huge, with 80 different language choices, local versions in 91 countries, and nearly two billion monthly users. The platform covers 95% of the internet population, and global diversity is expressed in its top-performing countries.
LinkedIn is another famous social media platform for business marketing.
It can be a powerful tool for you if your company follows a B2B model, or targets customers based on work titles!
LinkedIn has 303 million monthly active users; most of them are in or close to the world of work.
Twitter has 330 million active users who show up at least once a month and 145 million daily active users.
The average time spent on Twitter is approximately 3:39 minutes per session, considering the design of the site.
During the last few years, Twitter has gained dramatic popularity and growth.
Twitter is an impressive social media channel with over 330 million active monthly users, where individuals share and find bite-sized content.
The largest chunk of Twitter traffic comes from the smartphone, like most social media sites.
· TikTok
TikTok, launched in 2017, is rising at an amazingly fast rate. Users of TikTok spend an average of 46 minutes watching videos on the app every day.
An average user of TikTok opens the application 8 times a day.
TikTok is a highly addictive candy for social media that urges individuals to continue watching short videos.
TikTok has been the 7th most downloaded app in the last decade in just a few years.
WhatsApp Business is intended specifically for companies. It has been built from the ground up to give consumers a concierge-like service and will be used only by business owners.
Due to the way WhatsApp as a service is built, there are a few prerequisites for running WhatsApp Company.
· Snapchat
Users of Snapchat use the service about 30 times a day, spending 28 minutes on average.
The multimedia messaging app has over 238 active users regularly and is among the younger generations’ most popular social media sites.
In the U.S. alone the app has over 46 million monthly active users.
Employing User-generated content on Social Media
For quite a while now, influencer partnerships have been a part of a brand’s marketing strategy. User-Generated Content (UGC) is a great advantage that we’re just starting to explore social media campaigns.
When influencers share a product’s photos and videos, it can spark various distinctive and attractive ideas. When ordinary people talk about your product compared to celebrities and models, consumers find it even more reliable and authentic to make a purchase decision.
Reports say that every time they make a purchase, over 64% of social media relies on UGC. Compared to those made by the brand itself the view of a UGC video is tenfold higher.
Incorporation of AI and AR
There is a range of AI-powered tools to provide insights from the social media posts, profiles, and audience of your company. Measure the brand and trends via social media.
Social media intelligence driven by AI can enable businesses to quantify and enhance brand value, identify customer patterns, and understand target audiences.
Social media sites such as Snapchat provide AR filters that users can apply to turn their faces into animals or add to their images elements such as flower crowns or glasses.
But facial filters aren’t just for games and fun. Branded filters can be used by companies to quickly promote their brands on social media.
Social selling
Find out the right social media platform for your product and your target audience. Social selling is just what it sounds like: it’s the social media method of selling.
This sales arm is especially useful for the relationship-building aspect of the sales process, from researching prospects and communicating online, to sharing and interacting with posts from prospects and leaders to create confidence and knowledge.
When you’ve figured out where your audience spends time online, it’s time to create the profiles that you’re going to use to connect with prospects and leads.
Facebook Marketplace
The Facebook Marketplace business is a platform to discover, sell, and buy goods. This marketplace enables businesses, along with regular Facebook users, to sell their goods. Via Facebook Messenger, all transactions are possible, enabling businesses to communicate with customers one-on-one.
With Facebook Marketplace, you can reach interested buyers and establish a one-on-one connection with your audience. You don’t have to pay extra to list the products on Facebook Marketplace and it offers a lot more benefits. Selling on the social media marketplace is a lot easier than selling on a single vendor website.
Read: Facebook is extending ads from users and brands to the Marketplace
There is another Facebook feature for selling your products: Facebook Shop. It is easy to create and any Facebook user with a business page can sell through it.
Instagram Marketplace
Instagram Business can be a great option for selling online and this is going to trend in 2021 because the user base of Instagram is increasing. It has more than 1 billion active monthly users and 90% of them follow a business account. Instagram Business connects passion and it is a platform for talented and creative storytellers, here I am talking about brand storytellers. It gives you to make a sparking bond with users, allows you to connect with new customers, and strengthen your relationship with existing ones.
Read: Why you should sell on Etsy Marketplace? mCommerce presence of Etsy
Remixing the new user-generated content
Content created by users will evolve to include remixes. Remixing is the practice of taking and recreating existing formats, models, or ideas to convey the personality or ideas of a user. It is on the rise through apps such as TikTok and Instagram Reels, according to Talkwalker. The pattern is only just beginning, the research added.
In the future, there will be more co-production opportunities, with brands supplying consumers with models to base their content on. This will encourage more organic ties between businesses and customers.
With brands engaging with new customers and producing extra content that stands out from the crowd, the marketing industry should expect 2021 to bring even more possibilities for remixing.
Social advertising has a dynamic future
Social advertising isn’t the latest 2021 trend but it is going to increase this year. Advertising on social media platforms allows you to reach a wider audience than those who are following you.
To boost our brand awareness and engagement on the respective social media sites, you can use Facebook advertising, Instagram Ads, Pinterest ads, and other social media ads. To drive leads and sales, several other businesses also use social media advertising.
Ad on social media is an efficient medium for your marketing campaign that offers a higher ROI for your ad spending. As time shifts, social media undergoes an online transformation that affects both company and consumer behavior.
People have now started to demand a more personalized type of advertising experience on social media. Therefore in the modern world, brands that can easily adjust the modifications and easily offer diverse advertising to social media users will definitely earn praise.
Audio Search in Social Media
Have you ever found that the pop-ups, advertisements, and advertising of that subject seem to come out of nowhere when you’re talking or looking for something on social media? This is not a coincidence; it is a marketing technique that is totally deliberate and prepared.
This is an emerging technology that we will see and lead up to more in 2021. For marketers to see what goods and activities are trending and are most sought after, social listening may be used more in the future.
Live Streaming
Live streaming for advertisers is no longer a novelty; the way brands communicate with their audiences is changed by live content. In immediate and genuine ways that other social media formats do not a live video, approach engages audiences.
And with two-thirds of extra spending on live streaming, advertisers are paying more attention.
Live streaming keeps the audience rising. The Internet is an extremely big location. Live streaming lowers expenditures. To train new hires, some organizations use live streaming as part of their training programs. Reduced prices would mean higher sales.
Instagram Reels
Instagram stories are already popular but Instagram Reels is the new feature added to Instagram in the year 2020. As part of your social media campaign, it’s worth giving Reels a try. Instagram, as it stands, has more than 1 billion active users. It is a wide target audience to hit, and if you’re already posting to Instagram, then this is a good addition to that job.
Another plus about using Instagram Reels for your ads is that, if you have a public account, these short videos hit not just your followers, but also the broader IG network. Once it appears in the Explore tab, Reels brings you in front of users that you wouldn’t have access to in your daily Feed.
Future of conversational marketing
Business communication is interrupted by the transition to messaging channels, and chatbots are increasingly becoming a cornerstone of digital marketing.
A modern, customized approach to doing business online is conversational marketing. By using the power of questions one at a time, it pushes customers through marketing and sales funnels, just like a real-time conversation. It’s an automated dialogue with visitors to your website.
This is the way how you can find out exactly what customers want, consider their pain points, and provide them with the right service or real-time marketing.
Chatbots
Our modern-day manifest destiny is bot-powered commerce. Bots help customers find solutions with the support of messaging apps, no forms, cluttered inboxes, or wasted minutes spent searching and scrolling through content, regardless of where they are or what device they use. Intertwining contact, operation, and transactions, bots offer services, unlike the self-serving ads of the past.
Wrap-up: These are the social media trends that will be followed by many businesses in the year 2021. I found it interesting to be able to dig through each pattern and see the many possibilities they offer globally for social media marketers.
There can be more things to follow in the year 2021 if you want to excel in your business. Subscribe to our newsletter or if you find this article helpful then let us know!
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