15 Social Media Trends You Should Focus in 2018

Long gone was the time when social media is used only to share your pictures of vacation or honeymoon.

Even though, that trend still remains, nowadays, social media is used by many brands to promote their items.

Brands have chosen social media as a channel to promote and endorse their products because people 24*7 check on portable devices such as mobile to browse and more time is spent on social media.

If people have any frustrations or dissatisfaction with any of the brands, they express their emotions on social media.

Mostly people search on social media to get ideas about new brands.

More brands are using social media to build relationships with their customers which will help them to create loyalty towards their brands.

Let’s take a look at the social media trends you should focus in 2018.

1. Ephemeral Content

The phenomenon of Ephemeral content is introduced by Snapchat. Wondering about what exactly is that?

The content which user has created vanishes after 24 hours and followers only have that limited time period to view that content.

Snapchat pioneered this phenomenon but Instagram copied that idea and introduced it as Instagram Stories.

Each month more than 200 million people are using Instagram Stories; which is more than 50 million of Snapchat users.

If it’s continuing by this rate, by the end of 2018, more than half of Instagram users will be using Stories.

Since launching the Instagram Stories, the average time per day spent by users on Instagram has increased to 28 minutes.

This is definitely 7-13 minutes more time spent before introducing Stories.

Each month, stories feature is actively used by more than 1 million advertisers.

The advantage of using stories for brands is that any Instagram user can see your brand stories even if they are not following you.

2. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is one of the best ways for the companies to get connected with next generation audiences.

World famous companies such as Rolex, The North Face, and HubSpot have made huge profits by making use of influencer marketing .

On the other hand, companies who have used traditional marketing strategies struggled to get connected to social media users.

This clearly indicates that 2018 is definitely a year for influencer marketing to bloom.

3. Understand Learning Styles

When you are trying to build and enhance personalized experience and categories for your targeted customers, you need to take an extra care in understanding learning styles.

Learning styles indicates the pattern how each people learn and process information is different.

The way you handle different learning styles on social media must be different.

Social Media Learning Styles from Nan Ross

4. Generation Z or Gen Z

This is one important area to focus more in 2018. Generation Z or Gen Z is more valuable to brand owners because this group is influenced more by the social media than they are by other sales and discounts.

Gen Z is also known as Post-Millennials, iGeneration, or Homeland Generation which includes freshly passouts from colleges who will enter corporate life or have already entered.

As they enter into workforce, their buying capacity also increases.

More than 80% of Gen Z says that they spend at least one hour in watching videos. This in turn will make more influencers move towards the brands.

Influencer marketing is an instant hit among Gen Z as they deliver 11 times Return On Investment (ROI) over other usual digital media channels.

5. Live Streaming

Live streaming was one of 2017’s top marketing trends and it will continue the same in 2018 as well.

Videos are always preferred over photos. In comparison with photos, Facebook videos get more than 135% of views.

Brands stream live videos on social media platforms which helps them dramatically to increase user engagement and followers.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and other platforms offer in-app live video streaming which help them in creating more user engagement.

6. Chatbots

Chatbots is a software application which is used to interact with customers; usually it adopts texual conversations with users.

Already, Facebook messenger have more than 100,000 active bots on a monthly basis. These chatbots have helped in increasing prodictivity of the organization up to 3.5 times.

More than 60% of Millenials says that they have already used chatbots in their business and other 71% wants to try hands in experiencing chatbots used by brands.

Don’t mistake chatbots to be robots. Using machine learning technology, chatbots are programmed to speak like human agents.

Brands are able to customize their bots in such a way they perfectly reflects personality of the brands and also send personalized messages to its users.

7. Messaging Platforms

More than 2.5 billion people use various messaging platforms such as Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp and, Kik to communicate with companies.

Instead of simply posting marketing content into profiles and feeds, companies should take an extra care to make it simple for customers to start one-to-one conversations.

It is more suitable to integrate chatbots and voice assistants into messaging platforms to create a unique and personalized experience for users.

Engaging more number of users through these platforms will contribute a huge difference in taking your business into new levels of success.

8. Social Listening

Social listening is the science of tracking conversations of the users which involves certain phrases, brands or words.

Then you can make use of these phrases/words together in finding new opportunities to create content suitable for your users.

Social listening tools help brands in synthesizing their customer’s digital footprint.

Using social listening, brands are able to track brand health in social media, develop marketing campaigns suitable for customers and therefore able to provide excellent brand experiences.

9. AI Marketing

Wondered when you search for something in internet and has seen related ads on pages you visit?

It’s because social media marketing has collaborated with Artificial Intelligence (AI) that enables corresponding ads to appear.

More than 50% of marketers already make use of AI in their businesses.

With the advancements in technology, the growth of AI is expected to reach around 53% in coming years.

10. Sentimental Analytics

In 2018, social media marketers will be concentrating more in analyzing emotions and feelings of customers towards brands rather than looking just into Likes, Views, Shares and Clicks which are great.

Social media marketers will be analyzing the following questions:

  • What is the customer sentiment towards the brand?
  • How social media can change that sentiment?
  • What’s the strength of our Brand Health Index?
  • Does our brand have high Net Promoter Score?
  • Do people think about our brand frequently?

The answers to these questions do matter as these answers can help you in analyzing what people feel about your brand and how you can improve the image of your brand.

11. Augmented Reality / Virtual Reality

Most brands are not aware of the marketing possibilities Augmented Reality(AR) / Virtual Reality (VR) possess and still thinking it’s expensive and take years to adapt to it.

AR/VR are able to drastically enhance content marketing, media relations and customer service.

AR/VR is expected to give whole new dimensions to SEO, social media, public relations and enhance better experiences to audiences.

12. Visual Content

Visual content gives brands a major opportunity to grow in 2018. As tons of contents are cluttering the social media, people don’t pay attention to these contents as they scroll very fast through the social media pages.

This trend can be avoided by videos (pre-recorded or live stream) as they stand out in between the junk contents.

So, visual contents are going to be a stand out trend in 2018.

13. Support Key Influencers

Another important social media trend to focus in 2018 is to support key influencers related to your industry.

It is important because by providing data, ideas, products and support to people who can easily connect large groups of followers to your business brand is a major trend to be focused.

Definitely a key influencer can outreach your marketing strategies by their influence in the followers.

They can do so much for your products, services and brand but you have to make sure that they also receive equal value for the relationship they have with your brand.

14. Video Ads

 Video was one of the hit trends for 2017 and it still continues to be same in 2018 as the need for videos are only increasing.

43% of users prefer to see more video content from marketers.

Social media ads is the area where brands can capitalize more on social media in 2018.

As social media ads are already trending and expected to continue the same throughout the year.

It’s clear that video ads can influence people greater, because 95% of the message conveyed through the video stays in minds of people compared to 10% while reading content texts.

15. LinkedIn

Last but not least, LinkedIn. You will be thinking why LinkedIn not any other platforms?

It is because LinkedIn is a mix of culture, business, life insights and lot more. LinkedIn doesn’t have any limiting algorithms like other platforms to bind its activity.

Content can be published by anyone and also can be seen by anyone; this makes the platform as an open source for its users.

While other platforms need someone to follow to even see their published content.

As it is an open source, there is more chance for achieving success. This makes LinkedIn one of the hottest  social media trends in 2018.

Why You Should Care About Social Media Trends?

Social media trends are definitely the ice breakers in gaining large number of customers.

To achieve success in your business, not only you should take care of social media trends but also in keeping up trust and transparency for your customers.

As you now know the top social media trends to be focused in 2018, we hope that this will definitely help you in achieving heights of success.

Please let us know if you have any questions or queries.

How Augmented Reality is Changing Content Marketing Experience

Marketers must always look at innovation in delivering their messages. Banner ads are replaced by entertaining and informative video on the internet today. Intrusive traditional marketing has given way to content marketing over the period of time. However, people have become averse to even email marketing, social media and search engine advertising. Users do not want to see ads, they want content that is fresh and interesting.

In this blog we will look at how Augmented Reality or AR is transforming content marketing experiences. The application of augmented reality to deliver content is all set to change how we see marketing messages and interact with them.

 What is Augmented Reality?

Augmented reality (AR) is superimposition of video, images, virtual objects onto the real world. AR came into the mainstream last year with the success of PokemonGo. The game unlocked the potential of AR for anyone with a smartphone in their hands.

Currently, all the tech giants and many startups are working on the potential to realize AR. There are more than 336 startups listed under the category on Anglelist. Research suggests that around 2.5 billion AR apps will be downloaded by end of this year. By 2021, mobile AR market alone is set to cross $83 billion in revenues (Source: Digi-capital).

Always the first to try out innovation, marketers are experimenting with the technology to bring novelty into the field.  Customers love these experiences as they are new, cutting edge and entertaining. They give audience a memorable and meaningful experience they love to share with their friends. According to Content Marketing Institute, 71% of consumers think that a brand using VR and AR is forward thinking.

How are brands using Augmented Reality?

Brands are using AR for publicity campaigns or to display their products in a personalized and visual context. Check out the interactive AR campaign carried out by Visa in Poland.

Brands are also using AR to allow users to try on their products virtually. This gives users an immersive experience that is exciting as well as functional. IKEA takes the guesswork out of furniture shopping using its AR app. Users can check how a piece of furniture looks in their room before buying it thanks to IKEA Place app.

How is AR changing Content Marketing?

As you can imagine these experiences catch the attention of users worldwide and quickly become viral.

In Pepsi’s London  AR campaign, a bus stop was modified to give the commuters unique experiences such as alien abduction and monster attacks. The campaign video went viral and got more than 50 million views across web! The campaign also reportedly led to a 30% increase in sales of single serving Pepsi bottles.

AR campaigns get huge publicity and which is great for content marketing. AR is not limited to just publicity campaigns and product apps, it is also changing how users are consuming content itself.

Many magazines and print ads are using AR interactive print to bring their content to life. Users can scan the ad to see a 3D model or video on their smartphones.

AR is already revolutionizing how content is consumed by in-store retail shoppers. Clothing retailer, American Apparel, has an AR app that allows shoppers to scan products and view its variants, reviews, inventory etc.

augmented-reality-screenshot

Future of Augmented Reality

AR will allow users to choose the format and context of content they want to see. AR is more promising than Virtual Reality (VR) for many companies. Unlike VR which takes users in an artificial world, AR allows brands to tell stories that adapt to the user’s reality while keeping him or her in context.

In future, we can also expect to see AR lens that do not even require a smartphone screen for AR. Scientists are working on eye lens that would project AR objects in our everyday reality. This can only be expected in a distant future though as we are far behind in terms of technology required for this.

Research team lead by Babak Parviz has already tested the lens on rabbits. “I mean, I don’t quite know what the timeline is going to be, but I give it a very, very high likelihood that they’re (AR lens) coming”  says Babak Parviz, researcher on display lenses and former Google X director.

The early phase of AR will be used by content marketers to create exciting content as well as deliver usual content in new immersive ways. As the industry matures, expect to see AR as common medium of communication while more products such as AR arenas, apps, lens, etc., are launched to support AR experience.