Whether you are a business owner, entrepreneur or are looking to follow that path for a new opportunity in the new year, the best way to prepare for marketing on Social Media in 2018 is to understand how the social landscape is changing to better develop your strategy.
Before we take a look at the hottest Social Media predictions for 2018, let’s take a quick look at the milestones of 2017
For social networks, 2017 may be remembered as one of the most turbulent years. It was filled with great achievements as well as great disappointments.
Facebook exceeded 2 billion users a month. That is nearly one-third of the planet. Twitter returned to the spotlight as a political tool due to one of its notable users: President Donald Trump. LinkedIn, acquired for $26 billion by Microsoft, unveiled a host of new features and saw the growth of exceptional content with its posts and blogs.
On the other hand, while imitation is often considered the sincerest form of flattery, Snapchat saw its valuation plummet as competitors copied the platform’s key features. Twitter continued to struggle and even upped its famous 140-character limit to 280 in an attempt to gain users.
Both Facebook and Twitter found themselves at the center of the fake news controversy. Russian-bought ads intended to influence political views in North America were fed to a large number of users clamoring for more insight in their feeds. As a result, Facebook and Twitter are both wrestling with the repercussions of sharing fake and biased news during the election, and scrambling to find ways to integrate human filters.
In addition, there is the significant amount of violent, discouraging, and downright depressing propaganda and news flooding feeds leaving users questioning the integrity of the platforms.
What Are The Secrets For Social Media Success In 2018?
To improve upon – or counteract some of these trends, there are a few predictions that will show a marked prominence in 2018. Some of these are a natural evolution of past successes while others are the repercussion of negative experiences in the past year.
Video Stars
If a picture is worth a thousand words, what is the value of video?
Video is expected to command 80% of global internet traffic. It is thought that in the coming months and years 90% of content shared by users will be video.
As a true indication of the strength of the medium, in marketing, it is predicted that 87% of campaigns will use video in the coming year.
The popularity of “Mobile TV”—video consumed on the go—gained significant popularity in 2017. This content is generally shorter and punchier, with fast cuts, flashy graphics, and more close-ups - key for a successful user experience on hand-held devices. Even advertising on Facebook has adopted video for “Thumb-stopping Ads.”
Social networks that take advantage of delivering these premium, short videos in 2018 will benefit not only from the popularity but the significantly higher ad rates that video commands.
YouTube was once DIY central with a slew of “how to” videos. These days, with the introduction of YouTube Red, a subscription service that lets you stream live TV from the major networks, the platform is literally winning Emmy Awards. Still offering free video content, YouTube remains a strong and important platform for the savvy marketer.
Facebook, in an attempt to take a share of the lucrative market, is upping its video content. Reportedly budgeting more than $1 billion in 2018 to produce programming for Watch, the network’s new home for original scripted shows. The marked popularity of animated Gifs on Facebook indicates the platform is ready for more sophisticated content. “Thumb-stopping ads” offering eye-catching sleek videos for merchandise – 15-30 second clips that are too tempting to scroll by -will enjoy increased popularity in 2018.
Even Snapchat is collaborating with NBCUniversal to augment its lineup of original Snapchat Shows. This content already includes productions from Conan O’Brien, ESPN, ABC, Discovery, and others.
Expect a sharper shift towards live video. A consequence of the fake news that proliferated news feeds, live (and genuine) video will be getting even more attention in 2018.
Clearly, video will continue to increase in popularity both for user satisfaction and as a successful marketing instrument.
The smart marketer will ensure that video and video production will be an integral part of any marketing campaign. This does not need to be a costly endeavor. There are many free and low-cost solutions for video production.
It’s Personal
Personalization, the highly personalized and relevant social media messages delivered through automation, was as strong as ever in 2017. Marketers understood the value of collected responses and customer data from social media channels. This helped to improve communication and drive conversions. It has become one of sales and marketing’s most important campaign considerations.
Advertising’s response to the big question: “what’s in it for me?” Can now be customized for most viewers. Personalization through the use of big data means highly targeted messages for increased conversion.
On a practical level, many dynamic
sites featuring smart
The concern is that excessive personalization becomes less direct, and even loses some of its potency. Experienced digital marketers will be fast to respond and adapt to consumer needs and wants.
Personalization will become even more important in 2018 and be evolving into something more subtle, relevant, and ultimately savvy.
The wise marketer will pay attention to key demographics to make the experience as personal as possible. Some platforms, like Facebook, offer great insights to creating and honing segmented audiences.
Storytelling
The counterpoint to personalization for brands will be storytelling. In order to compete for credibility with cynical audiences, many brands will aim to be more personable through engaging live video via social media channels like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Snapchat. Storytelling will be an important tool for brands who want to engage and retain viewer/customer loyalty.
Great storytelling will increase user involvement through
Substance will win over superficiality as a result of the “fake news” scandals of 2016 and 2017. Rather than just slickly produced, unsubstantial, bland brand storytelling videos using stock photography, content will need to be more ‘genuine’ and spontaneous. Brands will create campaigns featuring stories of relevant real-life examples, as opposed to the highly commercial generalized and scripted material of the past.
Clever and engaging storytelling will be the key to successful marketing campaigns. For the entrepreneur or small business owner, an understanding of great storytelling techniques will be their greatest marketing asset.
The Rise Of Social Messaging Apps
Four billion users worldwide use social messaging apps for social networking. In 2018 messaging apps will see increased use and popularity both from marketers and for viewers. They will play an even greater role in everyday interactions.
The instant, real-time connection is popular with millennials
Messaging may become the strategy of choice following Google’s initiative to penalize pop-ups on smartphones. Pop-ups will be replaced by more astutely designed messaging designed to minimize disruption to the user experience.
Understanding effective campaign strategies and using the latest technologies to broadcast messages will be important assets for marketers.
2017 saw the rise of the AI-powered chatbots to help customers on social media. All but the most basic interactions were unsuccessful.
Reportedly, bots actually failed 70% of the time on Facebook. For very simple requests such as ordering pizza, they apparently worked well.
Anything more demanding was frustrating for users.
That said, in 2018, companies will employ AI in increasingly creative ways on social media. Ad platforms will test hundreds of ad variations at once. They will have the ability to tweak creative and copy to automatically identify which ads are the best performers. Smart tools will pick out the optimal time to post and increase campaign budgets for the top performers.
The automated mastering of these tasks will leave marketers free to develop fresh, creative, inspirational, and outside-the-box campaigns for social media. it is not difficult to see where these trends lead. When content can be created instantly, targeted and distributed instantly, then tweaked and optimized instantly, marketing will become a whole new experience. Traditional marketing strategies are on the way out, and they will be replaced by an accelerating loop of testing and continued optimization.
Email replaced letter writing and messaging is quickly gaining ground on email. What is the significance of this need for speed?
It is widely reported that humans now have an attention span
of 8 seconds – less than that of a goldfish! Marketing will respond to this astonishing fact by delivering messages at an ever-increasing rate.
Augmented Social AI
2017 saw the rise of the AI-powered chatbots to help customers on social media. All but the most basic interactions were unsuccessful. Reportedly, bots actually failed 70% of the time on Facebook. For very simple requests such as ordering pizza, they apparently worked well.
Anything more demanding was frustrating for users.
That said, in 2018, companies will employ AI in increasingly creative ways on social media. Ad platforms will test hundreds of ad variations at once. They will have the ability to tweak creative and copy to automatically identify which ads are the best performers. Smart tools will pick out the optimal time to post and increase campaign budgets for the top performers.
The automated mastering of these tasks will leave marketers free to develop fresh, creative, inspirational, and outside-the-box campaigns for social media. it is not difficult to see where these trends lead. When content can be created instantly, targeted and distributed instantly, then tweaked and optimized instantly, marketing will become a whole new experience. Traditional marketing strategies are on the way out, and they will be replaced by an accelerating loop of testing and continued optimization.
Need For Speed
Email replaced letter writing and messaging is quickly gaining ground on email. What is the significance of this need for speed?
It is widely reported that humans now have an attention span
Messages and promotions will exploit scarcity with disappearing offers.
This is already apparent with Snapchat’s disappearing messages that entice the reader to act quickly – presumably within that crucial 8 second attention span. If that isn’t indication enough, Facebook jumped on the trend and added disappearing "Stories" as a feature in 2017. Instagram continued its attack on Snapchat by also adopting disappearing messages with photo and video content can be replayed once before they disappear. Speed in content will continue to grow in 2018.
How will this information be delivered at these break-neck speeds?
We have already looked at AI that will test and optimize content at lightning speeds. Cloud-based customer-relationship-management platforms (CRM) will continue to simplify the process of compiling and tracking prospects while breaking them down into more precise market segments. These highly targeted segments will be capable of consuming these precise micro-messages. Advanced content-creation software for post design and visuals will make it easier to condensing a complete message into less than 10 seconds.
Sexuality In Marketing
Gender issues exploded in 2017 with the disclosure of rampant sexual harassment in all aspects of life, but particularly in politics and media. The backlash following the decades of alleged sexual harassment and assault by producer Harvey Weinstein saw the #MeToo campaign of women sharing their experiences go viral.
In 2018 the prediction is that more stories created by women will be consumed by the media. Hollywood’s redemption may live and die by the industry’s embrace of femininity, both in front of the camera and behind it. It will be refreshing to see what else women are capable of in the media industry apart from being portrayed as victims and talking about men.
In 2018, we will see a definite split in marketing tactics in an attempt to recognize this range in gender.
Some brands will undoubtedly introduce more gender-neutral marketing campaigns in an attempt to appeal to the blurred gender lines of individuals born between 1996 and 2010 as they start to enter the workforce. Other brands may feature a variety of alternative lifestyles in their campaigns.
One can expect that campaigns targeting this age group will feature progressive slogans and hashtags targeted towards pansexuality and cross-gender segments. These campaigns will also likely support 2018’s continued celebrations marking the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage. Women won the right to vote in New York in 1917 after fighting for nearly 70 years to gain that right.
Shopping On Social Media
Shopping through social media has steadily increased. In 2017 Shopify officially launched an Instagram integration, letting its merchants sell directly from the network. This is significant because Instagram has nearly 1 billion active monthly users and Shopify powers more than 500,000 businesses.
Consumers can expect to see an unprecedented range of products on social media in 2018.The significant growth of Shopify means Facebook is relieved of handling payment processing and merchant support, which has not been entirely successful in the past. It will be interesting to see if another platform will rival Shopify's success.
For e-commerce businesses, the improvements to Facebook advertising and the Shopify platform will offer more opportunities for increased sales and business scaling. Automation will be key for targeting specific audiences. Short videos and disappearing promotions will become ubiquitous.
Conclusion
In just a little over ten years, social networks have captured a global audience of nearly 3 billion users. These networks continue to acknowledge the enormous responsibility and challenges that come with such a large and diverse audience. Networks must continue to scale all the while safeguarding our information and our feeds.
We have seen some significant developments in the past year. There have been great improvements to the user experience through an increased selection of evolving platforms. There have also been some disappointments and loss of trust due to issues like fake news.
Looking back on the trends that evolved in 2017 shows us some of the directions Social media will go in 2018. These new trends will make significant improvements to the Social Media experience.
Video will be more important than ever both for user experiences and marketing. Personalization will be essential for users experience and marketing success. This will be driven by disappearing content and micro-messaging. Sincere and substantial storytelling will be the focus of successful campaigns.
Messaging apps will become even more significant – especially given Google’s ban on pop-ups for mobile. Marketing to alternative genders will develop and evolve thanks to Generation Z. Content aimed at women will see increased popularity and awareness.
AI will play take on new roles in Social Media marketing management freeing marketers for more creative work. Shopping on Social Media will see new heights due to improved systems and new alliances.
Throughout next year, Social Media will continue to evolve and enrich our lives. Will it continue to satisfy the needs of users while developing more and better ways to serve advertisers? Will improvements in shopping and free TV persuade us to spend even more time on their platforms?
Time will tell.
