The previous years have been a challenging year for social media with all the security issues that shaken the trust of users against social media platforms. No doubt, social media users start doubting the credibility of social media giants after the Cambridge Analytica scandal which allegedly exposing user data despite the promise of data security. People shying away from social media can negatively impact a business’ social media marketing efforts if your brand fails to adapt.

This coming 2019 is for redeeming trust and strengthening relationships with your target market by engaging them through poignant social media marketing efforts that convert.

Social media marketing trends

New year is an opportunity for brands using social media to establish a lasting impression to target audience and gain (back) their loyalty. It’s time to redirect the focus of your social marketing to meaningful engagement in lieu of reach. There may be different approaches that will match the needs of a business depending on its current brand status on social media. Social media marketers need to boost their digital marketing knowledge in implementing the best SMM strategy for their brands.

Regardless of your current social media standing, these practical social media trends for 2019 will surely have a room in your future plans.

Intensify Social Listening

Monitoring, commonly known as social media listening, is the act of perusing various social media platforms using a specific keyword that tags and mentions a brand. While the primary goal of social listening is to control reputation management, a new year opens an opportunity for social listening to be a tool for lead generation and social selling.

Additionally, social media listening can be your agent in spying on your brand competitors and lets you prepare better strategies to win your market over.

Use micro-influencers for brand strategy

Influencer marketing has taken over the advertising scene in the past years and will continue to do so. Maybe you’ve heard about Instagram influencers, YouTube stars, and Twitter-famous celebrities who have thousands or even millions of followers who view their content without even asking for it. The more the view, the more their value increases to TV ad level rate.

Micro-influencers are social media personalities with less than 10,000 followers producing niche-specific contents with engaged followers. These micro-influencers will be the new trendsetters and will aid your social media marketing campaign by targeting more niche audiences. Not to mention, they are more affordable, down to earth, and easy to work with. To find a micro-influencer in your industry, you can run down a list of social media users using a specific hashtag on Twitter and Instagram.

Produce more video content

Facebook and Instagram’s “stories’ feature is taking the center stage of content marketing and there’s no looking back. Video content is slowly taking over text-based content with user-generated in-the-moment experiences through stories (and the recently introduce IGTV).

Social media marketers can take advantage of this feature to get creative and produce more compelling stories that appeal to their target audience. For starters, digital marketing newbies can experiment with how-to tutorials, your employees in-action, and or a Q&A with your star creatives focusing on topics that people can relate to.

You can also play with stickers and GIFs to embellish your video content. More so, you can try to sprinkle a bit of humor to capture the potential audience who are just looking for some fun and eventually lead them to your products. Don’t forget to include UTM to track your social media marketing campaign success.

Secret Facebook Groups

Facebook Groups have been favorable for brands for managing their community of followers Having a Facebook Page is necessary, but creating a Facebook Group to complement it is another story. Setting your page to secret for your superfans to engage with is another smm strategy that will generate curiosity for those who don’t belong to the inside group.

Everybody could just sneak peek in a public group. Otherwise, creating a secret Facebook is one way to gather your core audience and transform them into loyal customers by giving them the perks of deals and discounts that only your secret group members have access to.

Your brand must adapt

These are just a few of the many new year trends prediction and many are still expected to come. Digital marketing specialists and social media marketers need to adopt the right social media marketing technique that works for specific brands and target audience.

HOPLA helps brands across the world to gain success in no time. Using efficient tools to improve processes, HOPLA eyes on real-time solutions to bring your brand to social media stardom. Reach us today to learn how we can help you generate social media strategies that convert.