The landscape of social media is constantly changing. For social media marketers, staying relevant means evolving to suit the times, appealing to an ever-changing and broadening demographic with topical content.
So what changes should social media marketers be aware of in today’s online landscape? What marketing trends and ideas are catching on? And how can marketers keep their content relevant?
By exploring the evolution of this rapidly changing medium, social media marketers can craft content to their ideal audience across platforms and educate their customers without stumbling into legal pitfalls.
Here’s what you should know.
Trending Across Platforms
A widespread social media approach is essential for any marketer. Each common platform — be it Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter — comes with its own share of trends and audience demographics that make outreach across sites and applications varied and sometimes complex.
Here’s what you should know about staying relevant and evolving with each platform.
With over 2.6 billion active users, Facebook represents a huge marketplace spanning the world over. Marketing on Facebook is all about effective trending research and joining relevant groups where you can reach out and speak to the customer base you are attempting to interest. It is vital to know and understand your audience, so keeping up on your industry and its evolution comes down to following groups that involve relevant and similar products and services. Then, you have to gauge and engage the conversation.
Keep in mind:
- Using a quality, pleasant profile image
- Searching for and join relevant groups
- Learning from the industry and interested users
- Keeping track of Facebook insights
- Posting on the best day for engagement: Wednesday
A less content-heavy, more image-focused platform, Instagram is a great place to market consumer goods. Like on Facebook, marketers should explore trending topics. Instagram makes this easy through the use of the Explore tab, where you can easily search hashtags surrounding your industry or product. Instagram sees less volume of content but higher rates of engagement, making a focused and researched approach necessary for relevant posts.
Keep in mind:
- Making use of Instagram Stories
- Creating product teasers
- Using the Explore tab
- Keeping track of insight data
- Posting on the best day for engagement: Wednesday
Twitter is all about connection and communication. You now have 240 characters to express your message, along with accompanying attachments, and this brief chance to make a statement can be useful in maintaining customer interest and engagement. By following hashtags, people, and companies involved in your industry or product, you can keep up on the conversation 24/7 and ensure your own posts touch on relevant topics.
Keep in mind:
- Making use of images; Tweets with images were found to get 89% more favorites
- Creating multimedia content like video ads
- Using minimal hashtags (two preferred)
- Conducting polls to create engagement and research consumer interest
- Using Advanced Search to dig deeper into the conversation
- Posting on the best days for engagement: Friday, Saturday, and Sunday
You can use social media to expand your business by keeping up with the conversation. Your potential buyers are already talking, so it’s up to you to be there to hear it. While each platform differs, the fundamental aspect of maintaining relevance in the fast-paced evolution of social media comes down to engaging with trending posts and hashtags.
Staying up to date on the use of each social media platform helps you market strategies for each that maximize consumer interest and engagement. From there, you can maintain the relevance of your brand identity and educate your customers on new deals, products, and services.
The Power of Customer Education
To stay relevant in a rapidly evolving social media landscape, it’s on you to provide your potential and current customers with education and awareness on your products and services. A key aspect of this education is showcasing the need for your brand and what you offer. Social media is the perfect platform for integrating this education, so make use of it to retain and engage customers.
Educating customers is the best way to improve customer experience and ensure success. Your social media can be an environment in which customers can ask product questions and engage quickly and easily with your business as well as other users.
Consider posting FAQ links or updates for new products and tools. Create groups online specifically for product training and discussion, so fans and users alike can go to you and/or each other for tips and tricks.
Maintaining accessibility of communication in client education should be a priority in your social media relevance strategy. Transparency is often the key step in winning customer hearts, and social media is the perfect place to make product knowledge accessible and transparent for your customers.
Avoiding Legal Pitfalls
Social media is a powerful tool for engaging with customers and sharing product information, but it’s not without its challenges. Many well-meaning marketers run into legal problems they never knew were problems in the course of creating content for social media. Maintaining a relevant presence online means understanding these evolving challenges.
Here are some common issues to avoid:
- Using or claiming photos, videos, or music without permission
- Using people’s faces in multimedia content without permission
- Misleading customers about products or services
- Failing to meet marketing standards
- Requiring employees to promote social media on personal pages
Good social media marketers will keep a running knowledge of legal trouble that can occur in the digital world, ensuring they are up to date on all new policies and regulations both in the law and in the terms of service on the various platforms. Make checking up on new policies a habit of your social media strategy and avoid facing any lawsuits and fees.
Staying Current with Effective Marketing
An effective social media marketing strategy accounts for the quickly evolving landscape that is the online world. The key to this strategy is the keeping up of current trends and conversations surrounding your industry. Keep your eyes and ears open, build customer education, and watch out for legal pitfalls to stay relevant and build your business.
About the author
Noah Rue is a journalist and content writer, fascinated with the intersection between global health, personal wellness, and modern technology. When he isn’t searching out his next great writing opportunity, Noah likes to shut off his devices and head to the mountains to disconnect.
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