At any given point in time, one thing’s for sure: We can expect that social media marketing will take a turn.
When dealing with millions of social media users, it only makes sense that trends will regularly present themselves in the digital space. Interested in getting a good sense of what trends are making waves today, we reached out to Karen Spaeder, vice president of communications at Rallio, a software as a service (SaaS) platform combining cloud-based social media technology.
Here are three trends she shared with us:
1. Promoting digital innovations
The trend toward digital consumption is definitely something you’ve heard of before, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t worth mentioning again.
In fact, its continued growth is all the more reason why Spaeder mentioned the trend toward digital as the number one marketing shift to pay attention to.
Spaeder says digital options like online and contactless ordering are more important than ever.
“Give customers what they want through digital ordering. And promote your easy ordering options on social media. Not only will you better serve your current customers, but you’ll most likely gain new ones, too,” Spaeder said.
2. Collecting customer reviews
As a marketer, you know the value of “having your ear to the ground” and knowing how your customers feel about your brand. You also know that it’s in your best interest to have that information as fast — and as often — as possible.
Social media is not only here to help you foster those responses, but it can give you critical insight into how your brand is fairing with consumers.
“Online reputation is impacted by social media. People are more inclined to leave online reviews and comments on social media when they have either a positive or negative experience,” Spaeder said. “Businesses need to be in the know about what their customers are saying. Even positive comments need a response, but especially negative comments require your immediate attention.”
3. Gaining insights from employee and influencer marketing
Influencer marketing isn’t just for driving revenue and customer acquisition — you can use it to gain consumer insights as well.
"Employee and influencer marketing continue to surge. New Apple privacy changes are making it harder to track customers across apps and gain insights from third-party data,” said Spaeder. “One way to combat the changes is by utilizing other social media marketing methods that don’t rely on tracking. Look to your employees and influencers to help with social media marketing and avoid the tracking problem.”
Social media marketing is an ever-changing marketing channel with a number of strategies meant to support each coming trend. Appeasing social media users and making sure your brand aligns with trending content, starts with knowing what’s going on in social media marketing.
