Yesterday the Ateam took a break from our day to day work to gather round a laptop and hear what Hootsuite have to say about social media in 2018 and I have to say, it was #SoWorthIt.
According to the Hootsuite guru’s leading the lecture, users are now interacting with social media for 2 main reasons; passive networking, and finding entertainment.
Passive behaviour is hugely important for brands because it explains why social media is still so effective, even if we’re seeing less actual interaction from followers in the same way as before. Facebook and Twitter are still growing but they way people are using them is different, they tend to use the platforms more privately e.g. to direct message, research companies or view articles. They then move what they’re reading over to other platforms to share such as WhatsApp or Facebook.
🤔 55-64 year olds research products through social media over search engines, as do GenZ.
5 Trends for 2018
1. The Evolution of ROI
The definition of and measurements for ROI is broadening over a whole customer lifecycle
People use SM (social media) to solve wider problems
Measurements and metrics need to change as businesses struggle to tie metrics in to KPI’s
Measurement must go beyond content performance and must be connected back to the customer journey
People believe social media can better help them understand their customer preferences and help them make better business decisions
It’s important to understand the impact of dark social
Success must be defined beyond sales, e.g. customer satisfaction when platforms are being used as an extension of customer service
💡UTM (unique tracking module’s) should be installed to track the whole cycle of campaigns (online and offline)
2. Mobile 📲
Mobile and video entertainment
Brands will have independent media outlets of their own to generate entertainment content
Social media advertising will to take over TV advertising spend
SM will be the biggest advertising platform
Marketing spend will drop as companies focus spend on social media
Important content / strategy changes:
Brands are partnering with TV networks to generate content, mostly for live streaming & video.
Brands are creating new partnerships with micro-influencers & community engagement with brand Facebook Groups.
Brands must leverage user generated content
💡Brands must combing SEO and Facebook indexing of live streaming videos as Google are implementing 5 second video previews and therefore are indexing Facebook live videos
20% of marketing budgets are going to Facebook ads because of their rich data
3. Trust
Trust is declining while peer influencers are rising
People trust 'real customers’ / ‘people like me’
Public trust in CEO’s & government officials is at an all time low in 17 countries. With old institutions failing, peers are trusting each other (vertically rather than up)
People most likely to be trusted when it comes to creating trust in brands
☝️1. Peers / People like me
✌️2. Employees: internal brand culture is key (look back to notes from The Secret Life of Brands where Ascot launched their brand internally before they launched it to the public)
Brands must create REAL communities
Apple were late to the game with Instagram but when they started using it, their #ShotOniPhone 📱 campaign was used to blur the lines between customer advocacy and advertising
💡 Chewy.com are swapping free orders for reviews (even if they’re not positive reviews) because they know the value of this customer feedback
Look beyond reach & traffic
Create / interact with Facebook groups
Micro & macro influencers
Go unscripted on Facebook live, you must come across as authentic
4. AI
Humans & bots will work together
We’re already seeing a massive increase in ChatBots
Messaging apps are becoming more personalised as content channels
AI can create faster analytics
👉 Quill Engage Google Analytics is a free site by Narrative Science for free analytics created by robots
5. The promise (& reality) of social data
Social data is being used to help marketing struggles e.g. lack of time, integration, culture & politics
Get comfortable making assumptions
For small businesses on a low budget, keep it simple and do one thing well