Needless to say, about the importance of social media in our everyday life. According to Statista, the active global social media population worldwide now has reached 4.14 billion users. People communicate with each other, make purchases & sell products, set up their businesses, or develop their brand via social media. And, to stay on the top among the competitors of the same area, marketers use the latest social media tools and tend to follow the latest trends among their target audience to increase the product, service, or brand awareness.
So, here are the top 10 trends to include in your marketing in social for 2021.
Table of Contents
#1 Social Commerce Is the Future
Social commerce implies using various social media platforms like Instagram or Facebook to promote and sell the products and services via the content published on the official accounts. In such a way, it is quite easy to create various interactions between your business and the target audience. For instance, you can use chatbots and customer support services as well as publish the products’ insights, ads, user-generated content, and more.
In short, social media commerce improves the connection of your brand and its audience, shows the way customers want to interact with the products, and encourages them to consider its purchase.
Here are the most popular examples you might have already known with:
Facebook Ads
One of the biggest social media platforms for e-commerce is widely used by well-known brands and small online stores as well. Now there are more than 80 million active business pages on Facebook that actively target people who might be interested in their products or services. Use tools such as StoryXpress to create video ads for your business. It’s a great alternative to tools such as Vidyard and Loom.
Instagram Shopping Posts
Another good way to offer the products for sale is to publish the content related to the products’ usage or presentation. That’s the exact point you can easily launch and manage via Instagram.
YouTube Shopping Ads
A brilliant method to reach your target audience is to publish the ads in the video content related to your product, and YouTube is the best platform with over 1 billion views per day only for mobile. Just imagine the efficiency and prospectiveness of this platform for your business.
#2 Communicating With Memes
To keep up with the pace, stay in touch with your audience, and engage them on social media, all you need is … memes! Posting a meme won’t harm the brand’s image. Instead, it will reach a wide audience and significantly increase brand awareness.
Mostly the memes are posted as a picture or GIF on the topic related to a certain content type, with the text attached on the image’s top or bottom side.
Here are some simple reasons for using memes on social:
- Great audience engagement with a low price;
- Boost the brand awareness in social;
- Converts your target audience into the community;
- Increases your audience via memes sharing.
No words needed. Go & check this now!
#3 “Ugly Business” Moves to Instagram
In fact, social media can also be destructive as well. The ugly business or bad publicity can also be used in increasing brand awareness. Sure, everyone tries to do their best to stay on the top in a certain area. But some companies use bad PR instead to gain popularity. This path is risky but not that competitive and greatly effective in increasing brand awareness.
Or else, some huge companies tend to show their superiority in the list of arguments by comparing their products to the items of their competitors. This can have a huge influence on the final decision of your potential customer.
#4 The Rise of Messaging Apps
For sure, nowadays no one uses phone calls to reach the customer and convince him to try your product. However, the social media messaging option is just the perfect one to boost audience engagement and more.
Also, with the messenger using you can:
- increase the business revenue by boosting your sales;
- improve the customer support service;
- create the informative chatbots for the purchase automation;
- share some useful tips and interactive information about the products’ usage etc.
A powerful social media platform with effective messenger usage for business is Facebook Messenger. By sending short messages with useful information inside, you are more likely to enlarge your audience and boost the business performance.
#5 Socially Responsible Marketing
Nevertheless, to convert the one-time buyers into your loyal customers, it’s not enough to sell the product. More and more brands are now focusing on the customers’ preferences, needs, and expectations. The experts providing vpn for facebook claim that companies spend huge investments on promoting the activities with the socially responsible elements in them.
In practice, socially responsible marketing is used almost everywhere: with recyclable packaging and materials, contribution to social issues, resolving global problems, etc. For instance, the Apple company has abandoned including the charging unit in their new iPhones, thus showing the company’s concern about the global ecosystem. This has not only increased the company’s income but also attracted public attention towards this issue.
#6 Adapting Content to COVID-19
Also, the recent events in our world have also impacted the way we interact with our audience on social media. A huge number of industries have experienced rapid and radical changes due to the COVID-19. That is why all the popular companies who are working remotely constantly post informative infographics about the current pandemic situation, share useful tips and insights about how to adapt to the new routine, and, which is more important, how their products can be helpful in these hard times.
The famous marketing expert Kristin Johnson, VP of content and communications for Sprout Social, in his recent interview, suggests using the following tips for the marketing strategy to follow in 2021:
- Hit on your audience’s interests and needs;
- Use the direct conversation for increasing the interaction with your followers;
- Constantly post the content and don’t get your digital event to have the starting point and the end session.
Additionally, the focus on staying relevant for your audience by showing a certain empathy and support during and after the pandemic. The more memorable your brand is now, the more likely you’ll get new loyal customers in the future.
#7 Nostalgic Marketing
Nostalgic marketing has started gaining popularity in the last decade, and till now remains one of the most effective marketing strategies to follow. Furthermore, since nothing can spread the news and trends that fast as it is done with social media, your business can have a huge benefit from this strategy as well.
So, let us give some insights on how you can make the old-fashioned products great again:
- Create the posts with limited edition products that were highly popular in past;
- Focus on making the marketing campaign with the familiar atmosphere;
- Show the old-fashioned products from a fresh view.
A great example of this marketing strategy in social media is the Adidas marketing strategy. According to Hubspot, the commercial videos of their new line with the retro-style training shoes have led to a 20% boost in tennis shoe sales. The main reason for that is the historical tennis “Battle of the Sexes” between Billie Jean King and her male opponent Bobby rings.
The tennis fans were extremely excited to be reminded about such a great event in sports, and after the campaign is over, these limited edition shoes are auctioned off for upwards of $1,000.
#8 The Popularity of Niche Platforms Is on the Rise
In addition, it is also critical to leverage not only the popular social media platforms but also develop the interaction with your target audience via the niche platforms as well. There are some important reasons for that:
- The less competitive area for increasing your brand awareness and widening the target audience;
- Higher possibility for reaching the new lifetime consumers;
- Boosting the sales by offering the right option at the right time for the person who needs it.
By launching the social media campaign on the platform among the people focused on consuming specific content, you will increase the possibility of enlarging your audience and improving brand awareness.
In fact, there are a variety of niche social media platforms targeting different individuals. A great example of them is Behance. That’s an advanced social platform for creative people to find their own inspiration. The artists and designers worldwide share their work and discover the newest trends every day. According to Forbes, in 2012, Adobe acquired Behance for $150 million.
#9 Video Games and Gaming Communities Are Driving Content
Another excellent niche you should definitely consider while getting deeper into the social media marketing of 2021 is video games. The secret of gaming content remaining that popular at present is that it successfully combines the major points of going viral.
- Consumers receive great and pleasant feelings after completing the hard level. That’s a great option for connecting those unforgettable feelings with your brand or business.
- People enjoy watching the videos, as they can easily grab their attention with plenty of different data and news.
- Games are widely distributed among friends thanks to the exciting promos or some other unique features consumers want to share with others.
So, create partnerships with influencers or game streamers to increase audience engagement. For boosting your brand’s social media performance, it is also important to include the followers in the process of content creation.
For instance, you can encourage people to show the way they use your product during the gaming process. That’s really simple with the social media contest. As a result, you will generate more people to discover some captivative insights about your product, which leads to the audience’s enlargement.
#10 The Growth of Digital Disinformation
A huge amount of research has shown that online disinformation is now spreading really fast nowadays. Being perfectly written to reach a wide audience can really have a huge impact on information sharing in social media.
The main reason for this is not only the automatic chatbots or so but the human behavior as well. The disinformation may be conducted by putting a like on a post or sharing it to the user’s own networks of contacts, friends, and family. As a result, it may cause the social media algorithms to offer fake information for other people to read & share.
Some people may share fake information because of being paid. Some of them just can’t really identify the source to consider it as relevant or false. Of course, you can’t do anything to secure your business from facing issues like that. However, there is an effective way to get ready for any trick from third parties.
- Strengthen the connection between the brand, its products, and your consumers;
- Share the relevant information with your consumers to gain their trust;
- Include maximum openness and transparency in your company’s policy.
Keep in mind there will always be obstacles on the way to improving the business in society and a huge amount of competitors as well. Being aware of these trends will greatly help you to get ready to face any hits and overcome all the issues towards the company’s success.
Final Thoughts
To sum up, social media platforms have different trends to follow in 2021. And, as you can see from the list above, there are lots of ways to increase the interaction with your target audience and potential buyers via social media.
Furthermore, understanding these trends will benefit from strengthening the connection between you and your customers, which will certainly lead to the revenue constantly increasing.
So, the trends we listed above will definitely help you understand how users interact with social media and keep up with the latest marketing trends to stay one step ahead of the competition! Are you still doubting this? Go and check yourself!