How Businesses are Using Social Media in 2018

In general, the way business is conducted has changed a lot and will probably continue changing throughout 2017. While virtually all businesses are – or should be using – social media for their marketing purposes -, there are visible specific trends regarding how they are using it this year.

It is important to point out that over $30 billion of all the revenue coming from E-commerce came from social media platforms in 2017. Also, 46% of salespersons that used social selling were able to achieve their quotas compared to 38% of those who didn’t during 2016. It is clear that companies have already acknowledged that social media is the present and the future of business. 

Here is how they are using social media in 2018 in order to help them achieve their goals:

More Focus on Instagram

While Facebook was and is still the “king” of social media business use, more and more companies have also started to focus their attention on Instagram. This is mostly due to the social commerce options this social media platform has to offer. With a total of four call-to-action buttons, Instagram users can land directly to a business’s website, app, or landing page. 

These buttons include “shop now”, and “learn more” among others. In March 2016, Instagram lengthened its videos to 60 seconds – originally being 30 seconds long. The purpose of this move is to optimize viewership metrics. Also, the number of active users in Instagram has skyrocketed from 300 million in 2015 to 400 million in 2016.

Using More Videos

Companies have begun to use more videos for their marketing purposes. There is a clear explanation for this occurrence. Ever since Google announced that all of its videos would come with “shoppable” ads in late 2015, businesses worldwide have been more and more interested in this feature. These ads allow the viewer to purchase products that are promoted in pre-roll ads before a video is displayed. Additionally, YouTube is also featuring call-to-action interactive cards in which a company can give viewers information about a product so they can buy it right away.

Also, new social platforms that encourage the use of live videos are being launched. For instance, Your Brand live allows companies to have live videos along with questions and comments from customers, thus, creating a personalized online shop brand experience.

Reviews and Rating Social Media Integration

The power of public opinion can’t be underestimated. According to Ironpaper, peer recommendations are considered trustworthy by 90% of people. On the other hand, paid ads are only trusted by 14% of the general population on average. Businesses are being more and more aware of these facts and are using them to their advantage. 

As data such as the one listed above become more available on the web and business owners begin understanding the importance of being informed about these issues, social media integration – particularly, in regards to reviews and ratings – is now being used more than ever before. Ratings and reviews are a way to socially validate a purchasing decision. 

Currently, there isn’t a direct way to integrate reviews and ratings on Facebook and other similar platforms. What businesses are doing is posting their reviews (both the positive and negative ones) in their social media business pages to let potential customers know what others think of their products and/or services.

So don't get late in using social media for your business growth. Contact Us for social media marketing in Pakistan to expand your business and increase in ROI.

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The Climate of Social Media Marketing

The context of social media marketing has quickly changed in the past year, and we are still trying to figure out how to navigate through these changes in an effective way. Many of the challenges we face in social media involve the recent popularity of fake news and its infiltration on our daily consumption of information through sites like Facebook and Google. Although these and other sites are trying to stop the spreading of fake news, we are sure that it will be a large problem with information sharing for a quite a while.

Social messaging applications are also taking over our concept of social media. Companies are opting for this trend by buying ad space on messaging outlets like Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp. Because of the popularity of these applications, these ad spaces give these companies the opportunity to be seen on a regular basis.

On the other side of social messaging, new developments in artificial intelligence have allowed companies to use Chatbots to interact with customers online without the need of employing personnel. When an individual has a question, they receive a response immediately, from their home. AI gives companies the opportunity to streamline customer service and increase the number of interactions in order to make their services relate to customers.

Social networks like Facebook and Instagram have recently released an element of their applications that allow users to produce live videos to their friends. Although we have not seen the live video realize its full potential, live video can be a key outlet for making a brand relevant.

Without an internet presence, it is almost impossible for new businesses and companies to gain popularity when competing with established businesses. In this social media climate, the new challenge for companies is to develop ads that are interesting enough to spark conversation on a virtual level.

An advertisement has been the key component for businesses’ success for decades, but for the first time, advancements in social media have made the advertisement more accessible to both businesses and consumers. On one hand, these new modes of advertisement make it easier to gain a following for your service or product, but on the other hand, these developments mean that your business needs to have an online presence in order to be considered relevant and competitive. As technology progresses, we must adjust to meet the ever-changing standards of social media.

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How to Improve Your Social Media Engagement

If you are using social media marketing, lack of engagement is very frustrating. If you keep posting every day expecting to see your audience starting to interact with you but you only end up with one or two people it hurts so much and it is so costly. Your social media marketing will not pay off if the targeted audience is not excited about what you are saying.

Using Facebook engagement trends, for instance, is a very popular way of analyzing how your digital marketing is performing. Social media marketing lets you interact with customers one on one. With it, you are able to talk directly to someone who may eventually become your customer (and then become an advocate). With such an opportunity, you will want to capitalize on the connection -Facebook engagement lets you do so easily and transparently.

There are several ways to go beyond the noise on social media platforms and interact with your audience. The first one is by stopping the scroll. The best way to get somebody to engage with your brand is to stop them from scrolling past your post. If you stop people from going down the newsfeed you will get their attention. For you to get that attention you must post things that they are interested in and something that stands out from the crowd.

The second way of improving your social media engagement is by knowing where your audience is – you need to engage with them on their terms and on their favourite platforms. You need to know why the people that you are targeting use the particular social media platform that you may or may not be using too. It could be that they love going through stories on Facebook; if that is the case then post content that is more authentic so that your brand is seen as trustworthy. Similarly, your target audience may prefer other platforms like Instagram where they log in to see what new photos and videos their friends have posted. If this is so, then it is better to stop them from scrolling down by posting eye-catching pictures. If a person sees a photo of your employees doing something fun for instance, they are more likely to stop and read what it is all about and they are likely to engage with it.

The third way of improving your social media engagement is to know what your audience engages in when they are not on social media. For instance, if you are selling dog products, use a lot of dogs on your posts. You can show photos of dogs on a hike or photos of your staff playing with their dogs. Incorporating dogs will make your particular target audience stop scrolling and check out what you have to say.

The fourth way of improving your social media engagement is by being funny. People on social media want to be entertained and not to be sold to. If you ignore or forget this, you will lose the attention of your audience because they will ignore what you post. Being humorous is a very good way of to promote your business on social media while keeping your audience still engaged. If you are using Twitter engagement trends then you will learn what content to post and what type of humour works too. You never know, your brand could go viral with lots of people sharing it and tagging their friends as well.

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