Social Media Marketing Trends to Watch Out for in 2018

Social Media fraternity experienced a lot of trending happenings in 2017. Being one of the most dynamic fields, it is important to keep updated with what will impact your social media strategy with upcoming trends in Social Media Marketing 2018. Let’s have a look at what Social Media Marketing trends have our industry experts anticipated for 2018:

Social Media Marketing Trends 2018 | SMM Trends

Rohit Uttamchandani, Head – Digital Advertising & Content Marketing, Social Beat

Brands will spend lesser on organic content creation and community building on Social Media

Brands at the leading edge of the Social Media Marketing curve will cut down the cost of creating organic content (spend less on agency fees/internal resources dedicated to making posts to Facebook and other Social Media pages). With Facebook’s organic reach at less than 1% for most pages and Facebook experimenting with the new “Explore Feed” (which moves all business page content out of the main news feed), spending on creating content just to “keep pages active” might not justify itself anymore Brands would rather focus more on paid social media strategies, particularly Facebook ads, to drive results from Social Media.

Chatbots will change the social media response management game

Chatbots might seem over-hyped to many, but their use by brands to increase the speed and efficiency of their customer service has only been on the rise. These bots may not be as smart as you would expect at the moment but with massive advances in AI, bots are bound to become smarter and more human-like as we head into 2018. Their use by brands is likely to grow at a rapid pace as well.

The use of Twitter will decline further

Twitter has added 12 million monthly active users in the last one year. In the same period, Instagram added 200 million monthly active users and Facebook added 212 million! Twitter has failed to add active users to its platform and its effectiveness as a platform for marketing has been on the decline as well. Twitter’s ads product has also failed to add value to marketers, as compared to Facebook, Instagram and LinkedIn ads. Unless Twitter changes things drastically, it’s use as a marketing platform is bound to decline further in 2018.

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Karan Rajpal, Head of Social Media, HCL Technologies

Contextual Personalization

Gone are the days of mass marketing and welcome to the new age of personalized “1 to You” marketing. According to Gartner, by 2018, organizations that have fully invested in all types of online personalization will outsell companies that have not, by more than 30%. But, before investing in personalization, it is important to understand customers, their pain points, problem statements and business objectives. As Marketers, we need to make customers feel valued by creating personalized experiences. Contextually personalized ads, which help the customer in their discovery and decision making, can increase conversions multi-fold. This can be achieved using anonymized but personal data such as search history, recent views and purchases, and intent. This allows marketers to reach customers when they are needed, and in a form more helpful to them.

VR/AR Experiences

VR/AR experiences are going to change the face of Digital Marketing, both inbound and outbound. With Apple’s ARKit and the Android ARCore, developers’ and marketers’ ability to create AR/VR experiences for customers for various products will add hitherto unseen opportunities. With the advent of technology which enables you to make your own AR+VR world, the floodgates for out of the ‘screen’ marketing ideas have opened. The feeling of experiencing something as it were ‘live’ changes the whole game. With use-case scenario and trials now available in the customer’s own home, they can have a truly digital experience.

Investments in micro-moments

Mobility has changed everything. With people relying on their phones for almost everything, marketers need to address, and answer, the situations that lead users to consult their phones. These ‘Micro-moments’ feed the user’s personal questions and desires. In this small timeframe you have the user’s full attention, marketers need to leverage this to feed relevant information to the user, and hence turn it into a lead. The information should be readily available, easily consumable, and always accountable. Interfaces such as Google Now are going to become more available to marketers, so we can be ready in a predictive manner to meet users’ needs.

Zubin Kutar, Head – Digital Marketing Communications & Social Media, Tata Consultancy Services

1) AI will rule Digital Platforms

As companies and firms invest more into AI and AI related technologies, the tools on this front will be a major focus as we move into 2018. While the capabilities to use these tools

(Chatbots and Chatbot platform tools) will be a major focus area for companies they will effectively be used across all digital platforms. Social Media will benefit more from this as customer engagement and traction will be higher and sale conclusion could see instant closure.

2) Influencer Marketing

According to the Edelmann Trust Barometer 2017, more than 50 % of people surveyed don’t trust business institutions. This is the reason why Influencer Marketing has seen high growth on social platforms in the last couple of years. Influencers endorsing brands and reaching communities with their personalized messaging will get more effective traction in 2018. Influencers are a powerful tribe that brands and companies need to leverage to build trust and sell products.

3) Instagram Stories

This has increasingly become a critical channel in the social media communication mix over the last 6-8 months. Companies and Brand should learn the platform and see what works best to leverage their products and services. The winning combination here is to be relevant in connecting the product and platform.

Social Media Marketing Trends 2018 from Digital Vidya

Social Media Marketing Trends to Watch Out for in 2018

Social Media Marketing Trends 2018 | SMM Trends

Rohit Uttamchandani, Head – Digital Advertising & Content Marketing, Social Beat

Brands will spend lesser on organic content creation and community building on Social Media