Marketing & SEO

Trends Social Media Marketing: Sharpen Your SMM Weapons in 2021

Nicolas Finet 16 November, 2021

Businesses in more ways than one are exerting great efforts for their online marketing. The connection towards a target audience is created across multiple social media platforms, while the attention span of consumers online is getting shorter. From the year 2000, we went down from 12 seconds to an outright 8 seconds. That’s why we offer you to look at trends social media marketing and find out how to make your business strategies successful.

Overview of Social Media Marketing Trends

Social Media

Social trends in business are giving consumers lots of content material every single day. Now it is essential to start building a plan that would work for the speed of the feed. To help you do it right, I have conducted research and singled out current trends which rule the world in 2021.

Contents – Brief Overview

  • Social Commerce
  • Micro-Influencer Marketing
  • Decrease of Organic Traffic on Instagram
  • Paid Advertising
  • Quality and Transparency
  • Content Personalization
  • Social Media Campaigns Supported by Brands
  • Reels
  • Augmented Reality
  • Instagram Stories Drive Upcoming Instagram Trends
  • Live Streaming Technology
  • The Rise of Chatbots for Better Service and Efficient Management
  • TikTok
  • Revamping Twitter
  • Messaging Platforms Make Brands More Accessible
  • A Focus on Generation Z Instead of the Millennials
  • Need For Social Network Detoxification

Social Commerce

Social Commerce

Business owners continue selling goods online on social media platforms. Therefore, nowadays, people use them as search tools for products or services. These are modern analogs of websites with descriptions of the offers, reviews, the ability to communicate with consultants and make a purchase. The primary sources that include social commerce features in 2021 are Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Micro-Influencer Marketing

Nowadays, bloggers have the power and know how to monetize subscribers’ engagement and trust. Those who want to increase their client base, boost traffic and build a brand should choose an influencer presenting a specific business niche and more targeted audience. Please note that appealing to a micro-influencer(between 10K and 100K followers) is more effective and costs less.

Decrease of Organic Traffic on Instagram

Instagram will repeat the destiny of Facebook. Thus, it’ll lose organic traffic and force business owners to set up paid ads. Still, advertisement can’t guarantee the same results. Therefore you should fight for your audience and their engagement by improving the quality and quantity of your posts. Users will interact with your content, leave reactions and make comments; all this works best for a good reach rate.

Besides, to achieve better results, you should work on your social media marketing plan and define your goals, target audience, the best time for publishing content, and its promotion.

Paid Advertising

Ads

Paid ads help business owners find users interested in the product as the algorithms can define the audience’s preferences. Using this valuable tool for improving conversions and reaches is a must in 2021.

Quality and Transparency

Due to recent updates, likes and views don’t play an essential role anymore. Today algorithms appreciate quality content that attracts an audience and makes users share it with others. It’s necessary to accept social networks as promotional tools and a way of communication and integration with subscribers.

Don’t forget to stay sincere and fair – people appreciate when you tell about your difficulties and share some moments from real life. Thus, you can:

  • start a live broadcast and answer their questions;
  • publish posts about the history of your brand development, the owners, the team, and the working process.

Content Personalization

Nobody likes reading content that doesn’t resonate with the brand that they patronize. Generic content and other materials that don’t give benefit to a consumer are quickly thrown away. Hence, content personalization has now become one of the new trends social media marketing. It creates a genuine connection between the brand and the audience and solves many marketing problems.

There is a distinct evolution in social media platforms as it now contains business-specific features and analytical tools that are well detailed. These tools and features provide results that you can monitor and test. Afterward, one can directly verify which of the personalized content resonates well with the intended consumer. 2021 is the year wherein we can engage consumers on a personal level.

Social Media Campaigns Supported by Brands

Social Campaigns

For successful relationships, the values of a brand and a client should coincide. Most users will prefer conscious companies with a strong social position. Therefore, you should support collaborations with social projects, animal (environmental) protection organizations, charitable foundations, and so on to prove that you stand out from others and care about the world.

Reels

Social networks are overrun with short videos up to 60 sec planned for entertainment. You should adapt to a modern tool and use this new way to attract and engage customers(f.e. sell your goods and services). To create a cool video, make sure that it’s quality, add filters, visuals, music, and some text.

Augmented Reality

Augmented reality (AR) creates virtual reality. With mobile cameras, anyone can play and experiment with AR design in their daily social media use. The most common examples of AR used on social media are filters, lenses, stickers, interactive maps, interactive product display, and custom look emojis.

 Instagram Stories Drive Upcoming Instagram Trends

Instagram Stories

Instagram stories are one of the trends social media marketing and one of the demanded tools for brand development. They catch users’ attention, help businesses find new clients and build relationships with them. There are lots of settings for creativity and self-expression, as well as functions for interaction with the followers.

Live Streaming Technology

Trends social media marketing will continue to include live streaming. Many social media influencers will make the most of this opportunity as it always works, and consumers love it too. There is more to live streaming social trends in business. Year after year, newer and better phones appear, so the user will likely take advantage of the more modern models. Current mobile apps can be fine-tuned or easily adaptable to every new technology that comes up.

Data speeds and smartphones are a hundred times better than what they were five years ago. Social technology uses live streaming as a medium to reach out to each, and everyone’s intended customer. Numerous updates have made it truly enjoyable and engaging.

The Rise of Chatbots for Better Service and Efficient Management

The chatbot makes it to the list of social media trends. Incorporating chatbots makes customer service efficient and faster and the exchange between the consumer and the business easier and more accessible. The integration of these AI-powered bots is in the following sectors; banking, customer service, payments, and ever for personal entertainment. Advancement possibilities for chatbots are endless as AI is not stopping its technological growth and achievements.

TikTok

TikTok connects people all over the world. Moreover, it’s the most downloadable app in 2019. A new platform for publishing and promoting the content overgrows and is one of the most popular social networks nowadays. It allows users to create short videos supported by music, filters, and various valuable features. As everybody has access to it, sometimes it seems that the feed never ends, and you scroll it for ages! By the way, another strength is an easy opportunity to get likes and views.

@spikeball

Breakfast of champions 🥚🎊 #spikeball

♬ El Payaso Del Rodeo – Grupo Rasado

Another popular trend is using TikTok videos in Instagram or teasing followers by interrupting a video in the middle of production.

Revamping Twitter

Twitter needs a significant change but might not know just how to do so yet. It has been slowly dropping its game for quite some time now, so it produces no impact in the social network arena this year alone. To stay in the competition alongside its rivals, Twitter must make massive changes to remain relevant.

For Twitter to be in the social trends, possible changes might include selling the company to the private sector. Something new may be a subscription or a new feature for the consumers to stay loyal to Twitter.

Messaging Platforms Make Brands More Accessible

The United States is lagging in this part; overseas counterparts are way ahead. Chinese messaging apps such as WhatsApp with 2 billion active users worldwide and WeChat with 1.2 billion monthly active users worldwide. They are dominating social media with their functions such as purchasing, direct messaging, and e-commerce. Messaging platforms are going to catch on as one of the trends social media marketing.

The increase of brand engagement in messaging platforms for 2021 will rise. Year after year, Millenial and Gen Z have a more substantial buying power online. These are the people who prefer talking to a brand in their native language using messaging platforms. We expect that online marketing next year will see advancements in voice assistants. Consumers will now have a much personalized shopping experience with these updates.

A Focus on Generation Z Instead of the Millennials

Generation Z

Generation Z folks are two to three times easier to influence, especially with social media. Apparently, they are the only generation wherein online marketing about sales and discounts does not appeal to them when deciding on buying or making a purchase.

Research from Fluent reports data which states that Generation Z, a staggering 81% would watch an average of one hour of online video every day. The oldest Generation Z is 25 years old. These people are now entering the labor force, and their buying power will be something that brands are looking to get.

Need For Social Network Detoxification

People realize that using social networks can have harmful consequences in the form of depression, anger, or even envy. That’s why today, lots of them try to reduce the time they spend on social media or refuse its use for some days/weeks or even months. Thanks to some settings, followers can even define how much time they spend there every day.

For brands, it may become a real problem, so that you should think of new ways to maintain their engagement.

Besides, launching a website will always work as there are about 5.4 billion Google searches per day. Thus, even those who aren’t registered in some social networks will get information about your services. Please look at MotoCMS website templates that can be customized in a few days and launched without any professional skills.

Summing Up

Social Media Marketing

The trends social media marketing predict that social media platforms will become an integral part of business promotion. It means that brands will have to step up their online presence for the upcoming year. It will be another year of beta testing for new features and programs, plus technological advancements will be abundant. Brands and online digital marketers must plan how to take these trends and implement them for their marketing via the different social media platforms available. Social media is the fastest way still to become successful and known in each and everyone’s respective industries.

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Tags: marketing marketing strategies online marketing social media social media presence tips on social media content sharing trends
Author: Nicolas Finet
Nicolas Finet is the Co-founder of sort-list.co.uk – an online solutions company which helps customers to find the best marketing agencies. Follow him on Twitter @nifinet!