Social Media Marketing Trends That Dominated in 2016
December 22, 2016 No CommentsFeatured article by Calvin Paige, Independent Technology Author
To many people, social media platforms are an integral part of everyday life. And businesses are listening, with more and more enterprises turning to social media in a bid to widen their client base. But, for businesses to take full advantage of social media, they need to keep abreast of emerging trends. Here are some of the biggest social marketing trends that dominated 2016.
Automation
The various existing popular social media sites are visited by millions of people daily. This makes it extremely time-consuming for businesses to keep tabs with all their social media accounts.
In a bid to conserve time, a large number of business owners have turned to automation, and a plethora of tools exist for business owners who want to keep a close eye on their social marketing efforts. While these tools have become useful, the need for automation has given marketing agencies an opportunity to diversify their services. Today, agencies such as riversagency.com are incorporating social media strategies into their marketing products.
Popularity of Live Streaming
Live streaming, a feature that was nearly absent in the early stages of social media, has now become almost ubiquitous. The popularity of live streaming can be attributed directly to increased connection speeds, especially when it comes to mobile devices. Another factor that may have contributed to the popularity of live streaming is the perceived monotony of older mediums.
The demand for live content has prompted many social media networks to introduce new products, Facebook’s Live feature being a prime example, and we can expect Twitter and Instagram to soon follow suit with their own solutions.
Paid Posts
Social networking giants Twitter and Facebook are currently the two most used social media platforms. In a bid to bolster their dominance, the two have introduced special paid services aimed at enterprises. With these services, companies can get their content promoted, for a fee. This has prompted many brands to diversify their advertising methods and more have adopted paid tweets and posts as it was more beneficial in their line of business.
Demand for Personalization
Many users have grown tired of viewing the same and sometimes irrelevant content. This has led to an increased demand for personalization. Social media platforms are now constantly tweaking their algorithms to better personalize stories for users. Publishers are also putting up content relevant to their niche markets. This demand for customization and personalization is set to increase in the next few years.
Changing Interactions
In 2016, forms of social interactions have changed with social media platforms adopting conversation based approaches. New apps such as Snapchat have taken a one-sided conversation approach. Also, social media platforms are diversifying with the release of new products and features. The Messenger for business feature from Facebook is one that is changing the social media industry.
Conclusion
Social media sites are crowded and users are looking for new ways of using their social media accounts. This is one of the reasons that has led to the above-discussed changes in social media. These changes have prompted many businesses to change tactics and adopt user-friendly approaches to social media marketing. Moreover, social media platforms are innovating and changing in a bid to offer the best user experience, and this should be a continuing trend for many years to come.