2019 Social Media Trends You Need To Include In Your Strategy.

It’s just two months away for the world to clock 2019, 2018 has been crazily amazing for social media with the new trends coming out almost every day. The social media space is constantly evolving, this jungle is not for the weak, if you aren’t on top of your game, you are losing a lot. As a marketer or business owner, you need to know how to leverage social media to your own advantage. Your consistency and presence is quite valuable for your survival.

Yes obviously, presence is not just enough. This is why you need to have strategies for your social media plan. I want to share with you trends that I think you should include in your social media strategy for 2019. I tried to analyse data and trends in 2018, and previous years just to get a clearer picture of what next year holds for Digital Marketers and businesses that are using Social Media to grow their businesses.

1. Video Content: Let us start with video contents. According to this study by hubspot, 83% of consumers would consider sharing video content with their friends if it is specific to their interests. Facts all the way, I personally don’t go a day without sharing awesome contents with my friends, could be funny, enlightening or sad, the thing is 90% of them are always videos. You can check the contents you’ve shared with your friends on Twitter, Instagram or Facebook, you will notice that the bulk of it are videos. Online video drives better engagement, 80% of the traffic on the internet will be video by 2019. Before we move on I want to give you more numbers, because numbers don’t lie. The team from depositphotos did a research and this is what they got:

• 90% of consumers say video can help them make buying decisions
• Mentioning the word ‘video’ in your email subject line increases open rates by 19%
• Video on landing pages can increase conversions by up to 80%

So, if you are not thinking about videos because you find them stressful to create, you need to start reconsidering. There are many options out there, you can always outsource or learn. Also note that live videos will become more popular.

2. Increased Focus on UGC: What’s UGC? User Generated Content. This is one of the best ways to grow your business without doing a lot of work, or spending money. Brands are leveraging UGCs, this is because 65% of customers agree UGC is more interesting than the content created by brands. This is how UGC influences online shopping.

The recent ‘Just Do It’ campaign by Nike is a perfect example of how UGCs can help your business. On Instagram, there are more than 15 million posts with the hashtag #JustDoIt and this UGC did help Nike gain more social media followers, comments, and sales. Twitter, and Facebook also played their parts in the #JustDoIt movement. UGCs are amazing and you need to include this in your 2019 strategy.

3. Chatbots will become More Popular: I nearly typed my baby will become more popular, that’s how much I love chatbots. This chat solution right here is a gem, they’ve been around for a long but like everything else, chatbots are evolving as well. More businesses are adopting the use of chatbots to communicate with their customers on social media. This trend is really growing fast. Did you know that, 80% of marketing executives have used or plan to use chatbots by 2020? Now you do. To know more about Chatbots, please check out my medium page.

4. Social Media Ads: Friends and Family First, that is the facebook and Instagram algorithm summed up. As long as you have a business page, you will always need to do ads on these platforms. They are always changing their algorithms, and this is affecting what users see on their timelines. You can’t bank on organic reach anymore due to this, so one of the alternatives out there is social media ads. Ads will help you reach more people, what’s awesome about ads is the fact that you can target your right audience and it goes straight to their faces. By January when you want to draw the budget for the year, you should consider putting in a lot for ads.

5. Influencer marketing will become more popular: According to Forbes, influencer marketing is on the verge of exploding. 84% of marketers engaged in influencer marketing campaign in 2017. This just reaffirms the fact that organic traffic is dropping, if you want to get your product out there via social media, Influencer marketing is something you cannot neglect. According to research, micro influencers have a 60% higher engagement rate than the normal celebrity influencers. You can also expect to see 22.2% increase in average weekly conversions from this marketing strategy. There are micro influencers and there are macro influencers. Micro Influencers range from 1000 followers to 90,000 followers, anything from 100K and above makes a macro influencer. Personally, I am more drawn to micro influencers and this is because their followers trust their opinions and they are cost-effective compared to macro influencers.

To Wrap It Up

Social media is constantly changing, and as a marketer you need to always keep up with the trends. In 2019, these 5 social media trends will definitely help your business as long as you include them in your strategy.

I want to add that branding will become more important and this is key to making so many things work for you on social media. 2018 is almost over, but you can use this information to grow and expand your business in 2019.

Before you go, I would like to know what social media trend(s) will you/your company focus on to generate leads and drive conversions in 2019?