In the last blog post, we introduced how can social media marketing be used within a B2B model, which tools work the best, and how to build a brand and social media presence.
As the world of social media is very dynamic let’s now take a look on what is the future of social media marketing and which tools and models you should be considering to embrace in the upcoming days.
Ten years ago, nobody knew what is social media. However, today, a single consumer is subscribed to 9 different social media platforms on average and spends about two hours a day using their social platforms.
Let’s now take a look at 3 of the most important trends that will affect social media marketing in the near future:
The first one would be the dominance of video:
You may consider producing informative videos, where a person simply explains things, you may include some feature releases of your product, or make exclusive behind-the-scenes content from your company. Video is also great for product testimonials, which are crucial.
The second one is limited accessibility content. This means content like story posts on Instagram, Snapchat, and TikTok. However, LinkedIn has recently also integrated story-style features into their interface. This way you may use LinkedIn stories to promote your company and focus on B2B content.
The so-called “ephemeral content” manages to create a sense of urgency in consumers. This leads to a higher involvement of the customer. You may consider posting polls, consumer drawing functionality, and more. It is also desirable to get inspiration from companies that have already mastered this kind of content like Deloitte Digital.
And the third one is – more influencer marketing. Influencer marketing is a 10 billion dollar industry. About 63 % of consumers trust branded messages of their favorite influencers and in a study presented by Convince and Convert, 58 % of participants said that they purchased a product in the past six months as a result of an influencer recommendation.
But to become successful using these tools, you need to implement some tools that help you along the way with your social media campaign. One of them would be a content calendar.
If you want to optimize and increase the organic reach of your business, you need to be active consistently. Content calendars can help you to ensure that you stay on track with your objectives.
Take a look at project management technologies like Trello, Toggl, or Asana to build a content calendar.
As mentioned, if your business is more B2B oriented, LinkedIn is your go-to platform. B2B basically lives on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is a concentrated community of professionals, so for B2B marketers, it is way easier to make use of their campaigns. About 61 million LinkedIn users are senior-level influencers and 40 million are in decision-making positions.
Twitter and Facebook algorithms focus primarily on a recent post in the newsfeed. However, LinkedIn focuses on engagement. Your posts need to continue to generate engagement, this way they will organically continue to appear in people’s feeds and thrive.
With a LinkedIn business account, you are able to define your target audience and with that, you are provided with content suggestions. LinkedIn also has a better community mentality than Twitter or Instagram.
If you post a question, it is likely you are going to get a kind answer. There are not many negative comments on LinkedIn since the platform keeps people being far from anonymous.
LinkedIn is a great place for B2B in general, let’s take a closer look at LinkedIn social media marketing in the next blog post.