Social media marketing uses social media platforms to connect with customers to promote your brand, increase sales, and drive more traffic to a website. 

Social media is the fastest-growing sector in the history of humanity. Thus, marketing a brand on social media is a sure way to engage as many consumers as possible. 

Below is a breakdown of social media trends that will guide you on how to put together an effective strategy to advertise your brand.

1. Re-evaluating The Metrics

According to the latest report by Sprout Social Index, marketing agencies are now evaluating different metrics to determine what is working and what is not on social media sites. 

Facebook and Instagram’s “Like” was the most reliable way of measuring the success of a product. However, the tested removal of the “Like” button from Facebook and Instagram proved that if done so, it will force a shift away from “Likes” as the measuring tool for content performance. Thus, confirming that the presence of the like button makes a big difference. 

Even if the social sites do not remove the “Like” button, the trend calls for the need to look beyond surface-level data. Nearly two-thirds of marketers believe that social listening is the most crucial trend in 2020. Marketers are now more concerned about what is being said about their product rather than how many people are looking or clicking on a single post.

Long term engagement results in much more than a short-lived spike in “Likes”. Instead of chasing a viral moment to gain short-lived popularity, brands are now focused on understanding what will drive a meaningful conversation with consumers.

2. The Digital Detox

About 45% of the world’s population is on social media. That means brands have the chance to reach a greater number of consumers than ever before. But a new trend is affecting that customer base. 

More and more people are choosing digital detox from social media by deleting apps or accounts. This is not the usual change we see in people when they start using some new platform and step away from the previous social site. This trend means people are taking a temporary or permanent break from all social media.

The main reason behind this is that people feel exhausted by social media and step away from maintaining their mental health and well-being. Some users step away because they do not trust social media due to several reasons, such as fake news, data, and privacy concerns.

This trend does not mean that social media will become useless for digital marketing, but social media marketers need to keep this in mind when making a marketing strategy. As more and more people adopt digital detox, social media marketing will be affected. 

As a social media marketer, you should not put all your efforts and resources into the social media bucket to advertise. You need to ensure allotment of budget to other marketing channels such as email marketing and search engine marketing.

3. Social Media Influencers 

The success of influencer marketing is well-documented as an authentic way to advertise your brand. And while influencers are not going anywhere in 2020, marketers are looking at influencer relationships with caution. Fake-influencers are on the rise. So the influencer you approach should first back up their price tag with data.

Another thing to keep in mind is that many influencers are no longer trusted by consumers. Influencers with huge followings are not only costly for brands, they have also lost the influence they used to have. People see them as dishonest as they will do anything to earn from a brand, even lie to their followers.

61% of people will trust recommendations from friends or family as compared to influencers.

In comparison to big-time influencers, nano-influencers are more effective. They are part of their communities and have better relationships with their followers. They have the benefit of trust compared to big-time influencers who only benefit from reaching a larger audience. Using a nano-influencer is not only less costly but also leads to more trust in a brand.

Before choosing an influencer, simply ponder over what that influencer brings to the table and whether their audience is useful to your brand or not. You should also try and evaluate whether the influencer has a trust-based relationship with their audience.