Build an Engaging Social Media Strategy in 2020

23 Apr Build an Engaging Social Media Strategy in 2020

As soon as you think that you’ve got this social media marketing thing down, something happens. It’s always changing. How are you supposed to keep up?

Before we start, get into the always-be-testing mindset. You don’t necessarily need to get on every social media platform. But you should test them and see if it’s where your audience is and if it can help attract new customers.

Ready to dive into how you’ll be able to create a winning social media strategy for your business?

Worry Less about Likes and Focus on Traffic

Currently, Instagram is testing how removing likes from the general public count affects the user experience.

The company says this is often an attempt to promote mental health. Instagram’s CEO Adam Mosseri says, “The idea is to try to depressurize Instagram, make it less of a competition, and give people more space to focus on connecting with the people they love and things that inspire them.”

Removing likes should also help eliminate fraud and faux followers— people that pay for likes. According to a study in 2018 from influencer marketing platform HYPR, “Some 64% of influencers admitted to buying likes.”

Plus, getting rid of public likes puts a heavier emphasis on quality instead of quantity and should encourage brands and users to concentrate on creating attention-grabbing content which will drive action that goes beyond a double-tap.

All of this doesn’t mean influencer marketing is going away. In fact, as you’ll read below, it’s here to stay.

What this does mean though, is that you’ll want to stress less about the vanity metrics and focus more on action-oriented results, such as clicks, shares, and saves.

Are social media users coming to your website?

Do they convert into leads and even customers?

If you’ve got plenty of likes but no website views and no view-to-lead conversion, is social media marketing even working?

Test Paid Ads in Social Media

Whether it’s for the analytics or because you need to pay for greater reach, social media advertising might be part of your winning marketing strategy.

As automation & AI continue to progress, this will require less monitoring.

Google ads launched Responsive Search Ads in 2019. These ads adapt to device widths and lets Google automatically test 15 different headlines and 4 descriptions you create. Then Google uses AI to place together a combination of these titles/descriptions catered to your audience and their search term. This might help improve the ad group’s performance, generating more clicks and conversions than your existing text ads.

Investigate Influencer Marketing

According to a recent Global Web Index study that was conducted in August of 2019, users who follow social influencers are less concerned with an Influencer’s amount of “likes” and care more about the type of content they share.

With that said, “The influencer market has ballooned in recent years and is anticipated to grow to a $6.5 billion industry by 2020,” according to The Guardian

Data Privacy and Security Still Big Consumer Concern

As users become more conscious of how their data is getting used, privacy becomes more of a concern. From security breaches to phones listening to our conversations to the Facebook-Cambridge Analytica scandal, we’re all much more aware of how our data is getting diced up and passed around.

As a result, we’ll see an increase in the use of “dark social.” this is often where users communicate and share privately, such as messaging and email.

So understanding and respecting privacy should be a serious part of your social media marketing strategy. And as you’ll see, focusing on the private social conversation of email could bring in a fresh move for your marketing.

Become a Video Ninja

According to social report, people check out videos 5 times longer on Facebook and Instagram than static content like text and pictures.

Are you creating videos for your potential customers?

The number of brands using video in their marketing strategy has extremely increased over the past few years. It’s time to join the party.

Add into that mix live video, and you’ve got the chance to succeed in plenty of people with your message. In face by 2020, 75% of mobile traffic is going to be video consistent with a Cisco study.

Many people think videos need to be polished, there has got to be a script, it needs to be perfectly edited and all that. Not the case.

When it involves live videos, they assist humanize the brand by showing real-time, raw footage

One platform you would possibly want to explore it TikTok. There are 500 million worldwide active TikTok users & they’re very engaged. If the 20-year-old demographic is your jam, 41% of users are between 18-24 years old. So while this won’t be the simplest tool for B2B companies, TikTok might be beneficial for B2C companies with a younger audience.

Augmented Reality in Marketing

Augmented reality enhances our experiences by taking the important world and projects virtual, computer-generated augmentations to it.

Snapchat is currently leading the trend for AR. More than 400,000 AR Lenses have already been created with a total of 15 billion plays.

In fact, other platforms are already testing AR:

Amazon: Testing to help consumers virtually try on clothes

Instagram: Currently testing an on platform Augmented reality feature with select advertisers

In this example, Instagram is testing a virtual try on for Rayban sunglasses.

How can you use augmented reality?

• Online shopping
• Live events
• Videos
• Brand awareness
• Customer delight

While this is often so new and upcoming, the most effective thing we can do now’s to continue to learn and see how this evolves and find ways to incorporate AR into our marketing strategies.

Ecommerce businesses especially should stay within the loop and find ways to use AR to boost customer experience.

Wrap up/ Final thoughts

Developments in social media are constantly changing. As a marketer, you need to stay up to date with the newest trends to keep your finger on the pulse and effectively reach your target audience.

Want to succeed on social media in 2020? There’s no shortage of platforms where you could be investing your time. But in the end, it all comes back to your audience. Are you getting in front of them where they’re spending their time? Are you giving them what they need at the correct time? Then you need to check out our Social Media Services. Let’s grow better together!