Social Media’s Power in the Digital Age

15 Oct Social Media’s Power in the Digital Age

It’s been well established that most people spend a considerable amount of time watching, learning, and buying stuff online. This has resulted in a significant shift from traditional marketing methods to digital ones. Consequently, brands must have an online presence to stay ahead in their marketing game.

Before you can begin putting together a game plan for social media management, you’ll need to consider what the most effective social media platforms are for your business and what benefits they can provide to your business. You’ve got to keep in mind that it is crucial to post daily on your different social media platforms in order to grow your business through social media.

Be real, be authentic, and be simple. This can truly have an excellent impact on your business.

How social media marketing works for business

• Market Research: Collecting relevant data to solve marketing challenges in the digital age is easy as compared to the normal methods. Social media allows you to know your customer demand, stay updated about the buying trends, analyze the market condition, and your competitors’ efforts.
• Discovery opportunities: Identifying and revealing new opportunities is easy in the ever-evolving real-time world of social media. You can find new ways to connect with your target audience, generate leads, nurture them, and provide customer support.
• Formulate strategies/opportunities: Depending on your business objectives, you can prioritize your opportunities and develop a transparent social media strategy. Various online tools have also popped up to assist you in managing your digital marketing efforts.
• Final analysis and report: You can receive direct feedback and reports of your campaigns on social media. And accordingly, you can improvise your digital marketing strategy.

Existing and upcoming trends in SMM

Technology keeps on evolving and shaping the world. The world of social media isn’t new to changes either. The features provided by online platforms have to adapt to the lifestyle, habits, and preferences of consumers. So, here’s a roundup on all the popular phenomena in social media marketing that you simply should keep up with.

• Top social media sites: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Youtube are the leading platforms in terms of use by both business owners and consumers.
• Increasing video content: Video advertising has established a solid foothold in terms of engagement. It is in the sort of Facebook content, Instagram stories, six-second Twitter ads, or YouTube in-stream ads. Social Media Today estimates that video content will constitute 82% of all online traffic in 2020.
• Rise of social media management tools: Online software applications and automation tools like Buffer and Hootsuite allow you to schedule posts on multiple platforms, integrate your efforts, and also analyze the results.
• The arrival of social commerce: Social media offers a unique way of engaging with potential customers at their level. Business transactions can be facilitated with a Facebook store, Instagram storefronts, or merely a shoppable online post. Brands have realized that social commerce offers a unique retail avenue with pre-selling features at par with offline stores and websites.
• Soaring influencer marketing: Modern-day consumers prefer user-generated content over business-generated content. Moreover, listening about another person’s corroboration gives more confidence to potential customers to make a purchase. As many as 49 percent of consumers make decisions piggybacking on the trust of an influencer.

Therefore, several brands are using online influencers to drive sales of their products in some way or the other. Micro-influencers with niche communities are a specific favorite, as they cost less but deliver high engagements due to their defined audiences. Gone are the times when a business had to shell out considerable sums to urge a celebrity endorsement for mass reach.

• Use of virtual robots or chatbots: A chatbot can have a one-on-one interaction with a target customer and also solve service-related queries. Facebook Messenger has about 100,000 active bots that gather information, provide product-related guidance to users, and take orders from them.

Going forward, bots are likely to become even smarter and acquire human-like traits with AI. According to Gartner, bots will be able to generate business messaging to the tune of 20 percent of all content, instead of just disseminating it.

• Embracing Augmented Reality: Snapchat and Instagram are already using augmented reality filters as a way to amplify the visual content shared on these social media platforms. As social media platforms improve their AR features, businesses can make AR a key part of their SMM strategy. Be sure to keep up with social media AR trends so that you can stay ahead of the competition and grow your business.

• Adoption of virtual reality: Virtual Reality is the buzzword in the present-day tech community. Social VR has also seen an upsurge as big players are investing in providing enhanced user experiences. And as these new-age technologies advance further and user demand grows, the definition of ‘engagement’ will also evolve. Facebook has already introduced its social VR world called Horizon. 

Wrap up

When it involves SMM, you don’t have to go it alone. As a social media management company, Rio Digital offers a variety of digital marketing services from social media management to social ad strategy and development. With our team behind you, there’s nowhere to go but up.

Our social media specialists can help you promote your business through effective social media marketing. Contact us today if you’re ready to take your SMM to the next level!