2018 Social Media Trends
Everyday there are 1.13 billion active users on Facebook. Over 95 million photos and videos are shared on Instagram daily. LinkedIn has 100 million monthly active users and finally, 8,796 photos are shared on Snapchat every second. With statistics like these its impossible to ignore the power of social media and the wide spread of its reign. One third of the world’s population uses social media networks regularly, so it’s no surprise that tech savvy businesses have jumped online.
Make sure your business stays ahead of the social game! Read on for Spicy Broccoli’s marketing trends for 2018!
(If you like looking in the past as well as the future, check out our social media trends for 2017. Click here!)
NUMBER ONE: STORIES
Mid 2017 Facebook announced that Instagram Stories surpassed its competition by acquiring 250 million daily active users within a year of its launch. That’s roughly 50% of Instagram’s total number of daily active users accessing the applications.
Why are Instagram, Snapchat and Facebook Messenger stories so important?
Bottom line: They provide businesses with a platform for brand personalisation.
They allow your consumers direct access to behind the scenes, authentic content also called ephemeral content. Authenticity is massive for new businesses trying to establish their brand identity in their industry, and for established businesses to renew theirs.
Stories= credibility, a fun new perspective, and a relationship between you and your customers.
WHO WORE IT BETTER? SNAPCHAT STORIES VS INSTAGRAM STORIES
Now we have established that stories are vital to your social media marketing strategy for 2018, the conversation turns to a debate of which platform is best. In essence, both apps and features function in the same way.
However It’s slightly easier to search for and discover new users on Instagram than on Snapchat, where you have to spell out the exact username. Instagram also allows brands to attach to links and landing pages to their Stories. Instagram permits clickable hashtags and geotags to be added to Stories — on Snapchat, they’re manually searchable.
Instagram Stories are an addition to an existing photo and video-sharing platform — Snapchat is only about ephemeral content-sharing. Instagram Stories alone have more users than Snapchat, and some brands are starting to move their ephemeral messaging strategies away from Snapchat to reside primarily or completely on Instagram Stories.
Messenger stories just called “Stories,” 24-hour ephemeral posts in either Facebook or Messenger appear in both apps, and viewing is synced, so you won’t see a Story as unviewed in one app if you already watched it in the other. Instagram has been rolling out a “cross-post to Facebook Stories” feature that will now populate to Messenger too, though there’s no current plan to allow Facebook Stories to be pushed to Instagram.
SPICY CHOICE: INSTAGRAM ALL THE WAY BABY!
Check out ours: https://www.instagram.com/spicybroccoli/
SPICY OMG MOMENT:
The latest iPhone update has a fun surprise in store for all!
Screen recording and animation is now an inbuilt feature on the iPhone. It allows you to record your screen as a video, allowing you to animate images through other apps and also navigate through websites showing your consumers mobile functionality of any website and application functions and uses.
Check it out here, skip to 2:57 or watch all of Jane Lu’s Instagram Tips and Tricks!
NUMBER 2: LIVE STREAMING VIDEOS
“Users watch live videos three times longer than the same videos they aren’t live. It’s apparent that live-streaming social content is going to thrive throughout 2017” SBM 2017 – a trend that is still rising into 2018
Live streaming videos is a very similar concept to stories, live video content being ideal for launches, new products, Q & A and in depth branding. They are real time, real talk engagement, allowing your brand to directly respond to customer enquiries and feedback. Accompanying this is the phenomenon of virtual FOMO. FOMO is the acronym for “fear of missing out” and virtual FOMO refers to missing a live video or stream, missing a post, missing an opportunity to enter a social media competition. Creating this type of relationship with customers is enabled by highly active accounts.
Kylie Jenner is queen of attracting all her followers ( a mere 100M) to watch her live streams about her cosmetics line Kylie Cosmetics, as she often drops new products, makes announcements and does live tutorials.
Coke Music is another business seizing the power of live streaming, streaming from both Periscope and Facebook Live, Coke Music has hosted more than 20 livestreams with six artists. “We’re getting incredible reception from fans. People are excited that we’re giving them a unique vantage point into new music,” Yuri Pereira, Coke Music manager explains (read more here).
NUMBER THREE: DIGITAL HANGOUTS
Digital hangouts are expanding in popularity – in a globalised world it make sense as the next step forward that everyone is able to “hangout” without leaving the comfort of their homes. For example, Discord is a VoIP and instant messaging social platform. It allows users to have the ability to communicate with voice calls, video calls, text messaging, media and files in private chats or as part of communities called “servers”. Talk, chat, hang out, and stay close with your friends and communities.
NUMBER FOUR: AUGMENTED REALITY
Imagine being able to insert your brand into your customers everyday reality?
An interactive ad which does not require a follow up by your customer but instead a simple click takes them directly to wherever you want them… your products page, your store location, the checkout!
Augmented reality (AR) is a live direct or indirect view of a physical, real-world environment whose elements are “augmented” by computer-generated or extracted real-world sensory input such as sound, video, graphics, haptics or GPS data. New iPhone technology and apps (eg. Jigspace) are beginning to use augmented realities. Getting your business into augmented reality could be the big next step of the future.
NUMBER FIVE: MICRO INFLUENCERS
82% of consumers are likely to follow a recommendation made by a micro influencer.
Micro influencers hold the power of brand ambassadorship for the future. Their niche followings create markets of followers that are very likely to be persuaded by the influencer they follow. Investment in influencer marketing is something all businesses should be considering. To find out more about this key trend take a look at the blog post we wrote earlier this year.
We know we’ve you with a whole lotta knowledge… so use it! Let 2018 be your year to push the limits in social media and create amazing trends like those listed.
Have a question? Send your inquiry to bianca@spicybroccoli.com
Speak soon,
