Marketing trends change every year, but one thing that won’t change any time soon is the amount of influence social media marketing has on consumers. In fact, as much as 73% of marketers believe that social media marketing has been somewhat effective or very effective for their business.
However, even though you’re probably using social media to promote your business, you shouldn’t expect the same strategies that have worked so far to be effective in 2021. You need to follow trends and apply the right social media marketing tips to be ahead of the game at all times. Unless you put some work into your social media game all of your efforts will be in vain.
This article lists some important social media strategies you should consider using in 2021.
Adapt to a more socially conscious consumer base
Younger generations such as Generation Z and Alpha are much more socially conscious than older generations ever were. They concern themselves with issues such as mental health, climate change, and education. Not only that, but they expect brands to have the same social values as they do.
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This trend has been going around for some time now, as consumers don’t want to support brands that don’t have social causes aligned with their products or services. Due to the pandemic, a lot of brands worldwide have done their best to show solidarity and support.
Conversations surrounding the pandemic and other issues will undoubtedly continue in 2021, and most of those conversations will be done via social media. This is why brands that want to stay relevant in the following year need to talk about social issues their customers care about.
Ideally, you should research your target audience to identify which issues are most relevant to them and show you’re working toward creating a positive social impact.
Get into conversational marketing
Just a few years ago, brands could put out a message and wait for consumers to interact with their business, but that’s just not enough anymore. Instead of setting up a regular campaign and hoping for the best, you need to implement some conversational marketing strategies.
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Through conversational marketing, you create personalized content that will engage your customers and help you build relationships with them. The need for brands to establish two-way communication with customers and connect with them on a personal basis will be much more prominent in 2021.
Millennial and Gen Z consumers prefer brands that are willing to put in the effort into creating a robust customer experience through genuine engagement and relationship-building. This means you need to produce innovative content that shows the human side of your brand and captures your audience’s attention.
To do this, you should leverage tools such as live-video streaming platforms and chatbots on your social channels to build an authentic connection with your followers.
Join new social media platforms
Even though almost all successful businesses in the world have a social media marketing strategy in place, they’re also all using the same old platforms. While social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram were good enough to promote a business a few years ago, the times are changing.
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There are some new social media platforms that have slowly but surely started to gain more and more popularity in 2020 and that trend will undoubtedly continue in 2021.
Take TikTok for instance, which is the number one downloaded app of 2020 and already has more users than Reddit, Twitter, and Snapchat. Businesses who were smart enough to join this social media platform now engage with their target audiences much more easily.
However, before you join TikTok or any other new social media platform, you need to perform thorough research to see if your ideal clients are actually using that platform. If they don’t, think about how likely they are to start using it in the near future.
Be smart about how you use old social media platforms
While you should create a social media presence on new platforms, you also mustn’t forget about the well-established ones. If you’re already in the world of social media marketing, you most likely already have a business account on Facebook.
Facebook has been around for a while and is currently the leading social platform with 2.60 billion monthly active users. Facebook can be a gold mine for marketers as long as they utilize the platform correctly.
Some things you should be doing on Facebook include:
- Sticking to a social media content calendar. Your followers should be able to predict when they can expect to see new content from you. If you plan out every new post around a calendar that works well for your audience, you will see more engagement and faster growth.
- Prioritizing engagement. A lot of brands make the mistake of thinking the only thing that matters on social media is the number of followers you have. However, it’s much more valuable to your business to have followers who engage with your brand, so make sure to respond to all comments and queries regularly.
- Using Facebook analytics. Facebook comes with its own analytics tool that provides you with insight into your customers’ journey across your business page. If you pay attention to analytics, you will have a better understanding of how users interact with your page and what difficulties they face.
- Optimizing your page. Something not many marketers know about Facebook business pages is that you can optimize them with videos. If you post videos instead of static images, you have a much bigger chance of attracting an audience.
Do research on your competitors
Take a close look at the profiles of your top competitors to see what kind of content they post and how much engagement their posts get.
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You may be inspired by some of their posts and create your own version of that content which improves on what your competitors created. Of course, you shouldn’t steal your competitors’ ideas, but by seeing what kind of content their audiences enjoy, you will be able to come up with your own strategy much more easily.
Final thoughts
One thing all marketers can agree on is that social media marketing is here to stay. While you’re preparing your marketing strategies for the following year, don’t forget to make a concise plan for how you want to utilize your social media profiles to see the best possible results.
The trends are constantly changing, and in 2021 your customers are expecting to see everything we talked about in this list of strategies. As long as you keep up with the trends but also know all the things you shouldn’t do in social media marketing, your campaign will be successful.
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