Customer engagement through social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat and Instagram has become a vital component of any successful marketing strategy. As the world of social media marketing changes quickly, it’s important to stay up to date on trends in the industry so that you can create the most successful engagement strategy possible.

Here are 7 trends in social media marketing that will dominate in 2018.

1. A focus on hiring talent for content creation.

In the past, many companies hired freelance writers to create content for their social media accounts. They would then cross-promote new content across platforms. The increased prominence of social media platforms as a method of engaging young consumers will push marketing firms and companies to hire their own employees to focus on content creation.

As young consumers spend a great deal of time engaging with brands on social media, it’s imperative that brands post content that is not only relevant to their target audience, but created specifically for the platform it’s being posted on. The type of content that is best for Facebook is very different from the type best for Instagram, which means that companies have to hire experts in the content-creation space to manage their accounts. Marketing strategies often take time to create and implement, so hiring in-house talent for social media marketing is a great way to ensure success in the space.

2. Increased emphasis on video content.

More and more content strategists are focusing on video content rather than pictures for brand marketing. Expert marketers have found that effectively engaging their target audience is much easier through video. However, it’s important to make sure that the video content you produce is closely aligned with your brand image and connects with your users.

To do this, create videos that your customers can relate to, and focus on showing your product in use rather than showing just the product itself.

3. A focus on user-generated content.

Many brands are leveraging user-generated content on their social media accounts to better engage their followers. For example, lifestyle brands will ask their followers to submit pictures of themselves wearing a particular style of clothing or doing a specific activity. These brands will choose the best submissions and feature them on their page, giving credit to the follower who submitted them.

This is not only a great way to get new, quality content; it’s also a perfect strategy for better engaging your followers. Chosen followers will be excited about being featured, and they’ll be more likely to purchase your products and encourage their friends to check out your page. Instagram perhaps delivers the biggest ROI for UGC. You can use an Instagram analytics tool to measure which posts receive the most engagement.

4. Increased use of Stories.

Facebook and Instagram Stories have become very popular among individual users and brands alike. It’s important for content strategists and marketers to produce content not only for posting directly to their accounts, but to their story as well.
Many users who follow a lot of accounts don’t take the time to view every new post in their feed, but they will take a few seconds to view new stories. You can use this to your advantage by encouraging users to check out newly posted content in your story or by cross-promoting it in your other social media accounts.

5. Brand partnership to engage customers.

Many brands are making use of influencers on Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat to promote their products to a large audience.
Brand partnerships are a great way to reach new users, and are often much more cost effective than generating new content yourself. To successfully implement a brand partnership at your company, focus on partnering with users who have a clear message and a large follower base, and who actively engage the community they post in. Brand partners often find innovative ways to get customers excited about products, and you can use their talent to your advantage.

6. Live content will appeal to the masses.

Many brands and companies are using live content to get their followers excited and engaged. Product marketers use Facebook Live to do product demonstrations and show videos of real people using their product. Broadcasting to followers in real time is a fantastic way to get people interested in your content and engaged with your brand.

7. Starting conversations with individual users.

Many brands have hired strategists and marketers to communicate with individual users and potential customers. Social media content managers have begun to talk to users in the comments of Instagram posts and reply to users’ tweets on Twitter.

Engaging with individual users directly is a great way to make followers feel important and get excited about your brand. And building brand loyalty and getting followers to actively engage with your content is the best way to convert users to paying customers.

If you work for an established brand, you probably haven’t looked at your brand strategy documents since your first week on the job. If you’re working at a startup or small business, you may not even have a formal brand strategy documented anywhere.

Whether you’re starting from scratch or simply reviewing your existing strategy to make sure it reflects the current goals and vision for your organization, it helps to guide your thinking with a few concrete questions.

Here are 7 brand strategy questions you can use to nail down your business brand.

1. Who Are We?

Maybe I was just an unusually existential middle schooler, but I remember having a serious identity crisis in 8th grade. I had no idea what type of person I wanted to be—I just knew that I didn’t like the person I was. I wrestled with the question throughout high school and eventually became someone close to the quirky nerd girl I am today.

How you answer this question is central to your entire organization. It often helps to think about your brand as a character or persona. If your company were a person, what kind would they be? What would they be interested in? What would get them out of bed in the morning? What would keep them up at night?

The more you know about who you are as a business, the better you’ll be able to communicate that to your prospects and customers.

2. What Makes Us Unique?

Once you’ve figured out who you are, the next step is to figure out where you fall in the spectrum of other businesses out there. It’s important to identify your unique attributes in comparison to your competitors, but it can also be valuable to see how you’re unique from a broader industry perspective.

Your answer to this question shouldn’t be a laundry list of features or services you provide. It should be the things that are integral to your business: How you run your team, how you interact with people online, how you approach customer support, what you value as a company, where you’re located, how you talk, how you look. All the things that make people special and different are things that can set your business apart as well.

3. Why Are We Here?

This is one of the big questions in life, and one that’s equally important for a brand to answer. Why does your brand exist? What is it designed to do? What’s your vision? Without a solid answer to these questions, your brand won’t be very meaningful or effective.

4. Who Are We Talking to?

Without understanding who your brand is talking to, your product development and marketing strategies will likely be misaligned with what delights your audience. Identifying exactly who your brand wants to serve, what their interests are, where they spend time, and what they care about will guide your marketing efforts and your business development road-map.

5. What Are We Doing?

Your brand’s mission statement should clearly explain what you’re doing and why. What do you hope to achieve as a brand, both now and in the future? Your daily business activities should tie back to these central goals.

6. How Do We Communicate?

You can’t develop solid a brand communication strategy until you’ve answered the questions above. After you’ve identified who your brand is, why you exist, what you’re doing and for whom, you can figure out how to talk to your target audience and what kind of tone your brand should have.
Another thing you can determine from this question is which communication channels you should use to reach your audience. You can then develop communication guidelines for on each channel.

7. Where Do We Invest Time?

• This is a really interesting question, and it’s one that brands aren’t always great at asking themselves. If it’s true that where we invest our time is where we invest our lives, then it’s important to identify where the brand should be purposefully spending its time, both in person and online. The answer to this question could involve:
  A digital channel plan.
• An event attendance and exhibitor plan.
• A speaking calendar.
• A list of volunteer opportunities your organization wants to participate in.

The Bottom Line
Whether you’re creating a brand strategy for the first time, or simply doing a periodic review of your existing plan, these 7 questions can help you nail down answers that are central to how your brand communicates, serves customers, and creates products and services.