Who would have thought back in the halcyon days of Myspace and MSN Messenger that social media would grow to be as powerful and all-encompassing as it is today?
Today most of us have one, if not several social media pages that we update and maintain regularly, and they have become an integral part of modern life. This isn’t just true for people, as any modern business worth its salt is expected to have a strong social media presence, and social media marketing plays a key role in any successful business’s marketing strategy.
Given how rapidly social media took over our lives and how quickly it can change, we want to let you know some of the most interesting social media marketing trends to look out for in 2018, so you don’t get left out of the loop:
A.I. and face filters
Over the course of the past couple of years, Artificial Intelligence has become an ever trendier buzzword for people to talk about, and A.I. looks set to continue to dominate headlines in 2018, and become more and more integral in social media marketing.
Just look at how popular face filter (also called A.I. lenses) were on sites like Snapchat last year. Well, expect to see more and more branded filters cropping up as 2018 rolls forward, with businesses taking advantage of the filters to have customers spread brand recognition amongst themselves.
Chatbots
Chatbots are likely to be utilized more and more across social media this year, and it’s not hard to see why considering they offer the opportunity to create unique interactions with consumers without needing an excessive amount of manpower.
With Facebook recently reporting that there are over 100,000 active bots per month on Facebook messenger, research showing that the majority of Millennials would like to experience interacting with a chatbot from a major brand this year, businesses would be foolish not to take advantage of the potential for unique audience interactions chatbots present.
Decreasing popularity of Facebook?
This trend is interesting to consider, especially when you think of how powerful and unstoppable Facebook has appeared to be. However, proving the old addage that no one is too big to fall rings true, experts are predicting that a whopping 2 million users expected to leave the site behind this year.
But with Facebook becoming more favoured by those over the age of 55 – and with the younger people who are leaving favouring the likes of Twitter and Instagram – it becomes vital to diversify your social media marketing approach depending on which age bracket you are targeting.
Whilst this number may represent a drop in the ocean for Facebook’s overall user numbers, it’ll be interesting to see if this is the beginning of the end of Facebook’s reign as ruler of social media sites.
Activism
Lastly, given how politically volatile and divisive the last couple of years have been, many are expecting the resultant rise in political activism to grow this year. 2018 looks set to see brands feel increasingly more emboldened to wade into divisive issues they would have avoided at all costs, and consumers become more concerned that the businesses they support have principals and ideologies that align closely with their own.