Marketers Capitalizing on 3 Emerging Social Media Trends

If you’re a marketing expert (or would like to be) you probably already know about social media and probably, like most, have been migrating between social media platforms. You probably already know that social networking is now considered to be one of the best ways to not only get in touch with potential customers but stay in touch with them. It also can help you to find out what your customer base really likes about your company and, conversely, what they don’t.

One thing’s for certain, social media is definitely going to continue to rise in popularity and, with that in mind, we’ve put together a little blog about the 3 Emerging Social Media Trends that any marketer or business owner should be keeping an eye on. Enjoy.

Trend 1) Spending for Social Media Marketing is Increasing.

For 99.9% of all businesses, marketing is an integral and vital part of their business. It also eats up a huge amount of their resources and social media is definitely no different. A recent report showed that nearly 70% of marketers are expected to increase their social media spending in 2014 while almost 30% are planning on raising their word-of-mouth marketing efforts at the same time.

The fact is that social media marketing is now an integral part of the business operations for many companies because it is very good at gaining interest from said company’s intended audience. One of the biggest expenditures with social media marketing is having the people available to answer questions and queries immediately when they come through a social media site. Being able to handle live client calls as well as provide “chat” is vital to a social media campaign’s success, but it doesn’t involve a big investment in time and people.

Trend 2) More and more people are using social networks.

Everyone knows that Facebook started the whole social media trend but today there are literally hundreds of social media sites that are popular, especially now that smart phones have become an ubiquitous part of our daily lives. In fact, eMarketer recently reported that nearly one in seven people worldwide uses a social media site at least once a month, a number that’s set to grow to nearly 2 billion people by the year 2017. Interestingly, the country with the highest penetration in social media is the Netherlands with nearly 64% of their population using social media sites on a regular basis. The United States comes in at sixth with approximately 51%.

Trend 3) Social Media sites are coming in bigger and better varieties.

The game is definitely changing and social media marketing, and one of the game changers is the emergence of social media sites that are driven by teenagers and young adults. Instagram, Vine and Snapchat are three of the most popular right now and, due to younger users, became popular extremely fast. Of course what that means for business is that they must establish yet another social media profile, something that should only be done if they understand their client base well and will get a significant enough return. The good news is that with such a wide variety of platforms the “shareability” of any business content is increased as well as the ability to give prospective customers that “personal touch” that they are looking for these days.

These new social media sites come with new tools like the six second videos that are popular on Vine, something that is definitely a new and interesting challenge for marketers but also offers quite a few added benefits. As with any marketing, tools and campaigns need to be customized to a specific market segment that a company is hoping to reach. The good news is that there are now a lot more avenues available to do that.