The Most Important 2017 Social Media Trends

Marketers have to constantly stay up on social media trends. As cumbersome and time-consuming as it may be sometimes, social media is an aspect of business that has to be paid attention to if a company wants to be successful.

The landscape of social media is constantly changing. New platforms pop up almost every day and the algorithms of existing platforms usually change just as you have gotten the hang of the first platform.

Staying abreast of social media trends can mean that you either have a really successful social media year or a really bad year. Here are the most important trends to look out for in 2017.

Live video content

Last year, Facebook and Twitter launched their live video content services and about half of all marketers indicated that live video would be a major part of their social media plan in 2017.

In order to make live video work for you, consider which social media platform your customers used the most frequently. The platform where you get the most engagement is where you will have the most success with live video.

When you plan a live stream, make sure that you are streaming content that your audience will care about. Some good examples are big company-wide events where you’re releasing new products or announcing new initiatives, question and answer sessions with your customers or with high-level executives, and/or product demonstrations.

It is important to not haphazardly throw together live video content. Your customers expect top-notch content and you have to deliver that with your live streams as well.

Messaging apps are the new customer service tools

If you haven’t noticed already, many of your customers reach out to you on social media before they call or email you. Social media and the messaging services attached to social media platforms have quickly become an invaluable customer service tool.

People prefer when they can chat with a customer service representative one on one and don’t have to wait on hold or be bounced around from representative to representative.

Meet your customers where they are. Start to train your customer service representatives in social media. Consider investing in a social media management tool that makes customer service easy. Once you start making this change, your customers will become happier and more responsive to your customer service efforts.

Mobile advertising will become significantly more competitive

Marketing on mobile devices shot up in the last few years. Once people started browsing the web and social media with their phones instead of their laptops or desktops, mobile ads started to become more and more important.

If you were one of the few brands that were early adopters of mobile advertising, good for you! But sadly, there’s some bad news for you in 2017. Mobile advertising is going to get increasingly more competitive as more and more brands start to move from desktop ads to mobile ads.

The mobile ad marketplace is going to get crowded fast and that is going to make it really competitive. Advertisers should be prepared to up the quality of their content and add more money to their mobile ad budget.

While Facebook and Twitter are still going to command a lot of the mobile ad space, Instagram and Snapchat are going to start to become more and more important. People are responding to ads on Instagram faster and better than was anticipated, so Instagram optimized ads are going to be important.

The bottom line with mobile advertising is, companies need to take a hard look at their mobile ad spend and the mobile optimization of their website if they are going to compete. If you don’t have a mobile-optimized site, get on it ASAP as it could take you down this year.

If you want to learn more about social media trends of 2017, take a look at my done-for-you system today.

Getting Profit from Facebook Ads

Facebook is a powerful tool for digital marketers. From communicating to customers and getting their feedback to getting more fans and spreading the word about your business, Facebook has changed the digital marketing landscape.

Facebook advertising has been a large player in that change. Once the social media platform started to charge brands to communicate with their customers and new customers, the potential for gains and losses got much more serious.

One thing that digital marketers sometimes forget about Facebook advertising is that you can drive real profit with them. Facebook has taken the time to create different types of ads that can drive profit as well as social engagement. Here’s how to make your Facebook ads profitable.

Don’t underestimate lead ads

A few years ago, Facebook introduced lead ads. These ads allowed advertisers to gather contact information for their customers and new customers to boost their email marketing campaigns. Facebook’s lead ads are different than any of their other ads in that people fill out their contact information without leaving the app.

In some cases, the contact information is auto-filled for the customer and all they have to do is click that they confirm that they want to receive emails and hit submit. This removes one of the biggest Facebook ad hurdles: click through.

After you have collected your leads, you can download them in a CSV file or integrate it directly with your email marketing platform. Facebook supports a number of these platforms, so putting the leads to work is easier than ever.

Facebook lead ads work to drive profit in a twofold way. First of all, they get your company name out there which means brand awareness. Secondly, they give you leads. Leads are invaluable to digital marketers and allow you to re-market effectively and efficiently.

Use the Facebook Pixel

If you don’t already know about it, Facebook’s pixel has changed the Facebook advertising game. The Pixel is a little piece of code that you put in the code of your website to track that behavior and clicks of a customer.

The Pixel can be set to trigger for a number of things such as view page, add to cart, purchase, add payment information, and more. These triggers can help you more effectively use Facebook to advertise to your customers.

For example, the Pixel allows you to go into Facebook and create custom audiences. Say you have been noticing a lot of people abandoning cart recently. If you have the Pixel on your website with an add to cart trigger and a purchase trigger, you can create an audience of all the people who added something to their cart but didn’t purchase.

This creates an instant re-marketing campaign. Now you can create a Facebook ad with a “Hey, it looks like you forgot something in your cart! Buy it now!” message and get those people to convert.

Use mobile ads

When it comes to Facebook, you have to embrace that most people use their phone to browse it. Mobile ads are the way to connect with these mobile users and they actually convert pretty well as far as Facebook ads go.

Mobile ads are incredibly effective when you are trying to accumulate Facebook pages likes to grow your network and application download campaigns. Both of these can be conversion and profit drivers for your business.

As your Facebook page accumulates likes, more and more people see your content and are more likely to drive profit. If you have an app and use a mobile ad to get people to download it, you open a whole new world of re-marketing and app activity.

Use mobile ads to your advantage and they can pay off in dividends.

If you are looking for more ways to drive profit through Facebook advertising, check out my done-for-you system today.