Social media is without a doubt a globally-dominating phenomenon. It changed the way we buy, sell and interact with brands and products. Generally speaking, social media has become an industry that is not slowing down at all – it’s the perfect solution for growth and opportunity.
But, it’s also constantly changing. What can you expect in 2020? What are the top 5 social media marketing strategies that work in 2020?
The global study of internet, social, and mobile adoption, study reveals that 1 million people joined social networks every single day in 2017. There are currently 2.82 billion social network users in the world, by next year this number is expected to increase by 14 million.
The key to social media success remains staying ahead of trends. This seems very overwhelming when you take into account that it’s one of the most rapidly advancing industries of our digital ecosystem. But the reward of implementing even one of these social media will put you in a very good place to capitalize in the future.
SOCIAL MEDIA CONTESTS ADD MORE VALUE THAN JUST FOLLOWERS
For some time, running a contest on social media has been one of the most efficient ways to draw new audiences. The initial plan behind social media contests was to obtain followers quickly on whichever social network the contest ran.
Now, approaching 2020, the way brands are socializing with their public has changed. Marketers are using this strategy to concentrate on engaging and connecting with social media users.
Other benefits of running a social media contest include:
Simultaneously with the shift in how we interact with our audiences online, brands are now concentrating more on what their audience values. In order to get value from running a contest on social media, you want to know what your audience values, and offer encouragement that aligns with those qualities.
Your social media competition should cater to your target readers and make sense for your brand. This strategy can be more complicated for publishers who don’t actually sell a product but still want to use social media contests to engage with their audience or generate traffic.
Ikea, for example, can compensate contestants with furniture and Taco Bell can give away a lifetime supply of tacos; but publishers, bloggers, and website owners need to sharpen their incentive on presenting things their specific audience finds importance in.
Check the image below to state what we’re talking about:
By building your purpose around something your target audience values you can bypass the fluke of strictly gaining followers fast for the sake of winning the contest, only for them to continue unengaged and ultimately unfollow after a short period of time.
Not having a customer product to offer as a reward for competitions actually help brands get more productive with their social media contest and create something audiences can interact with. Before, major publications have held contests where users can submit their own written or artistic pieces for a prize. To conclude, the winner(s) get to feature their work on that publisher’s website. Not only is this competition interactive and engaging, the publisher and the contestant both reach a new public.
Adobe Photoshop shows a great example of creating contests that are engaging, fulfilling, and aligns strategically with the brands’ values all while being a platform-selling company.
Check it out below
Your call to action for your social media contest can be as easy or creative as you decide, depending on the value of your reward. Social Media engagement call-to-actions can be:
THE RISE OF VIDEO CONTENT ISN’T APPROACHING
Definitely you’re already informed of the growing popularity of video content. It started with streaming services like Netflix and Hulu and has intensified to features like IGTV and TikTok. Let’s not forget about YouTube and it’s dominance of internet video.
Living in a visual generation, video content has taken the internet by storm and cleared social media up with it. In 2020, expect more marketers to leverage this as a social media marketing plan.
Every social media network grants some type of video-sharing feature. Video content on social media is growing more impactful to marketing trends because it is one of the most straightforward ways to engage with users online.
Not only are social media videos straightaway- they tend to be more “relatable” and imperfect than refined video content you would find through a streaming service.
TikTok is getting a lot of popularity lately.
The ordinary TikTok user spends around 45 minutes per day on TikTok, which is more time than on Facebook, says a report by MediaPost. With TikTok’s quick-growing reputation, marketers and advertisers are focusing more of their spending budgets on the app.
I collected a list of video tools from Fanzo’s Content Marketing World session; marketers can use these tools to stimulate their brand towards video optimized content:
Adobe Spark: Create your own videos with stories that allow you to add media, pick from pre-designed layouts, add text, themes, and soundtracks.
Vidyard: A video tool for your business, instantly create and distribute interactive videos with features to send emails as videos, with analytics to track who watches your video and the continuance.
DON’T UNDERMINE LINKEDIN
LinkedIn has been working out a lot of new underrated features that can help marketers increase engagement and make the most out of the platform.
An emerging social strategy from LinkedIn expert and Content Marketing World presenter, Viveka von Rosen, says to “treat your LinkedIn company page as a campaign.”
Here’s what I learned from her presentation:
While there isn’t an optimal position for visuals on LinkedIn profiles and company pages, you want to make the most out of the space you do have to produce a visually appealing profile. You can do this through new and existing LinkedIn features that enable you to optimize for:
BANNERS
Someone with a poor social strategy would have a banner-less LinkedIn page presenting the default blue background. If you want to stay ahead of future social media trends to improve your brand or business; use that area to your advantage by applying it into campaign-style images.
CALL-TO-ACTION BUTTON
Extra new feature LinkedIn offers is CTA (Call-To-Action) buttons that send traffic to your website. You can leverage this feature to grant leads to your blog, sign-up page, registration page, or whatever landing page is most relevant to your business.
The CTA button will present at the top of your company page straight under your photo and banner. This is another feature you can be regularly changing for traffic to different landing pages.
LONG-FORM POSTS
LinkedIn’s algorithm puts first the long-form posts because they are more appealing for the LinkedIn platform. Try to build LinkedIn posts that contain of 700 characters. This involves hashtags, emojis, and mentions. If you combine all of these elements LinkedIn is more likely to encourage visibility to that post.
WILL THERE BE AUGMENTED REALITY FOR SOCIAL MEDIA?
Augmented reality (not to be confused with virtual reality) can practice the world, live through a user’s mobile camera, and design computer-generated augmentations that are meant to improve audience engagement.
Snapchat has opened the door for AR technologies in social media, brands can build augmentations featured on Snapchat that seem as “filters” where elements are appended to a users selfie camera. This has transformed into quite a popular campaign strategy for many major brands.
As we close in to 2020, expect to see other social networks including AR on their platforms. Facebook lately introduced a Facebook AR Studio, a user-friendly studio that marketers staying ahead of trends can use to quickly create rich AR experiences.
As AR remains to normalize on social media expect to see brands using AR to promote the purchase paths through virtual try-on and even virtual stores, interactive AR at live events, and more.
Discovering cool ways to engage your website or brand audience with these new and emerging tools gives a big opportunity to increase in popularity very quickly if you can be the first to innovate or tap into these new trends.
BEING RELATABLE ON SOCIAL MEDIA IS WHAT SETS BRANDS APART. PERIOD.
Being relatable is definitely one the most important field of the “5 social media marketing strategies that work in 2020” list.
The overarching point from every keynote speaker and social media marketer who frequented Content Marketing World 2019 was relatability. Social media has an exciting impact on the constant spread of information, because this digital content is at a surplus and readers are having a hard time believing anything they see on social media.
To be a successful social media marketer you need to build an audience of faithful users who trust your brand or business, to be honest, authentic, and relatable. In 2020, guarantee that your social media strategy serves these guidelines and your audience loyalty will follow.
“The future to marketing is finding authentic ways to engage with consumers. The future of marketing is not generating leads, it’s building an audience.” — Mark Bornstein, VP of Content Marketing, ON24
Did we miss anything to add to the “5 social media marketing strategies that work in 2020”? Contact us and let us know.
Alicia Newman is a 29-year-old programming professor who enjoys working with computers, and solve programming challenges. She is an Australian citizen and has a very exciting and bright personality. She is currently a PhD candidate.
