Have you ever seen a celebrity mention a product in their social media? It probably made you want that product or at least curious about what it is. This is called influencer marketing. It was the number one trend for brands in 2017, and you can plan on it remaining a dominant trend for 2018. Influencer marketing is when a brand gets their product to be mentioned, talked about or shared by a celebrity, influential blogger or industry leader. Consumers want to hear that a product is worth buying from someone they know to be knowledgeable. This type of social media marketing makes you feel as though the product is not only reliable but desirable. I’ll admit Chrissy Teigen always gets me with any product related to food.
Move over millennials. To my fellow millennials, the day has come for us to be referred to as “old.” We are now too old to be considered the primary demographic; brands began targeting a new generation in 2017, say hello to Generation Z.
Generation Z refers to people born during or after 1995. They are close to $44 billion in purchasing power and will start defining how we use social media. What’s the difference between millennials and Generation Z? Generation Z values privacy more than millennials, and they are easily bored. The main difference is that they are harder to target because of their resistance to advertising.
There is hope for brands to reach Generation Z and that is through digital hangouts. Digital hangouts are apps that let you chat with people simultaneously and engage in activities together. There isn’t a frontrunner in this new realm so you can expect this to be a social media trend that isn’t going anywhere anytime soon.
Community-based communication is bringing more one-on-one interactions. Consumers prefer this because it’s naturally more personalized and thoughtful. That is perhaps why the popularity of Chatbots exploded this past year. Chatbots are taking the place of human representatives in some online chat interactions. If I go to my favorite store and scroll through 10 product pages, place my order, and the process continues. Chatbots can even give suggestions; if you give it a description, it will find the products that match it and some can even place the order for you. The future is bright for Chatbots and inexpensive for brands websites.
Have you noticed this past year that Facebook has started to show ads tailored towards you? You can be talking to your friends, looking online and emailing about a product then… there it is on your Facebook. You may think to yourself, “Facebook, you just out-creeped yourself,” but 2017 was significant for e-commerce integrations in a variety of social apps. Once we got used to it, we found out just how convenient and dangerous it is when you’re only one-click away from the shopping cart.
The last trend was the backlash of “fake news.” No matter your beliefs on this matter it changed how social media protected their platforms against low-quality content and how they will detect “fake news.”
Curious about the 2018 trends in social media? Check out this article.
Sources:
entrepreneur.com/article/300813
hubspot.com/stories/chatbot-marketing-future
