How to Adjust Your Small Business to Changing Social Media in 2018

Discover Social Media Trends for Small Business in 2018 ! To thrive in today’s competitive marketplace, your small business needs to adapt to the most predominant marketing trends. Social media channels have grown exponentially, as, in 2018, almost every person who owns a smartphone has at least one social media account. Your customers are probably spending time on social media too, so let me ask…are you engaging them at all? If you do, are you doing it well?

Social media is constantly changing. It’s changing rapidly, and you’ll have to keep up the pace. If you do that, you’ll be able to take advantage of all the opportunities and updates that your competitors will find out about later

In today’s post, we’re going to discuss several intriguing changes that will affect every small business that has a social media presence. Pay attention, stay sharp, and implement everything you learn.

1.    People Will Continue Using Social Media Even If Many Have Lost Faith in It

Even though social media channels are growing bigger each day, people have started to lose faith and trust. According to a recent report published by Hubspot, the number of individuals who have stopped trusting social channels has considerably grown in the last few years due to massive political and religious controversy and intrusive advertising.

However, even if people do no longer pay too much attention to advertisements, an effective ad will always have chances of grabbing the eyes of the viewers. Simply put, things are getting tougher. You can no longer fool people into buying your products and services. You need to provide great value and treat social channels as the place that allows you to display and distribute your brand’s potential and offerings.

2.    Instagram Stories Will Burst Efficient Marketing Results

Instagram is definitely a viable source of traffic for any small business, no matter the niche. Most business owners and newbie internet marketers believe that Instagram is only good for certain niches such as fashion, beauty, or relationships. However, that’s far away from the truth.

Apart from the normal Instagram posts, you can take advantage of Instagram’s Stories feature in order to improve your brand’s awareness and maybe even to burst conversions. It might seem out of the place for a business to focus extensively on Instagram stories, but here are the benefits that you might not have considered:

• Stories are placed on the top of your Instagram’s news feed. Therefore, they’re grabbing a lot of attention as your IG followers won’t have to scroll in order to reach your content.
• The more views a story gets the more frequently it’ll be suggested to more individuals
• IG stories are perfect for a short attention span type of audience
• The younger demographics love stories, and many will watch them every day

3.    Leverage Social Walls

Here’s another great strategy of capturing attention on social media channels. A social media wall is basically a small group of posts. A social hub, if you will, that can be broadcasted live on Twitter and Instagram. The purpose of a social wall is to improve the quality of your overall message by including visually stimulating copy that will encourage the growth of your user’s engagement.

Social walls are an easy way of improving your organic online presence. Dialogfeed is just one of the platforms that can help you develop an effective social wall for your small business. Developing your social wall is the first step. Next, you’ll need to make it profitable. With practice, you’ll create better and better walls and your traffic will consistently increase in time. Social walls are among social media trends for small business.

4.    Automate Carefully

Using digital bots and software is a terrific way of increasing your productivity and results. However, you should pay very close attention to how you delegate your tasks. Every great marketer will automate his social media campaigns, however, he will also ensure that his target audience is not neglected in the process.

Automate your accounting and invest in premium tools, but don’t you run away from your customers. You have to get personal, and by that, I’m talking about:

• Engaging with your fans on a personal level
• Replying to fan’s comments, critiques, and feedback through email
• Reply to social media comments
• Use the most trending hashtags
• Leverage niche influencers and to improve your brand’s reach

5.    Don’t Forget About the Power of Video Content

Video marketing is surely an important trend that ruled 2017, and I predict that it’ll get even better in 2018. As you can probably notice, every social media channel favors videos over other types of content. Live videos on Facebook are placed in front of millions of viewers each day, Instagram and Twitter are flooded with video content each day, and YouTube…let’s not forget about YouTube.

Here’s what Robert Bridges, Marketing Specialist at BestEssays, notes in one of our last meetings:

“Most small business owners understand that video content is really the right choice for their business, yet they’re afraid to start developing it. They’re afraid that it’ll require more resources, skills, and budget than they possess. Nevertheless, a short and efficient video can speak so many words about their brand’s value and offers. Developing video should be one of each marketer’s top priorities for 2018!”

Takeaways

If you want to be successful online, you can no longer neglect social media marketing. Great marketers understand that in order to generate lots of sales, they need to “fish” where the fish is at. In today’s digital environment, most of the fish are swimming on various social media channels. Build a strong presence, offer great content, cultivate trust, and stay consistent with all your efforts.

Author’s bio:

Warren’s lifestyle is full of hiking adventures. When he’s not busy with his guitar or enjoying the sunny day outside, he excels at blogging skills and leaps through social media.