10 Social Media Trends That Will Take Over In 2017

Social media is still in its prime, and social media marketing is showing no signs of losing its effectiveness. It is, however, an ever-changing medium, and keeping your business relevant in the social media world means keeping up with the latest social media marketing trends. In order to stay ahead of the game, consider capitalizing on these ten social media strategies and trends of 2017:

New Ways to Communicate 

The communities that businesses have developed on their social media pages have recently evolved into another branch of customer service and a new way for businesses to communicate directly to their customers. By developing a social media communication strategy that incorporates sales, marketing, service, and support, you can make the best use of this relatively new form of communication.

Chatbots Grow More Common 

Designed to be indistinguishable from a human employee, chatbots are a little controversial in the social media world. Largely, customers don’t like them. However, as the technology progresses and chatbots become more useful and “human-like” in their responses, more businesses are making use of them in order to cheaply and efficiently communicate with their customers on social media. Look for the chatbot trend grow in 2017, and, if you implement it in a way that will be accepted by your customers, consider capitalizing on it.   

The Power of the Social Influencer 

Not only can social influencers win your business more followers and fans, they can also leverage your current customer base to generate more sales and even higher customer satisfaction. It’s the new face of word-of-mouth marketing in the digital era. Relying on comments and recommendations coming from people who are trusted due to their fame looks to be one of the biggest social media trends in 2017.

Social Media Staffing Increases 

As social media takes on a larger role in more and more companies, these same companies are finding themselves upping the amount of staff they have dedicated to their social media marketing efforts. In 2017, don’t be afraid to spend a little more to make sure your social media efforts are done right. Having enough knowledgeable employees to effectively manage your business’s social media accounts will pay dividends in the long run. 

Greater Emotion and Creativity 

People log in to social media in order to be emotionally engaged, and businesses are picking up on this trend in their marketing techniques. Look for social media ads to become even more creative and emotionally engaging in the coming year, relying on entertaining and engaging the viewer more than supplying them with facts.

Social Media E-Commerce will Grow

Facebook recently introduced Facebook Pay, allowing users to quickly and easily send payments through the site’s Messenger app. In fact, Instagram, Twitter, Pintrest, and Snap all now offer the ability to send and receive payments on their platform, making these social media sites a promising new outlet for online sales in 2017. 

Marketers Will Make use of Virtual Reality

Virtual reality is largely still virgin territory from a marketing standpoint, but as the popularity of VR continues to skyrocket, look for businesses to figure out more innovative ways to make use of VR in their marketing efforts, including 3D ad videos and interactive VR content. 

Snap’s Influence Grows

Formerly Snapchat, Snap has rolled out several new updates that, when combined with the app’s widespread popularity, make it an increasingly attractive platform for marketers to cash in on. These updates include vertical video, live streaming video and ephemeral content for businesses–all of which give businesses even more tools for publishing video ads on Snap.

More Paid Advertising 

Organic reach is declining, meaning that paid advertising is going to have to pick up the slack. Social media is still as lucrative as ever; you may just have to pay a little more to capitalize on it in 2017.

Mobile Advertising will Become More Competitive 

Last year, Facebook brought in $7 billion in advertising revenue, 80% of which was mobile advertising revenue. Once less competitive than desktop ads, mobile ads have now become the more competitive (and therefore expensive) of the two. Nevertheless, mobile advertising is more effective than ever and should certainly still be used in 2017. 

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