Is Your Online Store Following Current Social Media Trends?

What in the world is going on with social media?! The second tax quarter for 2016 is well underway and many eCommerce business owners are still scratching their heads, trying to figure out current social media trends! Though social media marketing kept professional marketers busy throughout last year, 2016 has been more challenging than previously realized. There are many social media tactics that have become ineffective, while the under-appreciated techniques are starting to shine. This year has already brought witness a number of strategic changes in social media marketing efforts. Whether you’re the owner of an online business or someone who manages social media marketing for a company or brand, it’s crucial for you to know what’s happening with social media trends. If you aren’t aware of the latest and advanced tactics, pulling your social media strategies together can become a real pain.

Below are strong social media trends, the ones that are going strong in Q2 and look to be gaining speed for all of 2016. These are tactics that you should be ready to embrace. If you haven’t already adopted them into your social strategy, they can make an impact with your media marketing efforts and help you connect with your audiences effectively.

An exciting new medium that has opened up for online marketers is a reality TV-esque version of social media – live streaming. If you’re planning to humanize your brand while building strong relationships, real-time video streaming is the way to go for the rest of in 2016. Meerkat and Periscope (that Twitter recently acquired) are the two biggies in the live streaming arena. As new companies like blab.im and most recently Facebook join in, live video streaming will only grow stronger.

With the help of these real-time publishing apps, you can effectively show your audience the behind-the-scenes perspective, announce new product launches, or simply broadcast anything that explains how your offerings can be of advantage to the viewer. Real-time video streaming captures human emotion in ways text content cannot and is a perfect way to keep up with current social media trends.

[Long-Form Content] For a blink, it seemed like blogging was becoming less important. Online marketers were engaged in pushing smaller and smaller snippets of information into the social media stream. But as the stream continues to get crowded and social algorithms push out brands (the ‘Facebook debacle’ is widely known), the focus has shifted to creating long-form content, regularly. If you want to improve your brand, you should definitely consider this one of the most important social media trends and start revitalizing your blog with long-form, meaningful content.

The year 2015 was a good one in terms of racking up sales with social commerce. Online retailers witnessed substantial growth in sales by using e-commerce features like Facebook ad offerings (‘Canvas’ and a new shopping section), Twitter Buy button and Pinterest Buyable pins.

This fantastic social media trend is projected to continue in 2016. So… roll up your sleeves to make it work for you.

Is your online store on track with current social media trends?

Paid social media efforts should be an essential part of your overall social media marketing campaign. According to a report by eMarketer, around 20-25% people visit an e-commerce store or a website after seeing an ad on social media platforms, and around 14-17% of them convert. While you pay attention to your organic social media efforts, you should not ignore the potential of advertising on platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest.

If you plan to improve the sales of your online store and beat out the competition as well, you should decide upon a budget and work out an effective social media advertising strategy for 2016.

The world of social is getting both more competitive and more complex. To maximize success, you should be able to take good care of each of these tasks – content creation management, content publishing, relationship building and measurement. But the big question is – ‘What tools should you use?’

Social media guru, Devon Gardner, talked about 10 of her favorite social tools at Marketing Land’s SocialPro conference in November last year.

These include –

• NetBase: for analytics and reporting
• Canva: for photos and graphics creation
• BuzzSumo: to find hot topics and influencers
• Socialbakers: for analytics and reporting
• Google Analytics URL builder: to track the impact of links
• PicMonkey: for photos and graphics creation
• ManageFlitter: for audience management
• CrowdFire: for audience management
• LastPass: for password management
• IFTTT: for time management

Since trying to choose what will work out of 100s of social tools could easily become overwhelming, Devon’s list of 10 favorite tools is a great one to start with.

For anybody who manages any aspect of social media marketing, the key challenge is to keep pace with the upcoming tactics and social media trends, year after year. When you sit to tweak your existing social media strategy or create a new one altogether, you should definitely follow the tips mentioned above.