Social media channels and smartphones are the perfect storm. We are now captivated and captured by both technologies. They are impacting our daily lives – how we work, play, socialize and perform any action.

So, what are the latest social media marketing trends these day and what they have in store for us as entrepreneurs, business owners, online marketers and most of all, as passionate and complicated humans.

The Rise of Chatbots

Chatbots are artificial intelligence powered robots or you can say conversational agents that are tailor-made to resolve customer’s issues with an intelligent conversation without any human involvement.

In this age of machine learning and artificial intelligence, it’s all about embedding human intelligence in machines. Facebook chatbots are rapidly gaining massive popularity and are providing a new tool for digital marketers to leverage. These chatbots are the incorporation of automatic chatbots within chat apps such as Facebook Messenger, Slack or more.

Chatbots help bands to automate tasks and help in retrieving the important information. They are gradually becoming a crucial way to improve customer experience by providing excellent customer support service and real-time interaction.

In this age of instant gratification, customers are looking for immediate response to their comments and queries. The chatbots are designed in a way that they are able to respond to answer all the queries raised by customers, without human interaction. In addition, they can help in creating a strong relationship with current and potential buyers, without spending a lot of money.

Expiring Content

Capturing the interest of audience is a battle between brands with sufficient budgets and tech-savvy marketers with little budget. The challenge for businesses these days is to stand out and gain attention of users. Now traditional marketing tactics don’t work like they used to do in past.

But Snapchat, the most famous social media platform these days, has decided to work on an entirely different approach. Make content disappeared.

This approach brought the sense of urgency among audience. Users now know that they had a very short amount of time to read or view content before it expires.

This algorithm allows users to watch 10 seconds videos that are disappeared after one view and then it extended to Snapchat stories which last for 24 hours.

Instagram observed this marketing tactic and introduced their own Instagram Stories.

If truth be told, expiring or disappearing content is now part of the ever-changing social media landscape. It’s a new social media marketing trend that brands need to try and test for your upcoming digital marketing campaigns.

Getting Organic Traffic is Important

In past, gaining attention was so easy and straightforward. You easily got likes and shares on Facebook and made followers on Twitter. But now, it is not the case.

Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and other social media channels are removing sequential timeline updates. Now brands can get online visibility only when they are ready to pull out the credit card. In fact, social media marketing is just becoming another paid media.

So, this will make more and more marketers to go back and follow the digital basics. They need to:

•         Optimize for search engine ranking pages so your band rank on the first page.
•         Creating a list of subscribers so you can reach your audience without using any Google or Facebook algorithm blocking or filtering your content and updates.
•         Working harder to come up with marketing tricks that include growth hacking – a new science of marketing.

So, it’s not necessary to open your wallet for social media marketing every time, it’s time to pursue a multi-channel strategy and get website traffic organically

Automation is now very important

With the rise of social media networks, digital marketing has become complicated and messy endeavor for many marketers. Managing every social media platform has now become important for brands to stay on top of customers’ mind.

This is the reason, apps such as Hubspot, Buffer, Markteo and different other marketing automation software are now become essential for any business no matter, small, medium or large.

These automation tools are smarter, intuitive and affordable for many marketers. If your startup is not using any of these automation tools, think about it otherwise your customers won’t think for a second to prefer your competitors over your brand.

Personalization is becoming Key

As social media tools are becoming smarter and customers’ resistance to paid advertising grows higher, the need of personalized and relevant content becomes more important than ever.

Facebook retargeting and adverts driven by determining by where the visitor have been on the web and their interests are becoming the smart digital advertising tactic for remarketing campaigns. It delivers relevant, personalized content that converts at a much faster rate.

Digital marketing automation and remarketing techniques allow marketers to send the right content to the right customer at the right time. Relevant and personalized content is king for capturing audience attention in this noisy world of data clutter.

Video Streaming

Live video streaming is an amazing way to engage with your audience. This trend is changing how we share our experiences, stories, life events no matter personal or business. Video streaming can also help brands to build trust and credibility online with authentic and relevant content.

Influencer Marketing

Bloggers create content on food, web design, fashion, mobile app development and thousands of other topics. This way, they build loyal followers and fans on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and other social media channels. They construct credibility and build trust via their authentic content.

Influencers and thought leaders who have built reach globally are the new way to target customers. Brands are now focusing on influencer marketing to reach their potential customers and brand admirers.

Artificial Intelligence

As the data volume increases exponentially, the need of artificial intelligence and machine learning tools with big, powerful processors is getting higher. Artificial intelligence is being used on Google, Facebook and other social media networks that we don’t even bother to notice.

•         LinkedIn uses artificial intelligence to provide better and relevant job matching between companies and candidates
•         Pinterest uses artificial intelligence to boost image search and recognition
•         Facebook tag feature with facial recognition, newsfeed algorithms, friends are all done by artificial intelligence algorithms.

As online marketers, you need to stay updated with these technologies and trends emerge in digital marketing to grow your brand.

The post Social Media Marketing Trends to Watch in 2017 appeared first on Branex Official Blog.

It’s the right time for business owners to look forward to what your company really needs to stand out and how to improve their digital marketing prowess in 2024. The prominence and adoption of digital marketing change year after year. With the right digital marketing agency, businesses can improve their website conversion rate, drive sales and growth. The year 2024 promises to be another year where digital marketing plays a key role in growing and establishing business, generating leads and improving brand awareness.

With every new year comes new styles, trends and ideas, here I’ve curated the top 7 digital marketing trends for small business that will rule 2024. Let’s see what does 2024 hold for small businesses and how to use these trends and techniques to benefit small business owners.

1. Artificial Intelligence

2. User Engagement

3. Influencer Marketing

4. Cross-Platform Marketing

5. Mobile Optimization

6. Video Marketing

7. Storytelling

1. Artificial Intelligence

2024 will be the year when businesses more rely on the biggest trend in marketing — artificial intelligence (AI). From designing a website to advanced electronics applications, to data analytics that predict customers’ behavior and their needs as they arise, AI is all set to solve all these problems. Though artificial intelligence will not replace humans, it will serves as a helping hand and greatly influence what we do in our jobs.

Artificial intelligence is the biggest revolution in the entire history of digital marketing. Marketers can leave the most time consuming and logical matters to artificial intelligence and free up their precious time to think creatively while ensuring that AI efforts are strategically aligned with their business goals.

2. User Engagement

It is important than ever before to develop engaging and valuable content to gain the attention of users so they can like and share your content. Create a comprehensive content marketing strategy, focus on quality, engaging pieces that can easily be repurposed. Blog posts, infographics, slideshares, are all amazing ways to curate original content that can easily be broken down and reuse differently.

Curating content for your audience based on customer-centricity will be your top priority. If your business publishes content that has no images, and falls flats, chances are you will not build credibility and unable to gain audience engagement. Therefore, create an effective content strategy and content editorial calendar to check what type of content works best for your brand and your customers as well.

3. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is indeed the most effective way to increase brand awareness, and this trend is set to explode in 2024. People use and trust social proof of brands and products. If someone’s favorite blogger or celebrity promotes any brand, he/she will probably be more inclined to trust the endorsement instead of any marketing or email campaign directly from the brand.

Even if your brand has a limited marketing budget, small businesses can establish relationships with influencers that don’t require any investment. Access to your followers and cross-promotion on your business website can often be sufficient for smaller influencers.

4. Cross-Platform Marketing

Nowadays people have at least one or two digital devices, like smartphone, laptop, and tablet. And in the digital world, marketing across different channels and devices is the new standard. Therefore, every business small, medium or large must show their online presence where their customers exist.

Marketing efforts must be coordinated so they have a synchronized feel across multiple devices with different resolutions and screen sizes. Optimizing your website design for mobile is the most important step that every business owner should take, followed by email marketing for both desktop and mobile devices.

Your digital marketing and email marketing campaigns must be optimized for desktop and mobile. In addition, keep a clear eye on ROI for every campaign and device to know your success metrics and where your ideal audience exist and is more responsive.

5. Mobile Optimization

Mobile will still rule in 2024, which really comes as no wonder. Everything from your business website to email marketing campaigns must be optimized for mobile and if no doubt, mobile website optimization is something that must be done before desktop optimization. Because nowadays many people are using their mobiles devices to view websites, read emails, and use social media channels. So, being a small business owner, it is advised to grab your audience where it actually present and modify everything according to mobile. If your produce mobile-friendly website design and content, chances are your brand will gain user engagement and ultimately more conversion rate.

6. Video Marketing

Believe it or not, video is the next big thing. However, 2024 truly promises to be the year of video for a variety of reasons. Nearly every social media platform has now become integrated video functionality into its fundamental settings and for a good reason. Nowadays, people are watching videos massively. Facebook claims 100 million hours of videos are watched through its platform daily, imagine that is only one social media channel.

With this massive adoption of video, small business owners must consider using video marketing as an integral part of their social media marketing strategy that has potential to improve audience engagement and customer loyalty. For video marketing, you don’t need to be a tech savvy to master video production. Simply come up with some amazing ideas and see how your ROI boosts.

7. Storytelling

The most enduring principle of good writing is to tell everything in an interesting way. Descriptive explanation curates a scene the users can envision and allows them to visualize the idea and story you are trying to deliver. Storytelling websites have a great potential to attract prospective clients and retain loyal customers. It provides an interactive user experience that is what every brand and consumer want.

Carefully think what your business is trying to accomplish via specified campaigns, then craft the message from the user’s perspective. Customers have now become more tech savvy and don’t want any fake advertisement that bark CTAs. Therefore, it will be a worthwhile choice to curate a story that attracts users towards your brand in a subtle way. Come up with a story that requires Instagram images that users must revisit to watch the whole campaign unfold. This is something that users will want from businesses in 2024.

In a Nutshell

Stay up-to-date with these digital marketing trends and make 2024 the best year for your small business. Follow these trends and incorporate them into your business marketing plan that can take your business towards new heights of success.

The post 7 Digital Marketing Trends for 2024:  What Small Businesses can Expect appeared first on Branex Official Blog.