The Most Important 2017 Social Media Trends

Marketers have to constantly stay up on social media trends. As cumbersome and time-consuming as it may be sometimes, social media is an aspect of business that has to be paid attention to if a company wants to be successful.

The landscape of social media is constantly changing. New platforms pop up almost every day and the algorithms of existing platforms usually change just as you have gotten the hang of the first platform.

Staying abreast of social media trends can mean that you either have a really successful social media year or a really bad year. Here are the most important trends to look out for in 2017.

Live video content

 Live video contentLast year, Facebook and Twitter launched their live video content services and about half of all marketers indicated that live video would be a major part of their social media plan in 2017.

In order to make live video work for you, consider which social media platform your customers used the most frequently. The platform where you get the most engagement is where you will have the most success with live video.

When you plan a live stream, make sure that you are streaming content that your audience will care about. Some good examples are big company-wide events where you’re releasing new products or announcing new initiatives, question and answer sessions with your customers or with high-level executives, and/or product demonstrations.

It is important to not haphazardly throw together live video content. Your customers expect top-notch content and you have to deliver that with your live streams as well.

Messaging apps are the new customer service tools

Messaging apps are the new customer service tools If you haven’t noticed already, many of your customers reach out to you on social media before they call or email you. Social media and the messaging services attached to social media platforms have quickly become an invaluable customer service tool.

People prefer when they can chat with a customer service representative one on one and don’t have to wait on hold or be bounced around from representative to representative.

Meet your customers where they are. Start to train your customer service representatives in social media. Consider investing in a social media management tool that makes customer service easy. Once you start making this change, your customers will become happier and more responsive to your customer service efforts.

Mobile advertising will become significantly more competitive

Marketing on mobile devices shot up in the last few years. Once people started browsing the web and social media with their phones instead of their laptops or desktops, mobile ads started to become more and more important.Mobile advertising will become significantly more competitive

If you were one of the few brands that were early adopters of mobile advertising, good for you! But sadly, there’s some bad news for you in 2017. Mobile advertising is going to get increasingly more competitive as more and more brands start to move from desktop ads to mobile ads.

The mobile ad marketplace is going to get crowded fast and that is going to make it really competitive. Advertisers should be prepared to up the quality of their content and add more money to their mobile ad budget.

While Facebook and Twitter are still going to command a lot of the mobile ad space, Instagram and Snapchat are going to start to become more and more important. People are responding to ads on Instagram faster and better than was anticipated, so Instagram optimized ads are going to be important.

The bottom line with mobile advertising is, companies need to take a hard look at their mobile ad spend and the mobile optimization of their website if they are going to compete. If you don’t have a mobile-optimized site, get on it ASAP as it could take you down this year.

 

If you want to learn more about social media trends of 2017, check out my done-for-you system below.