4 social media trends to know in 2018

Social media is a massively useful tool for entrepreneurs and business owners – and a great way to take your business opportunity from pipe dream to fully functional enterprise with customers, leads and web traffic.

With headlines from Instagram, Facebook and Snapchat emerging on an almost daily basis, it’s fair to say that social develops almost at the speed of light – which is great news for business owners always on the lookout for new ways of building relationships and making sales. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the key trends you should know about (and know how to leverage) across your social media activity in 2018.

It launched in a blaze of glory and was called a Snapchat clone but don’t let that fool you – Instagram Stories are not going anywhere anytime soon. More and more brands and influencers are taking to stories and this live stream version of social media provides a totally new immersive, engaging and interactive element to your social presence.

Whether you go micro or macro, the trend for influencer marketing is set to stay strong in 2018 which means you’ll need to start thinking about how you can use the power of your fans too. Contrary to popular opinion, you don’t need a massive budget or a big name to put influencer marketing to work for your business. It could be as simple as finding an existing social media follower or fan and tapping into their network to help you spread the word.

There’s been a lot of talk about chatbots and messaging apps in the last 8 to 10 months and we predict this will come full circle and enter the mainstream this year. If you don’t yet use messaging apps or social chat apps to communicate with your social audience, it’s probably time to get researching. Social messaging apps are great for customer service but can also be used as sales tools, offering an immediacy that lots of prospective buyers love. Facebook offers a good starting point if you’re ready to add this to your marketing mix.

Facebook has already made several public tweaks to its News Feed algorithm to try and better serve its users. The platform says it wants to make it easier for users to discover news and updates from the people and connections that matter to them. Unfortunately for you if you have a Business Page, this means declining organic reach for your Facebook updates. As a result, you’ll need to be more creative with your Facebook strategies to ensure your content reaches its desired audience – perhaps with paid social and boosted posts but also with competitions, giveaways, other brand partnerships, live streaming and even messaging.