FUTURE SOCIAL MEDIA TRENDS FOR BUSINESS

1. The Importance of Engagement

Engagement has always mattered on social media. However, with the change in Facebook’s algorithm that emphasizes meaningful interactions, it has become even more important. This means that content which starts genuine conversations has become more favored.

In order to improve your organic reach, your content needs to be highly engaging. That means it should be interesting and appealing to your target audience too. It’s not enough to just ask people to like, share, and comment on your posts.

You need to change your approach and move away from engagement baiting techniques. Genuine content is the key to success in the future of social media marketing.

2. The Rise of Groups

Groups on Facebook have new features such as live videos, story updates, and participation as a business page. With the changes in the algorithm of Facebook, Groups have become the go-to place to connect with your audience.

Through Groups, you can not only get feedback about your products but even generate additional engagement.

A similar effect has been noticed on Instagram where influencers have started making their profiles private. This is done to avoid the effects of the Instagram algorithm.

Instagram Stories also have a “Close Friends” feature. Through this, brands can showcase their Stories to a select few people to give an insider look. This can even give people a more exclusive feel and they’d feel privileged to be able to see these Stories too.

Such segmentation trends can be expected to grow and shape the future of social media marketing.

3. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing has become popular on social media very quickly. It has even beaten print marketing in terms of popularity on Google Trends. People with thousands of followers can leverage their audiences and collaborate with brands.

Influencers get paid by the brands to promote their products to their audiences. Brands, on the other hand, are looking for reliable influencers to collaborate with to reach their target customers.

However, it’s not only the influencers with massive fan-followings who can reap the benefits of influencer marketing. As it’s popularity soars, big influencers are becoming expensive for brands. This has led to the rise of micro-influencers.

Micro-influencers have fewer followers than big influencers but they have the advantage of higher engagement with their audience. Additionally, they charge significantly less than popular influencers for sponsored content. This makes it affordable for brands to collaborate with them and promote their products or services to the audiences of the influencers.

In addition to micro-influencers, there are also nano-influencers. These influencers have less than 10k followers. While brands may not be able to reach a huge audience, they can benefit from the tightly-knit audiences of nan0-influencers. And it doesn’t require a large budget to collaborate with these smaller influencers.

As they may just be setting out on their influencer marketing journey, they may seek a stable partnership. It could be a great point to start a long-term partnership with the influencer.

4. Transparency

2018 was a year filled with privacy issues on major social media platforms such as Facebook. GDPR also came into effect to protect the data that websites took from customers.

According to Sprout Social, only 55% of customers felt that brands were transparent to some extent on social media. On the other hand, only 15% of them felt that they were very transparent.

This powerful statistic shows that there’s a lot that brands need to do to grow their transparency on social media. And millennials expect brands to be the most transparent on social media. This means that you need to up the ante by admitting your mistakes or at least give honest responses to them.

The same survey also found the top desire of consumers is for transparency from brands. That includes business practices, the company’s values, and product changes. Which means that you should share changes to your products and give a behind-the-scenes look of your company too.

The greater your transparency on social media, the more consumers trust you. And trust can translate into greater sales. That said, transparency is definitely the way ahead in the future of social media marketing.

5. Driving Sales through Social Media

While social media has long been used to generate engagement and sales, the latter is becoming a solid trend. Brands are provided with the necessary tools to promote their products on social media to get sales.

With advanced tracking tools such as the Facebook Pixel, it is possible to chart out the buyer journey as well.

According to Kleiner Perkins, about 55% of people who found a product on social media purchased it later. Among social media channels, Facebook is the leading platform for product discovery. Instagram and Pinterest are closely catching up in this trend as well.

This means that you can promote your products on these social media platforms to generate consistent sales. It is not necessary to rely on sales pitches anymore.

With social media, you can catch the attention of your target consumers and get them to purchase from you. Paid promotions on social media for your products should definitely be a part of your social media marketing strategy.

6. Chat bots and AI

Chat bots are one of the latest trends on social media. It has become increasingly simple for people to reach out to brands through social media.

This makes it very important for brands to respond to their queries as quickly as possible. While it can be a difficult task to get a human to respond instantly, chat bots can come to the rescue in such situations.

AI is the future of social media marketing and with it, you can have conversations with your customers. Chat bots powered by AI are being used on Facebook Messenger by many brands to promote their products and even resolve customers’ issues.

Mastercard, for instance, has their own chat bot that talks to you about your expenditures and finances.

Due to improvements in AI, more brands are switching to this mode of customer service to improve customer satisfaction levels. It can come in handy to answer common questions which may not require any human intervention.

What's app groups.

A new WhatsApp update means users will no longer be added to group chats without their consent.The latest feature for Android and iOS devices allow users to decide who, if anyone, can add them to new groups. It can be enabled through the messaging app's privacy settings, with three options now available for who is authorised to add to groups: 'Everyone',

'My Contacts', or 'My Contacts Except...'. My Contacts” means only users you have in your address book can add you to groups and “My Contacts Except” provides additional control for who among your contacts can add you to a group.The final option allows users to blacklist certain contacts, who will be forced to send any group chat invites through private chats. Users will then have three days to decide whether or not to accept the invite.


It is the latest in a string of recent updates to the world's most popular messaging app, which is used by around 300 million people each day.


Earlier this week the Facebook-owned app introduced an update that allows users to watch Netflix videos within the app.The feature, which is currently limited to the iPhone version of the app, means WhatsApp users no longer need to leave the app to preview content, similar to the way videos from Instagram and YouTube can already be viewed within WhatsApp.

Other recent updates include biometric security support that allows Android users to secure WhatsApp with a fingerprint to prevent people from snooping on their messages.
WhatsApp is also expected to introduce potentially the biggest update in its history over the coming months, with the introduction of support for Facebook's Libra cryptocurrency. No official date has been set for Libra and various regulatory hurdles need to be overcome before its launch, though once it is ready it will allow people to send funds across Facebook's stable of apps, including Instagram and Messenger.

Here are some top tips group admins should consider:
1) Regularly post community guidelines and notes about the 'reply' functionality. Whether a new group or an established one it never hurts to post community/group guidelines and names of group admins in case people have questions. Larger and more socially-focussed groups especially benefit from doing this (especially reminding people about 'reply' functionality) as it can help topics stay on track and members know when to dip in and out and avoid self-promotional posts.

2) Create a recognised post type for important information. The content contained will vary from group to group but if you create a post that is easily recognisable (image, emoji, ASCII) people are more likely to spot the post in more active groups (plus it's easy to search for).

3) Figure out what works (or what's missing) by using a tool like WhatsAnalyzer or ChatVisualizer (check terms and conditions first). A handy tool that completes data visualisation on your exported chats. Use the data to determine when to post, topics to post about and members you might want to contact to be more active or ask if anything different needs to be done.

4) Get quick feedback using Google Forms and Doodle. Ask a question or 20 using Google Forms or schedule a meet-up easily with a quick link from Doodle both make running large groups more manageable and fairer. Using bit.ly can also add an extra layer of measurement for WhatsApp group admins (and users).
5) Schedule discussions. It may sound strange but one of the best WhatsApp groups I am in schedules specific times to discuss topics (similar to Twitter chats or AMA on Reddit). One group even goes further and gets members to help create a Google Doc on the subject that is then edited by admins and then sent to everyone. This is unlikely to work for every group but it could be a good way to limit endless rivers of updates and create something usable faster.

Social Media Marketing:Hospitality

Virtually every sector is affected by the growth of digital platforms, and the shift to mobiledevice use. However, the hospitality and travel sector has been one of the most significantly impacted, due to major shifts in how people research, plan, and subsequently purchase their travel-related needs. The landscape is evolving, and as such, hospitality marketers need to understand those changing behaviors, and update their planning in step.

From a managerial perspective, marketers of hotel brands‘ pages first need to be aware of their members‘ characteristics and understand who their members are before developing strategies for successful social media pages. In addition, these benefits attract potential consumers to join the hotel brands‘pages. 

Hotel firms should provide communication devices with diverse formats (e.g., realtime synchronous or asynchronous communication technologies such as chat or bulletin boards, virtual product presentations) that enable members to exchange information about hotel properties/services, provide critiques of ambiance, and share service experiences.

Information gathering through brand pages is the most influential element to attract potential consumers to join hotel brands‘ online pages and to encourage current members to frequently visit the page. Valuable information for the firm can be collected from the communication among consumers. By analyzing the information, hotels may gain new insights into consumer trends, needs, and experiences that affect (dis)satisfaction.

Hotel firms should consider data-mining software to monitor the content of information posted by their members. This would enable marketers to analyze the success of current marketing activities and create opportunities to refine strategies, which in turn enhance business performance. Through monitoring, marketers may provide ongoing updates to brand-related information in order to satisfy the current needs of its members. Satisfying members’ information needs is important, because efficient and convenient information gathering is a primary purpose of hotel brands‘ page members.

Hotels should enhance opportunities that help members identify like-minded consumers who are seeking similar hotel services (e.g., in-room hotel technologies such as touch screen tablets or Wi-Fi). It is the nature of an online community that individuals gather based on similar interests and purposes. On a hotel brand‘s page, individuals may form a variety of sub-groups based on similar or specific needs for hotel services. Marketers need to identify these potential sub-groups and provide more specialized and personalized services to each group.

In addition to categorizing sub-groups, marketers need to incorporate a variety of tools in order to facilitate the hedonic nature of their brand pages. For example, hotels may use a gaming platform (e.g., simple poll, online flash, online puzzles) for notifications of new services. Adding videos related to new brand information and virtual tour devices gives members enjoyable experiences during their visit to the hotel brands‘ pages. New technologies including RFID (Radio-frequency identification) can be employed to allow members to carry out community activities (e.g., photos taken at a hotel are automatically posted on its brand Facebook page and tagged on members‘ own pages) without the presence of a computer or smart-phone during their stay. 

With these features, hotel brands can enhance member engagement by increasing the hedonic experiences of being a member of the hotel brands‘ pages and directly influence the positive impression of brands. Therefore, it is critical that marketers implement various features that enable members to enjoy all of the content on the brands‘ pages

Interactions and communication among consumers do not appear to help hotel brands develop consumer commitment. Marketers may need to devise methods that depend on business-to-consumer activities rather than facilitating interaction among consumers in order to build consumer commitment towards the brand. For example, direct communication via online chat features between consumer service and consumers when making reservations may be an effective approach to build consumer commitment. Through this process, hotel staff could directly identify consumer preferences (e.g., the type of pillow or room they prefer) and special requests (e.g., particular room temperature and particular newspaper they want to be delivered). Based on the information collected through this chat feature, hotels may provide personalized service that underlines the value of staying at the hotel brand. This may enhance consumer commitment toward a hotel brand and produce loyal customers.

Social media is an innovative tool by which hotel brands can take a proactive approach to manage brand relationships with their consumers. Hotel marketers can identify the most important attributes of their brands (e.g., rooms, front desk, breakfast, room rates, and cleanliness) by analyzing the consumers’ posts on the brand pages. Following this analysis, marketers can take immediate actions based on both complimentary reviews and complaints about service. Particularly for uncomplimentary reviews, marketers can mitigate their potential harmful effects by effectively responding to consumers’ comments. All of these efforts can assist hotel brands in creating favorable brand images and building strong relationships with their members.