Social Media Marketing (SMM) is constantly evolving, changing, reaching more and more users. For example, in one of research on the thematic portal it says that the social network Facebook is visited daily over 1.09 billion users, and more than 50 million companies have launched their pages there. The social network Snapchat is already used by more than 100 million users, and their number is growing daily.

To build a successful strategy group promotion in VK or promotion on Instagram, you need to follow the trends. We have collected 9 SMM trends of 2018 and briefly described each of them.

Internet Marketing Trends 2018

SEO Trends and Trends in 2018

9 SMM trends in 2018

Targeting mobile users

The mobile segment is constantly growing. In 2016, the number of visits to social networks from mobile exceeded the number of visits from desktop devices. 81% of users have used mobile – this is described by the research holding Romir in his publications… Now this figure continues to grow, so most of the content needs to be created specifically for mobile users – for example, use short structured posts, bright images and short videos.

Development of trade in social networks

Almost all social networks have introduced trading functionality. For instance:

• Instagram has a special Shopping tags – they mark any item in the photo as a product;
• VKontakte introduced not only products in groups, but also user products;
• Facebook encouraged users to create stores that also sell products.

Trading on social networks is convenient for the users themselves – they do not need to follow the links to the online store, read the description, place an order: just make one click and write to the seller. This development opportunity should not be missed.

Increasing consumption of video content

90% of consumed content in social networks in 2017 falls on video. According to IBS Russia, advertisers’ advertising budgets have grown by 29% in just six months. This speaks of the growing popularity of the video format – in order to interest users, you need to show the video. But here it is important not to shoot too long videos and to interest users in the first 3 seconds, then this format will be effective.

Read also: SMM promotion on your own

Reducing content: less words, more action

The audience of social networks is constantly growing, however, users are becoming more lazy. Now they don’t want to read long posts, but prefer shorter posts. According to research “Sberbank” with the Validata agency, the average period of user concentration on one object is 8 seconds, and information is consumed in small “snack” portions. Therefore, it is important not to stretch the content, but to submit it in a compressed format, with a maximum of useful information.

Integration of instant messengers and social networks

Nikita Yabloko, head of the SMM department of Webline Promotion, made an interesting presentation at the 2017 conference. According to him, the integration of managers and social networks is a great idea, because the time for users to familiarize themselves with ads is reduced to 30 minutes.

True, only the messenger from Facebook can boast of a full-fledged advertising cabinet so far, but we should expect development in this direction from other social networks.

Messengers for business

Use of graphic content

Users quickly perceive information – this became clear from the research of Sberbank, which we talked about above. And Social Media Examiner held studysurveyed over 5,700 marketers and found that 85% of marketers use visual content in their posts. This indirectly confirms the popularity of infographics, pictures and photos among users. Therefore, it is worth considering using graphics in posts.

Live streaming is gaining popularity

At the event Vk Digital Day the management of the Vkontakte network reported that the audience of the stories increased to 40 million a month after they were added. And 61% of marketers surveyed in the study above plan to use services Live video for promotion… Therefore, in order to stay in trend, you need to somehow interact with the format of live broadcasts on social networks.

Live streams on Instagram

Interest in learning content

Despite the fact that users have quickly grasped the main idea and moved on lately, they are ready to read long posts if they contain valuable information. Therefore, you can safely use training (educational) content: master classes, life hacks, checklists, infographics, collections, long reads and other formats. The main thing is to give the reader benefit and interest him with valuable information from the first sentences.

How to make good educational content?

Involvement

Engagement is important when ranking your social media feed posts. The more users will like, repost and comment on posts, the more popular your posts will be. This means that you will be able to reach a larger number of target audience and promote the company / goods / services even more effectively. To increase your engagement rate, follow the trends: publish interesting, but short posts, pay attention to videos and “live” videos, target users on mobile devices.

What SMM trends of 2018 will you be guided by? Share your opinion in the comments.