Social Media Marketing Agency

15 May Social Media Marketing Agency

Social Media Marketing Agency: What Does The Future Of Social Media Hold?

Social media moves at a remarkably quick lick. No sooner do you think you’ve mastered one platform than another newer and shinier one crops up; leaving you in its wake. Well, that’s not exactly true – nobody ever truly masters a platform! The point remains that things change quickly in the worlds of Instagram, Twitter, TikTok and all the other various social media platforms.

Knowing how to successfully navigate such a tumultuous world is difficult at the best of times. When you’re a business trying to capitalise on the marketing returns that social media affords you; the shifting sands of social media can be frustrating. “But I thought that’s what was popular?” is something we regularly here at our agency. What, then, does the future hold? The team here at VerriBerri, a leading social media marketing agency in Essex, wanted to look at some of the trends set to take over in the coming months.

But What About My LIKES?!

Now, Instagram has already been trialling this next particular trend out over the past few months. In fact, you’ll soon see a widespread rollout. Instagram’s premise has always been fairly simple; you post a photo (usually) and as people are scrolling, they’ll either double tap and like it, or they won’t. There really isn’t much more to it than that. Except that has proven to be more than a little problematic for people’s mental health.

What it’s contributed to in people is a feeling that self-worth is somehow intrinsically linked to ‘likes’. “The more likes I have, the more popular I am, the better I am” kind of thing. This is damaging for so many reasons, not least because should you fail to get likes on a post, you all of a sudden think you’re a failure as a person; which is just heart-breaking to acknowledge. On the flipside, it filters into a narcissism and inflated sense of self when you get lots of likes. There is no fundamental difference between the person who gets 2 likes, and the person that gets 2,000. So why do we think there is? Simply put, it’s perverse.

Because of this, Instagram has been looking to remove the like function. It hopes this will go some of the way in reversing the mind-set which apps such as itself has helped perpetuate. This will have huge consequences should it be fully implemented. Likes provide an easily tangible, quantifiable metric which brands can use to gauge how they’re performing. Measuring how campaigns are performing will become more difficult for brands. As such we may see a shift towards more obvious, explicit advertising options as opposed to influencers, say. What do we have to say about it at our social media marketing agency? Well, anything that aids more positive mental health sounds good to us.

The Continued Rise Of The Story

Content that’s available only for a short time has three main appeals to users. Firstly, it taps into FOMO (the fear of missing out) which has long since had the world’s younger generations on a hook. If you follow a brand you really connect and empathise with on their journey, whatever that journey may be, you don’t want to miss out on anything they do.

With that in mind, people engage more with temporary, ephemeral content so they never feel like they’ve missed out on something – and you can insert any of the following here -empowering, funny, ‘deep’, informative or cool. The other way that short-form content draws us in is that it’s more intimate, more ‘behind the scenes’. Whereas a photo post on Instagram may be curated and photo-shopped within an inch of its life, stories are more real. It feeds our need for voyeurism into people’s lives that aren’t ours whilst making us feel something like more of a true fan. Finally, stories work so well because nowadays we all have the attention span of caffeinated gnats.

Our social media marketing agency always encourages clients to use stories to be as open and authentic as possible. In the circles of social media where almost everything is a distorted version of reality, stories bring back some of that authenticity and perspective.

We Went Big, Now Let’s Bring It Down

One of the wonderful things about social media is that it allows you to market wherever you want to across the globe. The world becomes your oyster the instant you set up that Instagram or LinkedIn account. But the real returns are increasingly being seen in the more local marketing strategies. Local hashtags are very popular and have a high level of engagement. Let’s think of an example; if you’re an Essex-based hairdresser and you utilise the hashtag #besthairdresser, then you’ll be competing with a staggering number of other salons. If, on the other hand, you used the hashtag #besthairdresserinessex (or something even more local) then you’re going to access an audience who are deliberately looking for accounts just like yours.

Because more people are wising up to location-based hashtags, the audience is growing. This means you’re getting both quality and quantity of audience, which is the best of both worlds. If you’re unsure as to how to best use hashtags for your brand, or even how to manage your social media accounts more generally, then don’t worry. Here at our social media marketing agency, we have a team of specialists whose job it is to sniff out those successful, local hashtags as well as operating a client’s various social media platforms. This includes curating the content, scheduling and publishing it.

Contact US

These social media platforms chop and change quicker than you can unfollow that annoying celebrity on Twitter that you didn’t even realise you were! Whether you’re an expert or not, the chances are that you’d probably benefit from the help of an agency. So, if you’d like to find out more about our social media marketing agency, then get in touch! Contact VerriBerri today on 01376 386 850.