Brands heading into the second half of 2023 would want to ace their social media marketing strategy while remaining current with the trends at hand. With more than five plus months of the year still left for you to make a change, this is the ideal time for brands to reflect and refocus on how they want to go about their social media strategy.
Reevaluate the Metrics that Matter most to you
A recent research by Sprout Social pointed out that social media marketers have their eyes on a variety of metrics to ensure what’s working and what is not working on social media. The research found out that different social media managers define success through different metrics.
72 percent of all social media managers define success through likes or comments, 62 percent from shares, 60 percent from interaction with customers, 34 percent from revenue attribution, 32 percent from inspiring customers into action, and 29 percent define success through inspiring an emotional response.
However, Instagram and Facebook have both tested the planned removal of public likes from their platform. From showing the number of likes on every post, these two mega giants of the social media world have decided to keep likes private.
While private likes are now very much a part of Instagram, Facebook is still testing the move. This may force a transition from using ‘Likes’ as the ultimate metric for defining content performance. And, even if Likes didn’t disappear, it was time for marketers to look beyond data at the surface level.
Social listening will be crucial in 2023 and beyond. The world just came out of a pandemic, and it can suit you better to focus on sentiment analysis rather than surface-level metrics such as likes and comments.
Target Private Communities Driven by Interest
How do you build sentimental value in your customers? To answer this question, brands have started focusing on building long-lasting and sentimental connections with their target audience in shared, private groups. This is a move away from the ‘anybody and everybody’ approach brands had previously.
Brands still do want to reach as many customers as they possibly can, but the impact of marketing to groups with shared passions and interests surely speaks for itself. Targeting specific groups with shared interests and passions allows brands to talk to individuals in a sentimental manner.
With the advancements in technology, brands are more empowered to reach customers directly. The example above illustrates just how brands can target individual sentiments through their responses.
Also, the social media trend to interact with a specific audience is trending in consumer circles as well. Private closed groups on Facebook allow social media users to interact openly with people who share the same interests. Also, users can share stories and pictures with specific people through Instagram Threads.
Facebook does have a group marketing option in place, and it offers a valuable way for brands to market to private communities or tribes, as some may call them.
Find Authentic Influencers
Influencer marketing isn’t going anywhere; in fact, it is just maturing over time. For a brief time, brands confused influencer marketing on social media with building hype and excitement. The key to influencer marketing is to create a strategy that perfectly integrates with your overall marketing motive. The narrative you host through influencer marketing should still correlate with your brand objectives. You still want to sound authentic to your users, and poorly selected influencers do not help do that.
Authentic influencers will heavily outweigh ‘power influencers.’ Power influencers can come in handy occasionally as well, but it is the authentic influencers who will actually help you in forming connections with your consumers.
Brands are also motivated to look within their internal setup and determine if employees can step up through thought leadership roles and become the face of the organization. Smaller organizations can also look into industry event speakers and ambassadors to see who fits better with the target audience for their brand.
Focus on More Advanced and Direct Social ads
Brands are still heavily investing in social media ads, even though there were trends in between to focus more on organic growth. Since consumers are generally comfortable with how social shopping works, brands realize that their biggest selling potential lies in social media advertisements.
Social media platforms recognize how heavily businesses rely on ads to forward their products and offerings. In a bid to make the interaction even seamless, many social media platforms have incorporated advanced and easier means for brands to interact directly with consumers through social media ads.
Facebook recently rolled out a series of personalization tricks that businesses can apply online to sell personally to consumers. Brands can now change the format, carousel collection and calls to action for their ad, based on who is watching it.
Instagram recently rolled out the Instagram shopping experience, which is focused on direct social selling. The platform allows retail brands an opportunity to sell directly on Instagram without having to funnel or lead followers to their own webpage through a bio link.
Even LinkedIn has jumped to the party, as it allows businesses to help get their B2B products in front of the right customers. Social media is evolving and ads are now a very big part of the change.
Keep Focusing on Stories
Stories were one of the biggest social media trends last year. Brands over the globe were excited to find a new means of reaching out to their customers. And, 2023 looks no different.
The dominance of Instagram stories is hidden from none. However, surprisingly enough, Facebook stories are almost at similar levels of engagement, with around 500 million daily users viewing or interacting with stories on the platform.
Instagram allows you to interact in a new way with your audience. You can add stories, conduct polls and do a lot more through the interactive details on the site.
With new features like ‘Stories about You’ and Growth Insights being launched by Instagram, brands can expect to use a lot more than just stories on the platform.
by Bobby J Davidson
I love our companies and we love what we do. For more information on the Davidson Family of Companies, visit www.bobbydavidson.com/about. Sign up for my Newsletter at the bottom of this page.