Where is Social Media Marketing Headed in the Next Five Years?

Think back to a time not so long ago. It was a time when AOL sent software update CDs in the mail. It was a time when you couldn’t use the phone and the internet at the same time. And it was a time when social media did not yet exist.

Within your lifetime, social media has transformed from something students used to make plans for the weekend and share inside jokes to the source of one of the most powerful resources on earth — data. It has evolved into one of the key tools for brands and how marketers use these platforms will continue to change at an exponentially faster rate.

In order for marketing professionals to continue delivering effective campaigns, they must consistently educate themselves on the upcoming trends. To help you get started, here is a breakdown of some of the biggest changes to expect in social media marketing over the next five years.

1. More Regulated Native Advertising

When advertising first stepped onto the internet it was intrusive. It popped up and flashed, clashing with website content and annoying site visitors. After a few years, and through more effective social media tools and the advent of social media influencers, companies pursued native advertising, or advertising that was more camouflaged and cohesive with a platform.

This new form of marketing was effective. Consumers preferred these light advertising nudges over the pushier, flashier ads of the past. Eventually, though, the acceptance of native advertising faded. Consumers have begun to feel that they create a lack of transparency and they are losing trust in the influencers who are pushing the various products and services.

Over the next five years, native advertising will need to change. Not only are consumers catching on and getting frustrated with this ‘sneaky’ form of marketing, but regulators are also starting to get involved. In 2017, the Federal Trade Commission sent warnings to nearly 100 social media influencers and companies. And this is just the beginning. The FTC is going to begin demanding more transparency over the next few years. Influencers and other forms of native advertising will need to be open about the fact that the content is being paid for by the company.

2. Content With A Shorter Life Span

Marketers spend a lot of time developing campaigns. They mold and refine them to fit a target audience perfectly. For this reason, it would make sense that they would want the content to last, to be showcased for weeks, if not months. But while this may be what marketers want, it is not what consumers want, which can be seen by the over 400 million individuals who view Instagram stories each day.

One of the reasons that this ephemeral social media marketing will start taking off over the next few years is that consumers are tired of seeing the same ad every time they scroll through their social feeds. If they have seen it before they will quickly skip the ad, which means that companies are wasting money when they pay for that campaign to run for weeks on end.

A second reason quick content is going to work better and better is the concept of FOMO, or fear of missing out. When your company’s content is high quality, offers lucrative promotions, and only lives on social media for 24 hours, consumers will make the effort to view it, instead of waiting around for it to eventually pop up.

3. The Inbox Will Make A Comeback

Many marketing teams are moving away from promotional texts and emails. Statistically speaking, email marketing campaigns just don’t work as well as they used to. Instead, marketing experts are using them as a supplementary marketing aspect.

Over the next five years, this marketing method will be replaced. Instead of marketing emails that get sent straight to the spam folder or texts that are left unread, social media marketing will expand into messenger marketing. In fact, it already is. The companies that are starting to send out social media marketing content through Facebook Messenger are seeing astonishingly higher open, read, and click-through rates than in email and SMS campaigns.

There are three reasons for these improved numbers. The first is that it’s easier to opt out of messenger marketing than it is with unsubscribing from emails or texts. The second is that it allows the consumer to reply and have a conversation with the brand. The third is that the messages are short and straight to the point, enabling fast content consumption.

This preference can also be seen through the growth of users. While the four biggest social networking apps grew from about 2 billion to 2.6 billion users between 2014 and 2016, the four biggest messaging apps grew from roughly 800 million to 3 billion. In other words, consumers prefer to communicate through messenger apps rather than social media and marketers will need to serve this preference in the coming years.

4. Live Video

Social platform after social platform is adding a live video option. These subsections of the platforms are quickly becoming the most effective way for brands to get noticed by consumers. This fact is especially true for local brands as geo-location videos will be the next big trend in social media marketing and video discovery in 2019.

More specifically, when it comes to marketing, video content is more effective at making an impression, with 65% of Instagram impressions resulting from this form of marketing. Because of this and the fact that 80% of internet traffic in 2019 will be due to video content, two-thirds of marketers are planning to dive into video marketing for social media.

5. Consumers Creating Content

Authenticity is what consumers want. They need to trust the brands that they interact with. They are demanding more transparency. Because of this, the content that brands create only goes so far in connecting with consumers. It often seems fake, pushy, or too good to be true, which is why only about a fifth of the content that brands publish ever seems truly authentic to consumers.

On the other hand, when brands encourage consumers to generate and create content about products, services, or the brand in general, the community of consumers finds that 60% of this content is authentic and engaging. This can be seen by the fact that companies see a consumer engagement bump of 28% when user-generated content is mixed into the brand’s professionally created marketing content.

In order to foster this type of engagement, brands will begin to pull consumers into their social media marketing campaigns. They will invite them to make videos about their experiences, re-post Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter pictures and comments that consumers have posted, and develop contests and promotions around user-generated content.

6. Artificial Intelligence

The fact of the matter is that social media marketing has become such an enormous task that it is becoming more and more difficult for a single marketer or marketing team to take care of. But instead of hiring more marketing staff, companies will begin to embrace technology that augments their social media marketing efforts and, potentially, can take care of the vast majority of social media marketing tasks.

One way this will be happening is through AI technology that searches for user-generated content on social media platforms that is relevant to and promotional of the brand. The technology then automatically reshares it on the company’s own social pages and their website. This type of technology is currently available and it will only be built up over the next few years. Experts in AI are predicting that AI technology will soon be able to create content on its own, using stock photos and videos, social media analytics, and business strategy.

7. Social Listening

Marketers have been listening to their @ mentions on social media for years. Over the coming years, though, this will not be enough. Marketers will need to use social media listening tools to gain a more accurate understanding of their audience. These tools allow marketers to plug in keywords that pull social posts and analyze them for sentiment and enhanced consumer understanding.

This type of monitoring will be the only way for companies to keep up with consumer demands. The fact is that most of the time, 96% to be exact, when individuals discuss a brand online they don’t follow the brand. This means that companies are missing out on all of these posts, filled with opinions, thoughts, and suggestions.

As brands begin to monitor these unbranded conversations, they can also begin to respond and start conversations with consumers. This type of engagement can turn detractors into promoters and transform the social media marketing game. AI also has the potential to play a significant role in this process. Instead of a human searching through every post to find the best ones to respond to or the most insightful ones to analyze, AI can continuously filter the posts. It will be able to pull out the most relevant information and provide actionable insights.

Are You Ready to Focus on Social Media Marketing?

Social media marketing is no longer a niche aspect of marketing — a side project. It is a major part of every marketing campaign and companies must be willing to make an investment into it, both in terms of time and money. The most effective way to make this investment is by staying on top of the trends in social media marketing, allowing marketing professionals to create a comprehensive roadmap for the future.

This article first appeared on Jefflizik.com