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Social media marketing trends and changes to look forward to 2021
Social media marketing trends and changes to look forward to 2021

March 23, 2021

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- By Mr. Vikram Kumar, Co-Founder and Managing Director, SRV Media Pvt. Ltd

In today's digital era, social media has become an indispensable part of everyone's life. It is no longer just a place to catch up with friends or meet new people; it has become the ultimate online marketing platform. Be it a new trend, a new design, or even a new brand, we depend on our social accounts as our source of information. Social Media platforms have raised the bar and have become a pioneer for impeccable content and innovative marketing solutions.

2020, as a year, has carved a path for a more digital-savvy world and as a result, almost 4.66 billion people around the world now use the internet, which is almost 60 percent of the world population. Keeping in tandem with the growing audience, social media platforms are also transforming the way they interact with the mass. They are introducing new features, changing their algorithm, and forming new trends. Let us look at a few such vital social media marketing trends that will be the highlight of 2021.

  • Live Streaming will be the most popular form of brand communication: Throughout last year, businesses, communities, and brands had to modify their marketing and communication strategy to be more digitally inclined. Zoom calls, Google Meet, Facebook, and Instagram Live have now become the new way of interaction. Though the social distancing norm is slowly fading, according to a recent Sprout Social Index, 40% of consumers voted in the favour of live streaming as a preferable way to communicate with the brand.
  • Influencer Marketing will gain traction: Influencer marketing has gained popularity because of its flexibility to achieve numerous marketing goals than just generate leads, and it is also much more affordable than paid ad campaigns. Due to this recent analysis, both the influencer count on social media and the marketer count who are looking for different influencers to promote their product or service is seeing a new high.
  • Augmented reality will make its prominent place: AR opens a vast door of possibilities for marketers with what it can achieve. Be it a customized experience, or a truly interactive and immersive method of online shopping, AR is by far the most exciting trend to make way. According to Statista, AR and VR market is expected to reach a market size of 209.2 Billion US Dollars by 2022.
  • Chatbots will take over the customer service business: Analytics shows that chatbots can save 30% on customer support costs. Chatbots have also turned out to be people's favorite because of their smart, quick, and effective resolution time. As a technology, it has a much lower maintenance cost and gets work done faster, because of which a lot of companies will give it a go this year. Little Ice is Microsoft's biggest chatbot success story with over 850,000 followers in China.
  • Cause Driven campaigns will take the limelight: According to a recent Twitter survey, 74% of respondents wanted brands to be more kind and 77% of people responded positively to brands that came forward and helped during a social crisis. Brand Campaigns that will support and promote social welfare and stand beside the community are the ones to watch out for. This could clearly be seen during the lockdown phase where brands like Unilever started campaigns around #StayHomeStaySafe keeping the social agenda in mind to reach out to its customers.
  • Local targeting is a marvel for brands without a physical outlet: In the world of social media, local targeting is as effective as SEO. Instagram and Facebook allow you to choose your audience from specific geographic locations and promote your content or ad in those localities to reach the desired crowd more cost-effectively. Geo-targeting helps in selling a product or service which is logistically feasible for upcoming or area-specific brands and helps them reach the local and relevant audience without any hassle for brands who do not have a website or a retail store.

All in all 2021 promises to be an exemplary year for social media marketing as the trends seem to revolve around two very contradicting concepts. Firstly, the need to humanize the content that brands are putting out and secondly, the necessity to adapt to smarter technology for optimum outputs.

 


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Dr. Vikram Kumar

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