6 Social Media Marketing Trends That Are Ruling 2017

Social media currently has over 2.5 billion active users worldwide and this user-base is increasing at an annual growth rate of 9%. Studies which have confirmed that 75% of digital buyers refer to social media before making any online purchase, signify the power of this user-base and social media platforms. Today social media has become a highly lucrative platform for all the business for expanding their reach and generating more leads. Digital marketers are investing as much as $10.9 billion annually on social media marketing to reach out to this pool of potential customers. In order to see that this investment brings back a higher ROI, smart digital marketers keep eagle-watch on the trends in social media marketing to plan fail-safe marketing strategies.

If you are also looking for such trends then below are discussed 6 social media marketing trends that are ruling 2017. Read the trends and incorporate them into your social media marketing strategy to get success this year.

Engaging Chatbots On The Rise

24*7 chatbots instantly assist the users at any time with any query. The rise of Artificial Intelligence is enabling the chatbots to become more instantaneous and interactive in 2017. In the gone year, more than 18% of social messages required a response; with chatbots working on Artificial Intelligence, it would become easier to reduce this required response rate. With Facebook Messenger already launching over 30,000 chatbots for its 1 billion active users and 60 billion messages a day, the trend of using chatbots is exploding in 2017 and more and more businesses are seen using AI-based chatbots for quick user-interaction to keep them engaged.

Social Media Analytics As A Priority

The marketers in 2017 have started giving more priority to social media analytics for the measurement of their success or failure. Many new analytics features are being launched by various social media sites like Facebook Insights, Twitter Analytics, and the recently launched Instagram Business Tools. According to reports by Simplify360 , more than 36% of the businesses have started using social media analytics. Inclination towards these analytics tools would only increase with time to know more about their customers needs, activities, and engagement and survive in the increasing competition in the social landscape.

More Live Streaming

It was in 2016 that Facebook came up with the revolutionary concept of Live Videos and attracted almost 14% of the marketers. In 2017, more than 43% marketers are planning to or have already used live streaming for live interaction with all their audience. Seeing the success of Facebook Live and Periscope, other social media platforms like Instagram and Twitter also came up with the Live Video feature in during late 2016. Live streaming would become bigger and bigger this year and marketers would use it to stream product launches, brand events, Q/A sessions etc., to gain more engagement with their audience in 2017.

More Focus On Expiring Content

Snapchat used the unique concept of ephemerality and gained popularity among the youth for its 24 hours existing videos. This expiring concept has become more popular over time and more and more social media platforms are coming up with this concept of showing stories for a particular time before removing it forever. Facebook stories, Instagram stories and now even WhatsApp Stories have become the rising trend among marketers in 2017. According to marketers, expiring content plays with human psychology by creating a sense of urgency in the minds of the user and encouraging them to act faster.

Social Media Employee Advocacy

According to reports by Pardot, social media employee advocacy has increased by 191% in the past three years and is not going to stop in 2017 as well. More businesses have started investing in social media advocates as they have realized that almost every social users trust the information that has been shared by their family or friends over any normally shared information. Employee advocacy enables the business to tap into the network of their employees and reach out to more potential leads. Companies are also using their employees as micro-influencers in 2017 to advocate their particular brand.

Increased Use Of Social Commerce

A Forbes report recently stated that sales reps that used social media were able to outsell their peers by a whopping 78% and even 10.8% of the social sellers agreed to have made successful deals on social media. This trend of social selling has reached another level in 2017, with more and more social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Twitter and now even Instagram allowing instant purchase and other social commerce activities on their platforms. Interestingly, more than 28% of the consumers agreed to the fact that they would eagerly try new products if they trusted the brand's social presence.

This has made the online marketers to increase their efforts and finding new ways to make their social commerce stronger in 2017.
Social medias power is soaring higher with more and more users adding up every second and its becoming inescapable to plan right social media marketing strategies. To empower your business with the real power of social media, sync your effort and strategies with the 6 trends discussed above, and write your success saga in 2017.