Social Media Marketing (SMM) is constantly evolving, changing, and reaching more and more users. For example, in one of research the thematic portal says that the social network Facebook is visited daily more than 1.09 billion users, and more than 50 million companies have opened their pages there. The social network Snapchat is already used by more than 100 million users, and their number is growing every day.
To build a successful strategy or strategy, you need to follow trends. We have collected 9 SMM trends of 2018 and briefly described each of them.
9 SMM trends in 2018
Targeting mobile device users
The mobile segment is constantly growing. In 2016, the number of visits to social networks from mobile devices exceeded the number of visits from desktop devices. 81% of users used mobile- this was described by the Romir research holding in its publications . Now this figure continues to grow, so most content needs to be created specifically for mobile users - for example, use short structured posts, bright pictures and short videos.
Development of trade in social networks
Trade in in social networks it is convenient for the users themselves - they do not need to follow links to the online store, read the description, place an order: just make one click and write to the seller. This development opportunity should not be missed.
Increasing consumption of video content
90% of content consumed in social networks in 2017 it is video. According to IBS Russia, advertisers' advertising budgets increased by 29% in just six months. This indicates the growing popularity of the video format - in order to interest users, you need to show a video. But here it is important not to shoot too long videos and to interest users in the first 3 seconds, then this format will be effective.
Content reduction: less words, more action
The audience of social networks is constantly growing, but users are becoming lazier. Now they don't want to read long posts but prefer shorter posts. According to research Sberbank with the Validata agency, middle period the user's concentration on one object is 8 seconds, and information is consumed in small “snack” portions. Therefore, it is important not to stretch the content, but to present it in a compressed format, with maximum useful information.
Integration of instant messengers and social networks
Nikita Yabloko, head of the SMM department of Webline Promotion, spoke with interesting report at the 2017 conference. According to him, the integration of managers and social networks is great idea, because the time for users to become familiar with advertising is reduced to 30 minutes.
Use of graphic content
Users quickly perceive information - this became clear from the Sberbank study, which we discussed above. And the Social Media Examiner company conducted study , surveyed more than 5,700 marketers and found that 85% of marketers use visual content in their posts. This indirectly confirms the popularity of infographics, pictures and photographs among users. Therefore, it is worth thinking about using graphics in posts.
Live streaming is gaining popularity
At the Vk Digital Day event management of the VKontakte network reported that the audience of stories increased to 40 million per month after their addition. And 61% of marketers surveyed in the study above plan to use services Live video for promotion. Therefore, to stay in trend, you need to at least somehow interact with the format of live broadcasts on social networks.
Interest in educational content
Even though users in Lately They quickly grasp the main idea and move on; they are ready to read long posts if they contain valuable information. Therefore, you can safely use training (educational) content: master classes, life hacks, checklists, infographics, collections, longreads and other formats. The main thing is to give the reader benefit and interest him with valuable information from the first sentences.
Engagement
Engagement is important when ranking your posts in social media news feeds. The more users like, repost and comment on posts, the more popular your posts will be. This means you can reach more people target audience and promote your company/products/services even more effectively. To increase your engagement rate, follow trends: publish interesting but short posts, pay attention to videos and live videos, target users on mobile devices.
What SMM trends will you be guided by in 2018? Share your opinion in the comments.
16 min
16 min
Photo Cover photo: Pixabay.com
Text: Deep Patel
Translation: Ekaterina Bochkareva
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5. Business activity will increase in messengers
More than 2.5 billion people around the world use instant messengers, but companies, out of habit, continue to look for clients only on social networks. In 2018, brands will spend more money and time to interact with clients directly using instant messengers. Artificial intelligence, voice assistants, chatbots will allow businesses to be closer to customers and provide them with personalized services and products on platforms like Messenger, WhatsApp and Kik.
Daria Milshtein
SMM Director at Womenbz
New trend in marketing and sales - chat bots that are ready to give a quick and accurate answer to any request. Online chats and messaging apps are the most convenient and preferred way to contact a seller for more than 29% of buyers. Over time, this figure will increase, and chatbots, with a relatively low development cost, will be able to provide assistance to an endless number of people around the clock.
6. Live broadcasts will be included in content plans
What previously seemed like a curiosity has now become an integral attribute of social networks. Small and big business is already starting to actively broadcast live to attract attention more subscribers.
It is likely that in 2018, more companies will realize the need for live broadcasts and begin to include them in their monthly content plan.
GORUCK Facebook
Daria Milshtein
SMM Director at Womenbz
If you are not yet in live, then rather add periodic broadcasts to your content plan. True, filming “what I see, I sing” is not content yet. Prepare, think through everything that happens in the frame in advance, draw up a script, take care of the quality of the picture - this is a real marketing tool for sales and popularization of your brand.
8. Focus on “virtual parties”
More than a million people every day log into the application for joint parties and live video calls - Houseparty. Now this is the most convenient way for Generation Z to communicate with a group of friends of up to eight people in real time. The platform was so popular that Facebook began to look for ways to create similar functionality within its social network.
Today it’s no secret that video content in social networks plays a key role, so broadcasts of group video chats will be a logical continuation of this trend. Perhaps in 2018, Facebook will announce the release of an application similar to Houseparty in order to lure users to itself, thereby repeating the success of introducing Instagram stories.
9. Development of the Facebook Spaces project
Facebook is not just interested in video broadcasts: the company has long
Social networks have been actively developing this year - there is a large number of interactivity for users and new formats for advertisers, and messengers were finally separated from social networks. Digital agencies explained how brands’ SMM strategies have changed in this regard and what they will have to rely on when promoting content on social networks in 2018.
The real boom in stories and live broadcasts has already happened: 2017 passed under the auspices of supporting clip-based thinking modern society due to the development of tools for “disappearing”, momentary content (although there has been a slight rebound - stories can now be made even eternal). The effectiveness and relevance of the format has already been proven by Instagram - they won’t embed advertising tools into something that barely works. We are waiting for similar monetization steps from Facebook and VKontakte.
Anyone who really wanted to jump on the chatbot hype bandwagon should have done so in 2017. Those who didn’t have time, don’t have to try anymore - you won’t make a splash and will fall into the “one of the” category, especially after the Coca-Cola cases. Or just come up with something out of the ordinary.
Adding to chatbots artificial intelligence will help make it not only (and not so much) image-bearing as functional. This will help both for image and possibly for sales (isn’t that what we all work for).
In 2018, due to technically more complex mechanics, social networks will become increasingly used in a large split of digital tools (and not as a separate channel) to deeper involve the audience in communication with the brand.
Due to the increase in the share of situational content and the audience’s reaction to it, all brands will be even more active in Stories and broadcasts. Among the disadvantages of this trend: the lifespan of such content will become shorter, and the speed of its writing will increase (which may affect the quality). On the plus side (especially for agencies): the time for reducing the number of posts in exchange for increasing the coverage of these same posts is slowly ending - more “disappearing” content will be needed.
And, of course, messengers will develop even more actively next year. I think that everyone is waiting for Durov’s statements at Mobile Congress 2018. This will give an even greater impetus to the development of the application than the scandals with Roskomnadzor, especially considering that Durov mentioned monetization of the service in 2018.
1. The growth of mobile. The trend continues this year, people are still more actively logging into social network from mobile devices.
2. Chatbots. Having received their first successful cases, almost all brands have toyed with chatbots to one degree or another; the tool is interesting, but quickly gets boring.
3. Masks, gifts, sticker packs. Brands actively gave gifts for activity, messengers added new trendy masks, etc.
5. The video format is still going strong. Users have become even more accustomed to simplified content consumption.
6. Brands have become more active in using non-standard formats for integrating content (videos, covers, stories), which is not surprising: direct targeting has long ceased to produce stunning results.
7. The top Russian social networks have already become equal in age and purchasing power. One cannot safely call VKontakte a social network for teenagers, FB a platform for marketers, OK a social network for my mother, etc. Brands being proactive on key platforms, rather than exclusive ones, began to yield better results.
1. Social networks are actively being feminized. This is more about engagement. Female audience rapidly dominates comments, likes, shares and promotional activities. Many brands have already taken steps towards adapting content and advertising campaigns and will clearly continue to invest large budgets in the middle solvent segment of the audience.
2. VR and AR technologies have already begun to be integrated into sites, which is facilitated by the active development of neural networks and site statements (FB).
3. Brands will significantly increase their social media budgets (as usual).
The algorithmic news feed in all social networks (which replaced the chronological one) had a tremendous impact on the principle of work in SM. The vast majority of large brands have abandoned the priority associated with increasing the number of subscribers, moving to work on maximizing reach and increasing the engagement rate. The involvement of subscribers in communication with the brand is what the “client + agency” teams strived for in 2017 (there is no doubt that this goal will continue in 2018).
Situational marketing has moved from the “nice to have” category to a must have, a mandatory program. There's no point in Once again talk about the importance of quality content, but it is worth noting that this year the speed of work on the rapid processing of news feeds in connection with the brand and its content policy on social networks has sharply increased. In fact, relay races and flash mobs are born in a matter of hours, and selections of the best situational posts regularly appear in specialized media.
All social networks from Instagram to Odnoklassniki have increased the number of new tools (plus the frequency of updates has increased). All year there was a kind of competition: who would be the fastest to use new targeting capabilities; which brand will be the first to release dynamic covers or place buttons to go to the website in stories.
In general, we can safely say that in 2017, social networks became one of the key channels of communication between brands and audiences. This is completely logical in light of general trend on the increase in advertising budgets for promotion on the Internet compared to TV and the dynamics of growth in mobile traffic.
The visibility of a post on a social network, as in 2017, will depend on the content, its relevance, uniqueness and interest to the audience (and of course, on how professionally the content promotion strategy is built). We remember that the post is evaluated by a neural network that takes into account tens of thousands of factors. The rate for each community will be different. The principle of the algorithmic feed changes daily as the neural network learns.
The principle of “here and now” will increasingly extend to content: disappearing “stories” in this moment available on Instagram and Vkontakte, it is obvious that next year other social networks will also integrate the format. This means an even more interesting and active fight for the attention of users; it is literally necessary to convey the message before the content disappears from the network. Of course, the majority of posts will be posted in standard forms (but even here it would be appropriate to include the fashionable meme “but that’s not true!”).
The influence of bloggers and the scale of projects with them, judging by the colossal number of requests in 2017, will only continue to grow in 2018. More and more brands want to move from single activations to long-term contracts. I would like to believe that the new stars will respond with a new breakthrough in the quality of content and the level of creativity; after all, it is not for nothing that most of the top leaders have already acquired their own production studios.
In conclusion, I would like to note one of the most pleasant trends of the year - the interest of large brands in original image projects, in which the desire to convey brand values prevails over the desire to directly advertise the product. There is no doubt that next year we will see many challenges and surprises on social networks.
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Let's talk about contrast today. What is this contrast? Many photographers, especially beginners, will be surprised to hear that contrast is an element of composition. But, nevertheless, this is true. After all, contrast is not only the difference in tones and colors of an image.
Contrast as a compositional element makes the photo more expressive, more interesting and attractive to the viewer. Contrast gives photography an emotional resonance. But before we understand how contrast “works” in the art of photography, we need to understand how the concepts of “contrast” and “contrast” differ from each other.
Contrast is, first of all, the difference between areas of the image in all their various characteristics. This difference may be expressed to a greater or lesser extent. But contrast is the camera’s ability to see and capture this difference, that is, the difference between the contrasting elements of the image.
It is very important for a photographer to learn how to use this method correctly. To do this, first of all, you need to look at the photograph as some kind of abstract image, forget about its specifics. Forget about the functionality of the things depicted on it. Look and determine which type of contrast is in this image, in this specific composition more appropriate. And is he needed there in principle? The photographer needs to ensure that the contrasting elements of the image, at least in some way, resonate with its plot component. You also need to decide ahead of time whether your photo will be in color or monochrome (that is, black and white or sepia tones, for example). This may affect, for example, the brightness and sharpness of image elements that are incompatible with each other.
Now let's talk about how the contrast of elements can be expressed in photographs, in what types and forms this can occur.
Tonal Contrast
Tonal contrast refers to the deliberate darkening of the foreground and the brightening and highlighting of the background. Or vice versa. In this way, the light and dark areas of the image in the photograph are compared with each other so that the picture begins to convey the depth of space, its volume. The photograph creates what is called tonal perspective. This technique works well in monochrome, black and white photography. In color photographs, using tonal contrast, it is customary to depict the silhouettes of people who are located in the foreground of the picture.
Colour contrast
This type of contrast is somewhat more difficult to use than the one we described above. If color contrast is applied competently and correctly, then the photo will immediately catch the viewer’s eye and attract his attention. This is how our brain works that a person immediately selects an image with contrasting colors from many other images. Color contrast is the choice of colors that are on opposite sides color wheel. For example, yellow and blue, red and green. Moreover, the brighter, more saturated the shades of these colors contrasting with each other, the better. The use of color contrast is very important when working on still lifes, landscapes, and photographs of flowers. Well, for example, a landscape shot of a green forest edge with a bright spot of red rowan somewhere in the center.
Texture contrast
But what if you have objects of the same color in your frame? Well, that's how it happened. The customer wanted yellow on yellow or blue on blue? Remember that in addition to any other contrasts, there is also a contrast of textures. The rule here is simple: than a big difference in the texture of objects, the better the shape of these objects is emphasized in the photo. And another contrast of textures is great opportunity highlight any of the necessary elements of the photograph with light. This type of contrast is also good to use if you need to draw the viewer’s attention to one or another characteristic of the object being photographed. Examples? As much as you like. The wrinkled face of an old grandmother and the pink, tender cheek of a granddaughter. Or the most delicate lily against the backdrop of a rough brick wall.
Contrast of statics and dynamics
Contrast between moving and stationary objects in a photograph. For example, a lone car moving at high speed along a country highway against the backdrop of an endless field and a huge blue sky. Or a high jumper, frozen in the frame in his movement against the backdrop of silent empty stands. Flowing hair in motion beautiful girl. This is very complex look contrast. Not every photographer uses it correctly. Some are even inclined to believe that the contrast between statics and dynamics is in conflict with the basic rules and laws of composition. But if you managed to achieve such a pronounced contrast of this type in your photo, then rest assured that your work will be successful. This photograph will attract the attention of viewers and stand out from a number of works by other authors.
Semantic contrast
A very complex, perhaps even the most difficult type of contrast to use. Its essence is to combine seemingly incompatible things in the plane of one photograph. Well, for example, a person in winter suit standing on skis on a hot beach by the sea. Or a naked model on a crowded street big city. Such photographs should always be very carefully thought out. Otherwise, the viewer may mistake them for the sick fantasy of their author and express doubts about the health of his psyche. Semantic contrast is usually used in genre photography.
Well, a few words as a summary of all of the above. If you think about various types contrast in your works, your pictures will be much more attractive to the viewer. And don’t forget that in one shot you can use several of the above techniques at once.
