An important part of any organization’s marketing strategy is being active on the social media platforms that its audience regularly uses. This is because social media helps you listen to your audience, identify pain points, gather feedback and provide information.
A big part of excelling on social media and using it to enhance brand reach, visibility and awareness is keeping track of, and harnessing the power of social media trends. After all, these trending formats are given more weightage and visibility by social media algorithms. But, don’t hop on to the bandwagon blindly! Here are 7 tips to follow for the best results.
Define your goals
Begin with defining your business goals and what you wish to achieve via social media platforms. Is it improving brand perception, introducing products/services, highlighting testimonies, or something else? Once you have clear goals, it becomes easy to decide which trends you want to engage with and the kind of content you should be creating.
Understand your target audience
Simply following a trend is a poor use of your time and resources. An important component is a thorough understanding of who your target audience is and what they consume on social media. This will help you identify the right trends.
For example, as a video marketing agency, your target audience is likely to comprise mid-level and senior management of other companies. So, an informative Instagram reel that explains your USPs in a nutshell is going to be more impactful than a dance reel, for instance. The former will grab your audience’s attention, while the latter may be off-putting.
Spend time on social media
Don’t simply post and vanish! The more time you spend on your targeted social networking sites, the greater are your chances of identifying a trend early on. With your goals and audience in mind, you can create relevant content accordingly. Remember, the sooner you leverage trends, the better you can improve your reach and visibility. When you’re too late to the game, it’s difficult to stand out from the clutter.
Moreover, active social media listening also gives you a chance to keep track of your intended audience’s preferences, activities, likes, and dislikes. These will eventually lead you on the path to superlative content.
Create video posts
While the internet is becoming increasingly more accessible, people’s attention spans are shrinking! A recent study revealed that the attention span of an average human has diminished to a mere 8 seconds—a drop of about 25% in comparison to last year.
This means that you have about 8 seconds to communicate a message, impress your audience and steer them towards your organization. So, when you plan content around trends, prioritize video content as it is more attention-grabbing, and doesn’t require as much effort from your audience as reading a textual post does. Most importantly, don’t forget to keep it brief!
Pay attention to the basics
You may think that creating trending content is enough to see you through. While following social media trends that align with your brand and your audience will certainly help you, it’s important to pay attention to other things too. For instance, use the right hashtags, tag people (if relevant), and lastly, engage! Reply to comments and talk to your followers. Not only will this help you build a loyal community of individuals who are interested in your company and what it offers, but it will also help your content perform better.
Post consistently
It goes without saying that you should be active on social networking platforms and post consistently. Posting relevant content is good, but posting relevant content at regular intervals is even better. The age-old quote, ‘out of sight, out of mind’ is apt for social media platforms. So, once you have established your authority in your relevant industry, you need to keep going back and creating more engaging content. This keeps your brand fresh in people’s minds and gives them a reason to keep coming back to you.
To this end, you can use numerous automation tools that optimize your social media presence. They give you control over the content that you share and also the posting schedule, making it a low-effort, high-ROI option!
Use ads when necessary
Should you have the budget for it, make use of ads. They are a great way to target and re-target that segment of your audience that is most likely to benefit from your offerings. When you combine trending content with ads, you have on your hands a winning combination that can give you excellent results.
While capitalizing on trends is a great way to give your social media presence a boost, don’t just create content for the sake of doing so. Make sure that each post is providing some kind of value to your audience. Not sure how you can impress your audience and achieve your business’ goals? Get in touch with us. Our social media marketing services will keep you and your customers equally happy!
