#AgencyLife: Firebelly's Social Media Predictions For The New Year
The Firebelly Marketing team has decided to break open our fortune cookies to bring you our social media predictions for the new year. Check back in a year to see which came true!
Duncan Alney, President
Current (and prospective) customer focus
There will be a great focus on customers (and prospective customers). Social media offers the ability to answer questions and resolve issues in a manner that is preferable to many audiences (Millennials and Gen Z) while offering marketers the ability to layer in additional data and past social interactions and behavior.
Social media marketing will continue to include content, community management and ads. We’ll see more and more infusion of micro-influencers. This is the real way influencer marketing will proliferate as opposed to full scale explosion of influencer programs.
Marketers and agencies that cannot propose, defend and prove ROI will begin their long overdue path to extinction. And rightly so. Facebook, despite media noise including noisy CEOs like Elon Musk, will continue to provide advanced targeting and revenue generation for savvy marketers.
Chatbots will get better.
Chad Richards, Vice President
Bypassing the News Feed
Frustrated by dwindling organic visibility and algorithm updates that never work in their favor, savvy brands will work to bypass the News Feed and focus more of their efforts on engaging with audiences via Stories and Messenger Bots.
My wish for 2019? Instagram follower ads! C’mon, Facebook.
Lauren Johnson, Senior Social Media Manager
Greater emphasis on ROI
Brands will put more emphasis on ROI in social media. Social media marketers will need to get creative with their advertising and content creation approaches to capitalized on potential customers.
Video will continue to perform best in all areas of social media. Instagram stories and IGTV are areas to focus your social media efforts. Brands should consider investing in quality video production to compete with bigger companies in this area.
If you don’t already include user generated content in your social media approach, you need to! What better way to tell your story than though the point of view of your actual customers!
Wish list: audience growth ads for LinkedIn and Instagram, as well as editing capabilities for tweets!
Taylor Carlier, Social Media & Influencer Manager
Brands turn to micro & nano influencers
Social channels will continue to find new ways to weave in ads for brands.
Influencers will have to become more authentic to hold on to their audiences who have all caught onto the fact that they are paid to say what they say. Brands will turn their attention away from larger influencers and onto micro & nano influencers to stay real.
Video will continue to rise as the most preferred medium for messaging on all social channels.
Ad targeting will only become more restricted, resulting in brands needing to produce even better organic content for viral attention.
Kelly Perigo, Social Media Manager
The rise of AI
Visual and personalized/authentic real-time content will be more important than ever.
AI will become more of an integral component across social channels – enhancing response times, increasing engagement & providing more detailed analytics.
Marketers will focus more on marketing to Generation Z as they’re more active on social media than any other generation.
More brands will focus their efforts on Story Ads.
2019 is shaping up to be another exciting year in the world of social media.