The Current State of Social Media: What’s Trending, Performing and Evolving

There’s no doubt that social media has changed the way we consume content. We often find ourselves in the black hole of scrolling and scrolling, moving from one piece to the next. With many of us spending more time at home these days, we are consuming way more content than ever before, spending more and more time online and staying glued to our phones.

Because of this increase in content consumption, social media presence for brands is now more important than ever before. More than 3 billion people across the globe use social media at least once a day. With 80% of social media users following at least one brand, effective social media marketing has the potential to position brands top of mind to consumers and their target audience.

We have been closely monitoring platform usage since the pandemic began. According to eMarketer, between 46% and 51% of US adults began using social media more after the outbreak began. This gave room for brands to get creative in the way they marketed to consumers.

AUGGIES’ FAVORITE PLATFORMS

As Social Media Managers at Augustine, Instagram remains our favorite platform. With the evolving advancements we utilize the platform for much more than ever before – from mini-vlogs using Reels or using IGTV to post full tutorial videos for up to 60 minutes. In the current world of online marketing, this transparency helps build trust with your audience.

Additionally, we recognize the rise of TikTok as an emerging social media platform. TikTok has taken the world by storm recently. The platform allows brands to enter a light-hearted digital space with the ability to create behind-the-scenes content and utilize trends to remain top of mind with target consumers.

We also took in mind Pinterest’s data on rising search trends throughout the pandemic. Searches have focused on positivity and wellness, and increased on cooking at home trends. This knowledge gave an advantage to many brands in the wellness and food industry. We were able to utilize those search trends and tweak social strategies to accommodate what consumers were searching for.

TACTICAL ADVICE

From a brand perspective, it is best to assess your target audience and research which platforms your target demographic is using and then build out a social and content strategy from there. The key is to create content that is engaging and appealing for your targeted consumer. With the current state of our world, it is also important for brands to create high-quality content to keep their audience engaged. When it comes to social media, it is about quality versus quantity.

In today’s climate, it is essential for brands to stay ahead of current events. If a conversation is happening on social media that affects a large majority of your audience, it’s best to assess if putting together a statement is necessary to ensure that your consumers know that they are heard and feel valued. Consumers are not afraid to stop supporting brands that they feel do not align with their values and beliefs.

With the pandemic likely here to stay for a little longer, brands are further evolving their social strategies to keep their message top of mind. It’s more important than ever to be creative and strategic with your social media marketing. Long gone are the days of organic content. If you want consumers to fall in love with your brand, you’ve got to pay-to-play. Invest in content creation and a paid media budget to reach your audience. Your audience varies by platform so it’s very important to invest in the right channels.

CASE STUDY

For many of our clients, we shifted overall social strategies to accommodate the current pandemic. This resulted in creating recovery campaigns for travel destinations to promote future travel. For some food industry clients, we changed social strategies to accommodate food shortages, created community management plans of action and highlighted community outreach campaigns that focused on donating products to food banks.

Across industries, our digital team rallied together to modify current campaigns and website content to provide a positive experience for our customers amongst the current pandemic.

For information about how to pivot destination marketing strategies or if you are looking for a digital marketing content refresh coupled with out of the box strategic thinking, contact us today to see how we can help your brand outshine!