Just when you feel comfortable and secure with online media, the internet drops out from under your feet with the latest rules, algorithm swaps, fresh channels, and new trends. The online media marketing industry has gone through adjustment, advance, revision, and transformation. We cannot call it upheaval or metamorphosis as it changes regularly.
The world of the internet is ever-changing, what worked for you yesterday might not work for you today. It’s an online media’s hobby to shake things up for us (and keep us on their toes). Here at Sharp Media, we like to keep our fingers on the pulse. Here we have the top 6 key and coveted online media marketing tendencies to chew over when you detain your marketing strategy.
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EPHEMERAL CONTENT
Instagram and Snapchat stories are absolute examples of ephemeral content. The content which is accessible for a short duration only and then disappears after a particular amount of time is Ephemeral content. If you’re not on stories daily, we think you should be. People’s attention these days, spans are short, and the way they consume it has changed. Stories are short, engaging, and hypnotizing. Your audience can spend a lot of their time tapping through multiple stories. They love to take part in polls, use augmented reality, and see low-key, authentic content from brands. Many marketers have incorporated stories in their strategies or plan to do so in the future. Be one of those!
GOOGLE REAL ESTATE
Gone are the days when being on top of Google search engine results pages was a ‘good to go’ once you had your organic SEO in place. These days, it is not, and particularly not for Google! Today you will find a kaleidoscope of results. Often above traditional link results appears ads, maps, Q&As, videos, images, organic listings, reviews, flights, hotels, and lots more. This suggests that you cannot work only on your classic SEO using creative content and backlinks anymore. Now, you must work on your overall visibility- the Google ‘real estate’ which includes map listings, video listings (YouTube), image optimization, PR listings/mentions for branded terms, and a whole host of relevant Google snippets, etc.
AUTOMATION, AI & MACHINE LEARNING
As PPC managers experience a shift in role from manual optimizers to technical strategists and automation experts, PPC Strategy has become more precious than ever before. We’ve been anticipating great changes to our roles for years now because Google keeps shifting towards automation and machine learning. This presents new challenges to advertisers as Google’s objective is simply to maximize clicks, on the one hand. On the other hand, if we learn to adapt to an automated landscape, this provides a great opportunity to focus on strategy.
Some huge game changers which have taken away significant control from advertisers and created a need to closely monitor the effects of Google’s AI on PPC campaigns are changes to how ‘exact match’ and ‘phrase match’ close variation functions, Google’s auto-apply suggestions, and those pesky ‘expansion audiences’.
INSTAGRAM REMOVES LIKES
Instagram is one of the most popular social networks and any major change that takes place on this platform can have a dramatic effect on the wide world of social media marketing. The previous year has been a tumultuous one with Instagram’s latest changes and algorithm tweaks causing a stir. The following years are set to be no different. One major change already happening was Instagram removing the likes feature for posts for some accounts in Australia, Canada, Brazil, Ireland, Italy, Japan, New Zealand, and the US. It soon may apply to this change globally.
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With this new announcement, many brands are feeling the pressure as many wonder how they can easily report on their social efforts with such features being removed. An alternative view to it is that it’ll stop consumers from judging content with fewer likes and liking what speaks to them rather than what is popular among other users.
SOCIAL COMMERCE
Coming could be the years that social commerce takes off as an increasing number of customers shop on social platforms. Giving businesses an immersive storefront for people to discover and explore products as well as a link for purchases, Instagram already launched Instagram Shopping for selected brands. This new feature speeds up the purchasing process on the app as sitting comfortably between the IGTV tab and tagged photos tab on the profile page, products are displayed visually on the brand’s profile. Products are displayed in a similar fashion to an eCommerce site, allowing Instagram users to save products, tap for more details of the product, and finally, click through to view on the website for purchase.
The user will find these products listed in their wish-list under ‘saved posts’ or ‘liked posts’, if a user has liked or saved images that include product tags, reminding users of the products which result in further purchases hopefully.
VIDEO
Without sounding like a broken record, video is the way forward. Users will spend more time on a website with video than one without. Videos are a highly interactive and engaging tool, connecting you and your consumers. Most of the social platforms now provide editing features also which allows you to make your content more digestible, so it couldn’t be easier!
Google’s Bumper Machine is a great tool still in its infancy, introducing the ability to turn videos shorter than 90 seconds into a selection of six-second bumper ads. Videos are the future of social media content, whether it is short-form videos like those popular on TikTok or Stories or long-form content on YouTube. So if you’re not currently creating videos, what are you waiting for? It is now time that you include it in your content strategy. Videos will dominate social media and anyone who doesn’t realize that will need to spend time catching up, in the near future.
As always, expect constant change and movement and new technology, concept, and marketing ideas to emerge. There’s no question that the following years are going to see a raft of new and exciting ways for digital marketers to reach their desired audience.
