The increasing popularity of social media platforms has led many marketing agencies to divert their attention towards capitalizing on that untapped potential. Social media marketing has become essential in any SEO campaign. The emergence of different social media channels has offered marketers better opportunities to grow their business and increase brand visibility. How a website ranks on search engines can make a huge impact on the success of a business leading to better customer acquisition and inevitably better conversion rate for the website.

Combining social media marketing with search engine optimization strategies is an effective method to increase organic traffic to your website. Several different social media trends will have a different impact on how you as marketers will implement your SEO campaigns to boost lead generation and site conversion in the coming months and years.

Through the lens of experts, different social media trends have the potential to impact the growth and success of your SEO and marketing strategies. If you are ready to embrace these trends and willing to apply them to your marketing campaigns, read on and find out what they are.

Investing in Social Media Marketing is Necessary

For years, many marketers discounted social media as something integral in digital marketing. It is only in recent years that the industry has slowly accepted the realization that social media can help boost online businesses both in increasing site traffic and conversion. One reason behind this is due in part to the explosion in the number of users who are using social media to look for products and services.

According to recent social consumer statistics:

• Social networking is used by about 76% of businesses to achieve many of their business goals.
• Retailers experience a boost of about 133% in revenue after investing in social media marketing efforts.
• About 40% of shoppers in the US make their online purchases using a smartphone.
• Many shoppers regard reviews as trustworthy and simple marketing promotions.
• Most successful brands have an active social media page that serves to reach out to more audiences and increase their marketing coverage.

Benefits of using social media for brand promotion

1 Social signal growth

Social signals can help boost search engine optimization efforts because the more people share, recommend, and like your business’ page, the more relevant your page becomes to search engines. All this will help increase the chance that your web site will be placed at a higher position when customers look up your specific brand or services.

2 Promote branding and awareness

Users of social media have the ability to recommend to their circles all the qualities they like about your brand. This can be a great marketing opportunity to improve brand awareness and image. It can also be great at creating interest in your business and improve your reputation as a credible online retailer.

3 The power of word-of-mouth

A good friend of mine decided to start a cookie business as an extra source of income. Her recipe is one she got from her mom and had always loved it growing up. She began offering it to family and friends. Pretty soon she was taking orders from friends of friends. A year later her business’ Instagram account had gathered over a thousand followers. Last we talked, she’s considering making her cookie business her full-time job.

Word of mouth advertising has always had a high trust factor from customers than simple product descriptions on a website. It plays an important role in an effective social media marketing campaign. In my story, that friend started small. The growth that she experienced relied mostly on word of mouth and an active social media presence which made it easy for people to look her up and check out her products.

4 Changing Shopping Behaviors

More and more e-commerce sites are pushed towards social media advertising due to the changing behaviour of shoppers. Surveys show that a majority of consumers are spending an average of 35 minutes a day on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram. This is a huge potential for online marketers to tap.

The number of companies that are focusing on social media marketing is growing increasingly and this will mean social media marketing will continue to grow. If your business is not already doing this, take time to consider how much you’re missing out on consumers that are already on social media platforms looking for your products but end up in a competitor’s site.

To leverage social media advertising for your business, it’s necessary to do the following:

• Define the goals of your business
• Integrate SEO with social media advertising to optimizing your marketing efforts
• Know who your target audience is, their behaviour, activities, and most importantly, their needs.
• Optimize the landing page of your website

Image-centric environment

Social media is very much focused on visuals. There is more emphasis on photos and videos than any other media. Undoubtedly, these types of content receive the majority of attention, likes, comments, and share. For internet marketers, it’s good to pay attention to this type of trend to help e-commerce sites rank higher in searches and increase traffic to their site. Social media campaigns should put more emphasis on using photos, videos, graphs, and infographics to generate interest and boost brand awareness.

Rising Groups

Groups on Facebook have become predominant in recent years. Features like live videos and story updates have largely gained traction among groups. Businesses pages have also thrived because of the group and the algorithm that Facebook has implemented made it easier for brands and companies to reach their targeted audience.

Through groups, you can get instant feedback about your product or services. It is also in groups that you can connect and interact with your customers.

Based on how society has responded to social media, it’s safe to say the likes of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and YouTube are all here to stay. The big tech behind these platforms will continue to innovate and develop these platforms to better address the needs and wants of their users. With this in mind, businesses should take action and grab a piece of that action and develop an effective social media marketing strategy.

AUTHOR BIO:

Sarah Brooks is a passionate young blogger who loves to write about SEO techniques, digital marketing, social media and more. She is currently working with Galaxy Marketing, one of the leading providers of Social Media Marketing services in Germany.