Each new year signals a new starting—particularly in terms of your social media strategy. When you try new things on social this year that other brands are not doing, you have a greater chance of surprising your viewers and engaging them.
We have outlined all the major updates and new options for each of the major networks so you could incorporate them into your social marketing strategy for 2019.
1. Get personal with Messenger adverts
Messaging app utilization continues to grow—and social networks like Facebook are rapidly adapting. Facebook recently launched Messenger adverts, which permit brands to create and send targeted adverts via private chat.
In case your audience uses Messenger, it’s worth a try. With functions like automatic placement, Facebook will deliver adverts automatically to your followers. You may also edit your advert placements, which means your Messenger adverts will need to run in coordination with your news feed adverts.
Plus, with Mark Zuckerberg’s 2019 announcement that Facebook would be shifting to a more private model of social networking, brands need to get used to promoting in Messenger sooner rather than later.
Pro tip: contacting somebody through a private message is a lot more personal than a display advert. Be sure that your message is in context with other interactions you have had. For instance, you can share a discount code after somebody has made a purchase.
2. Extend your reach with Facebook Marketplace
Facebook Marketplace is an online shopping channel that permits users to purchase and sell from their local community.
In 2018, Facebook announced that companies may place adverts in Marketplace—which is great news for brands. This Marketplace adverts functionality means which you could extend your reach even further across Facebook properties. Your adverts will appear across the Facebook news feed, Instagram, Messenger, and Audience Network.
Early adoption of Marketplace adverts may have a giant payoff. As Facebook shares, companies are already seeing a return on their investment. Women’s lifestyle subscription box FabFitFun doubled its return on advert investment and increased its subscription base utilizing Marketplace adverts.
3. Build social videos with video creation kit
Facebook recently rolled out a handful of features to make amateur video creation fast and simple. Their video creation kit permits you to create mobile-optimized social videos based on pre-selected photos, logos, and text overlays.
This function is super useful if you should create lots of visual content, however, do not have an enormous budget or in-house team that could do it. You could customize different templates relying on your campaign targets, whether you are looking to run a brand awareness campaign or drive sales for a new product.
4. Try long-form storytelling with IGTV
Instagram launched IGTV, an app for watching a long-form video in 2018. It’s been designed with the Instagram viewers in mind: it is a fullscreen vertical experience.
IGTV now offers brands the chance to create videos which are up to an hour long. Compared to the usual 60 seconds that Instagram typically allows, it is a big change.
When you are looking to get into creating TV-style narrative content, then IGTV is a superb place to begin. (Or, when you have a prevalent YouTube channel, then you could double down on this effort by using IGTV.)
5. Get more engagement with Story Polls
Story Polls are the ultimate engagement play, aimed toward creating your Instagram Stories more fun and interactive. The template is pretty simple. You ask your audience a query; they will have a choice between two responses.
Don’t let the simplicity of Story Polls deceive you—it is a strong marketing tool. You could use the polls in a variety of ways relying on your content strategy, like run quizzes, show off your product, or do customer analysis. The customizable template permits for lots of flexibility to suit your targets.
6. Promote your best Story content with adverts
Instagram is testing a new function that will permit brands to advertise their Stories. Similarly to Facebook’s Boost function, Instagram Promote would permit brands to put advert budget behind their Stories content.
TechCrunch predicts that this will be the next huge moneymaker for Instagram.
Boosting content is a quick and simple method to extend the reach of your top-performing organic content. When this function becomes available, it’ll permit brands with any finances to get their greatest content in front of new eyeballs.
7. Try new engagement tactics with the speech bubble
In the next year, Twitter might look more like a messaging platform. They are at present testing some new functions—adding the new speech bubble—that will permit for an easier conversation view between users (already in messaging apps like iMessage and WhatsApp).
This function will be helpful for brands that already use Twitter as a conversation platform with customers since threaded chats will be much simpler to track and handle.
Once the beta is available to a wider group, try it and see how it works for your team. The new UI may mean that you adapt your existing engagement technique.
8. Use status updates to promote events
Twitter is also working on a status update function that will encourage users to comment on how they are feeling concerning the newest news and events.
It is a great chance for brands to promote events to their customers and take part in what’s trending with your community on Twitter.