Year after year, social media continues to revolutionize the way business is done. Social media marketing has become a major part of the marketing strategy in businesses. Both small and large businesses continue to adapt various social media networks to market their services and products. They all understand the impact that social media can have on them. Social media marketing presents various challenges and concerns to businesses. One use of social media demands the continuous production of content to keep up with the storytelling. Secondly, evaluating the effectiveness of this marketing strategy has been a major concern. Consequently, it may affect the decision on the amount of financial and human resources that a business commits to social media marketing. There’s also the challenge of fitting social media into the rigid corporate structures. 
Social Media Marketing Trends
Since its invention, social media has now become an important part of many businesses. Evidently, its trends keep changing amid the various concerns it presents as a marketing strategy. Nonetheless, businesses continue to commit resources to social media marketing. Below are social media marketing trends that are taking root:
1. Rise of paid social media advertising
Facebook continues to take the lead with a 90% preference by users over other forms of social media. Twitter follows from far with 20% traction and 17% for LinkedIn. With more than 2.4 million posts per minute on Facebook, it is likely that the company will remain ahead of the game even in paid social media advertising. Social media companies have a lot of information on user interest, details and lifestyles. This is the basis on which social media target advertising works. Social media companies are able to send users information and adverts that meet their needs or interests. This has been tapped on to inform on social media advertising. The demand for promoted and sponsored pages continues to be on the rise. This is evidenced by marketers’ efforts to pay for social media advertising as a major channel of marketing on the digital platform. Social media ad targeting is expected to become more sophisticated. More advertisers and marketers will continue to adapt it in their marketing strategies. It will be interesting to see further evolution of paid advertising in the future.
2. Video Marketing
This is a hot marketing trend to watch out for. Videos have been adopted as a quick, effective and inexpensive method of marketing. Organizations prefer using short videos to tell their brand stories. It is said that pictures tell a 1,000 words; videos can tell much more. They are a fun and intimate way of interacting with the customers. 
Over 100 videos are uploaded on YouTube hourly. Marketers are spoilt for choice on video marketing with various applications at their disposal with each meeting different needs. While YouTube is popular for medium sized clips, Instagram and Vimeo are suitable for up to six seconds and 15 seconds long videos respectively. The climax of video marketing is integration of other video platforms with Facebook. Video marketing increases engagement by four percent compared to other forms of social media marketing. It is expected that the tug of war for audiences between Facebook and YouTube will continue. YouTube’s audience is larger than one billion viewers hence a major team player in video marketing. Facebook records one billion daily views of videos. Video content is social media-friendly. It is easy to consume, it’s shareable and memorable. Therefore, we can only expect a continued rise in the popularity of video marketing in the spheres of social media.
3. Content Marketing
Online users continue to source for rich and engaging information. They want information that offers them solutions to their problems, answers to their questions or to learn something they did not know. At the heart of social media marketing is story telling. Social media users want stories that they can relate to. Marketers are faced with the responsibility to produce stories that tell about their brand while engaging the customers. This boils down to the kind of posts, blog posts, articles and web content that an organization produces. Consider wording, tone and organization of content. The quality of content has become paramount to the brand image of a business. Social media has enabled marketers to deliver their content to their target market. Through content provision, marketers are able to generate new leads for their business that eventually converts to sales.
Written content is highly compatible with other forms of content such as videos and photographs. It is also usable in practically all social media platforms. Even though video marketing is gaining footing, written content remains a crucial and relevant part of social media marketing.
Keep Up With The Current Trends!
Businesses must be able to keep up with the trends in social media marketing. By so doing, they will reap full benefits on resources committed to the strategy. Furthermore, the new trends have presented solutions to the concerns and challenges presented by social media marketing. If you have other ideas about social media marketing trends nowadays, please let us know.
