As we sit, just weeks away from the New Year, it is becom­ing increas­ing­ly appar­ent that social media for busi­ness­es is going to expe­ri­ence plen­ty of change in 2018. Noth­ing will go away (includ­ing Face­book) but changes will happen.

The best thing we could do as a gift from us to you as the year ends is to pro­vide you with a full and com­pre­hen­sive guide on how to man­age social media in the year ahead.

The campaign stuff

As we head into 2018, busi­ness­es need to be total­ly on top of the social media cam­paign approach.

Now, more than ever, a con­nect­ed approach is need­ed in all social media. There are a ton of things that social media can achieve for a busi­ness and per­haps if we take a look at them as a kind of refresh­er the need for con­nec­tiv­i­ty will become clearer.

The sales thing:

Social media is now very much a sales plat­form, but not in the way you might think. For years peo­ple have cau­tioned against over­ly sales-heavy con­tent and that will prob­a­bly nev­er change. Instead, we’re talk­ing about the need to focus on using the direct sales method that has come to the fore. Ensure clients are using Face­book and oth­er plat­forms for pro­mo­tions that link direct­ly to the shop­ping cart. Social has mor­phed into a place where it’s okay to ask for the sale. So make sure cam­paigns include this key aspect

Customer service:

This is now de rigueur in social media, but the very best brands out there will suc­ceed on a whole new lev­el. If you’re not lis­ten­ing to your cus­tomers and react­ing swift­ly and sen­si­tive­ly to cus­tomer ser­vice issues, you’re toast. This year saw Unit­ed Air­lines treat cus­tomers ter­ri­bly. Then, the response from the CEO was per­haps the worst exam­ple of how to respond to a cus­tomer com­plaint. Ever.

The thought leadership thing:

Thought lead­er­ship has had a num­ber of changes of late. 2018 looks like it may be a ban­ner year for the dis­ci­pline. Medi­um, for exam­ple, is going from strength to strength, and brands are doing every­thing pos­si­ble on social to show expertise.

All of the above need to be seam­less­ly knit­ted togeth­er into a social media cam­paign for 2018. And that’s just for starters. There are also areas that will fea­ture mas­sive­ly in the year to come, and we’re going to start with some­thing that is per­haps more impor­tant now than ever.

Social Listening

You’ll know what this is. It’s using social media to find out more about your audi­ence and your competition.

Because of the uber com­pet­i­tive space that social media in 2018 will be, your abil­i­ty to mon­i­tor brand men­tions, com­ments and ques­tions on all your chan­nels will be cru­cial. It will be the year where social lis­ten­ing will give you the edge over your competition.

From hash­tags you’re called in to tweets that com­plain about your competitor’s ser­vice, social lis­ten­ing is quick­ly becom­ing the only way to ‘stay cur­rent’ on social.

Platform choice

This has always been a con­cern for brands but it has jumped ahead of the queue going into 2018. Know­ing which social media plat­forms to be on will make a huge dif­fer­ence in a social media land­scape that is only becom­ing more crowded.

The three areas that need atten­tion here are your resources (have you the peo­ple to cov­er a zil­lion chan­nels?), time (there is no point hav­ing all those chan­nels if you can’t post to them every day) and your audi­ence (where they are).

Just ask ques­tions around these areas and you should find that your choic­es are eas­i­er. But 2018 will most def­i­nite­ly be about being in the right places for max­i­mum ROI.

Paid social traffic

This is going to become a major thing as the next few months play out. We have gone beyond the days when paid traf­fic was seen as evil com­pared to organ­ic (Face­book kind of made that hap­pen) but it is becom­ing a very pow­er­ful force.

How­ev­er, we are still of the mind that a com­bi­na­tion of paid and organ­ic rules them all. Organ­ic will bring you author­i­ty over time. Paid gets you quick results. Putting the two togeth­er still makes per­fect sense.

Post frequency

This is still up for debate on numer­ous plat­forms and media out­lets but we feel that 2018 will not change the good old rule of com­mon sense. This gen­er­al rule dic­tates that, when post­ing to social media accounts, the fre­quen­cy should be as follows:

Twit­ter: Here, you’re look­ing at 15 tweets a day to get the best ben­e­fit out of social media mar­ket­ing on the plat­form. You should be reply­ing and talk­ing to your users constantly.

Face­book: Once or twice has pret­ty much always been the gold­en rule, and that won’t change as far as we can tell.

Pin­ter­est: Hon­est­ly, this one fluc­tu­ates and is always hyper depen­dent on the brand to an extent. But we think around 20–25 posts a day should be ample.

Insta­gram: Post no more than twice a day. Simple.

If you want to dig deep­er and per­son­alise this advice to your chan­nels and your audi­ence, do take a look at our Opti­mal Post­ing Fre­quen­cy module.

Post times

This hasn’t changed much either. How­ev­er, we will offer the same caveat that we always do, and that is to remem­ber that post­ing times are also often depen­dent on what your client’s pres­ence is like. There are dif­fer­ent time zones in the world after all.

Any­way, out­side of check­ing your met­rics and our “Best Time To Post” mod­ule to see what works and when, the fol­low­ing times are often ‘opti­mum’ for the major­i­ty of brands:

Twit­ter: Brands are find­ing that the best time to post on this plat­form is on a Wednes­day. If you’re look­ing for a time, try between 5–6pm in the time­zone of your audience.

Insta­gram: This plat­form per­forms best for brands on Mon­days and Thurs­days, prefer­ably ear­ly afternoons.

Face­book: Thurs­day, Fri­day and the week­end rest days are the best for Face­book (it’s still a ‘leisure activ­i­ty’ basi­cal­ly). Do your post­ing at 9am, 1pm and 3pm for best results.

Pin­ter­est: Again, a ‘fun’ plat­form still. Here, focus on the week­ends to find the peo­ple who use it the most.

And finally, how to grow that audience in 2018

This is what every brand is fun­da­men­tal­ly inter­est­ed in. Engage­ment is obvi­ous­ly vital­ly impor­tant, but a grow­ing audi­ence keeps things mov­ing forward.

On Face­book, go for live video. Video itself is the way for­ward with the plat­form, but brands are find­ing that live video makes the biggest impact every time. Get on top of that in 2018 and your clients will be in the right place. And if live video isn’t what your clients are all about, the video itself will make a big dif­fer­ence anyway.

At the same time, don’t ignore the fact that Face­book Mes­sen­ger is becom­ing some­thing of a gold­en child for brands. It is quick and ridicu­lous­ly easy to use, with some com­par­ing it to the ear­li­er days of email mar­ket­ing. Worth inves­ti­gat­ing in the months ahead, and the impact of Bots is a huge game-changer.

Twit­ter is kind of in a fun­ny place in that it hasn’t changed huge­ly over the last cou­ple of years. If you’re work­ing on the plat­form, keep up the rou­tine. With all that is going on around it, you have a sit­u­a­tion where it is com­ing even clos­er to being a news feed. But be ready for some huge changes includ­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a paid element.

Insta­gram is get­ting big­ger and is expect­ed to go past a bil­lion users in 2018. But for brands, we reck­on that brand­ed hash­tags are where it’s at, and where brands will con­tin­ue to see progress. Focus on these, if you haven’t already, for an edge.

Trends that we think will just get bigger in 2018

The year ahead will most like­ly see a huge increase in the role of Vir­tu­al Real­i­ty and Aug­ment­ed Real­i­ty. This will hap­pen, vis­i­bly, in gam­ing first. But we can see more com­mer­cial and mar­ket­ing-based uses com­ing to light first in 2018.

Insta­gram Sto­ries is grow­ing quick­ly. Expect to see brands either scram­bling to get to grips with it, or mak­ing it a huge part of their cur­rent social strategy.

Face­book Spaces, while a lit­tle scary, is going to be scaled up in 2018. We won’t all be using it, but you can safe­ly say every­one will be talk­ing about it.

And live stream­ing will be every­where. Brands seri­ous­ly need to think about includ­ing even small ele­ments of this if they want to stay rel­e­vant in 2018.

It’s going to be an excit­ing year. Keep up with the changes for your clients, and be ready for some seri­ous­ly intense activ­i­ty in brand spaces in the year ahead.

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