Whether or whether your company decides to reduce spending and organic engagement on Twitter, marketers should use the start of a new year as an opportunity to step back and reassess how resources are being distributed around platforms. We’ve prioritized the “big few” for far too long, missing out on chances on networks without a blue logo.
2: Short-Form Video Leads Content Mix
Short-form video is without a doubt going to be the one significant platform change that will swiftly differentiate the companies that win from those that fail in 2023.
Even LinkedIn has changed its strategy to prioritize video content, and the majority of platforms are enthusiastic about live content. Simply put, consumers are victims of their own attention spans. Because of TikTok’s incredible popularity and appeal, short-form video has become the preferred format.
I suggest a few things to make sure your company or brand is handling that change:
Don’t follow the herd and instead, do what’s good for you. Not all people or businesses possess the personality to be silly on TikTok. However, everyone can probably be informal or informative. Find what you can offer via video that is helpful to the audience you are attempting to reach rather of shooting towards a style you don’t feel comfortable with.
When you have something to say, make videos. Don’t do it merely out of habit. Ignore what talking heads say about the frequency required to circumvent algorithms and the like. Your viewers will become accustomed to watching that one excellent video each month if you make one each month.
Yes, you should research Instagram Reels and TikTok. But you should put YouTube Shorts first. Why? It ranks No. 2 and No. 1 in the market for search engines, respectively, together with its parent firm. Shorts videos from YouTube are already disappearing from search engine results pages. You’ll experience quicker business outcomes if yours are there and properly categorized because people will see them, click over to your website, and possibly convert.
Make a vertical video template with your preferred video editing program. Or, you could make one using Canva, which is affordable and simple to use. Grab a video using your smartphone, drop it into the template with your branding, logo, URL, and other details, and then publish. It’s not necessary for video to be challenging to seem professional.
3: Proactive Audience Engagement Converts
2023 won’t be simple for many firms due to the increasing amount of content on platforms, but those who engage with their audience strategically and proactively will succeed.
Although they are essential for audience growth and brand-building, content creation and social media following growth alone do not generate leads or sales.
Businesses must implement a plan to turn their social media fans into paying clients. They must therefore take initiative. They must personally interact with their audience in order to remind them about their company and the products they sell.
For many companies that produce content incessantly while they wait for the sale, this is uncomfortable. 56.4% of organizations struggle to sell on demand, and only 4.2% are proficient at doing so, according to our own research.
The select few who push themselves and perform well will reap enormous benefits. The procedures are simple to implement, and you don’t need a large audience to generate a lot of money. Businesses only need to:
- Create content to attract the right potential customers.
- Create ‘hand-raiser’ content to identify specific people in your audience who’ve (even subtly) shown interest in your offers or demonstrate that they have a problem your offers solve.
- Reach out to those people and start a helpful, meaningful conversation.
- Make the sale. This could be getting someone on a call or selling a lower-ticket product initially.
Using social media to find and develop sales prospects should always be a priority.
Yes, you should provide unique material and interact with your audience in meaningful ways. But keep in mind your purpose if you don’t want to be a “maker.” Avoid wasting hours each week pouring your heart and soul into a platform only to have your audience fall in love with your content but have no idea what you do or how you can help.
The aforementioned approach may seem time-consuming and labor-intensive, but it yields far more fruit than the content development hamster wheel. It can also be resized.
Businesses who want to get more out of their content creation should concentrate more on how to turn followers into customers rather than just producing loads of it. And in order to accomplish this, a plan must be in place.
The quantity of engagement or followers on social media won’t ultimately cover your expenses.
The focus is always on sales.
4: Social Customer Care Leads to ROI
Businesses should be working extra hard in the current economic climate to keep their existing consumers while demonstrating to potential clients how their brand experiences far above those of their rivals.
Even in these trying times, the firms with social media customer service programs will prevail. This is due to the fact that one of the few marketing strategies that addresses both obtaining new customers and caring for existing ones is social media customer care.
A lot of marketers changed the term “social networking” to “social media,” making it less about connection and more about content. This is yet another indication that social media is in jeopardy; its core purpose of fostering connections and fostering relationships has been replaced with the broadcasting of information without any actual intention of fostering loyalty and trust.
Marketers should concentrate on dialogues and the consumer experience rather than content. Consider yourself to be your customer for a time. More of your clients are using social media for:
- Discover new brands and products
- Research product features and reviews
- Make buying decisions
- Ask support questions or lodge complaints
They anticipate being able to communicate with the brands they are contacting as a result. In other words, customers want to communicate with your company online as easily as they would in a typical brick-and-mortar store.
Studies demonstrate that early in the purchase process, brand discussion has a significant impact. The implication of this subtly important insight is that people—your customers—might be more impressionable during the acquisition stage of their online customer journey. Therefore, when a user messages a brand on social media with the question, “Hey, [brand]! Is your [product] Alexa-compatible? If you don’t have a prompt, amiable response, they’ll go to your rival and ask the same thing.
These same studies highlight how the buyer’s consideration of a purchase during the customer journey is significantly influenced by brand dialogue, whether brand- or shopper-initiated. Research reveals that brands have become less adept at responding to mentions on social media since the pandemic, despite this.
Never before has it been so simple for brands to interact with their audience directly. A social media customer care program offers businesses the ideal chance to draw in and retain clients. They only need to listen and participate in brand dialogue.
On terms of time and money, brands invest a lot in content marketing. People don’t lack for content, though. There are a lot of those. They really want to connect with people. Adopt this way of thinking by:
- Examining your social media channels to see where most of your customer care conversations (acquisition/retention) are happening
- Creating content that gets people talking (e.g., soliciting or eliciting opinions and feelings)
- Responding to questions and complaints as quickly as possible on your social channels
- Using social listening to find conversations where your brand or products are being mentioned but you aren’t being tagged
5: AI Content Recasts Content Creation Models
I like to push the boundaries. I test out every new technology in an effort to become a better consultant, instructor, and writer. I recently linked into something that gave me the same electric sensation as when I first connected to the internet. Everything in social media and content development will alter as a result.
I witnessed a presentation at SXSW about six years ago where the entire film’s narrative was created by artificial intelligence. It was both stunning and wonderful. When will this technology become a part of how we use social media every day? Up until recently, the intricate world of programmers and developers was the only place where this advanced AI existed. But now that a new, user-friendly interface has been developed, anyone can use this amazing technology. In the first week, a million people signed up for OpenAI.
OpenAI is a research facility whose goal is to develop human-beneficial artificial general intelligence (AGI).
Their goal is to make sure that AGI is developed responsibly and safely, and that its advantages are shared as broadly and equally as feasible. One of the top institutions for AI research is OpenAI, and the work they do might completely alter everything from healthcare and education to transportation and energy.
Additionally, this will completely alter how material is produced, shared, and consumed. AI might use automation to speed up the creation of better, more interesting content by creators. By assisting creators in effectively producing material catered to their target audience, AI-generated content may enable them to reach a wider audience.
One of the frequently used counterarguments is that artificial intelligence would never be able to completely replace human voice. False. With the help of this technology, everyone will be able to produce top-notch content. Many times, if a human is a poor communicator, it’s preferable to a “human voice.”
Social media marketing will change in 2023.
Much more than just blogging and copywriting is possible with OpenAI. It can answer questions, perform sentiment analysis, create graphics and ideas, and revise your content. I predict that it will offer the ability to produce audio and video by the end of the year.
The ramifications for you and your marketing profession are clear.
- You haven’t seen anything yet if you previously considered Content Shock to be an issue. It’s going to get increasingly harder to stand out in the social media shuffle.
- To use this technology, you must be involved. Avoid battling it. Control it.
- There will be a loss of many employment in content production.
- An effective personal brand is the ONLY thing that will make you stand out. You’ll need to present yourself in a way that makes YOU relevant in a world where everyone can create engaging content.
You can decide whether to feel terrified or excited. I’ll go with thrilled, and I hope you will, too.