Good marketing skills are crucial to the success of a social media marketing campaign. Marketing skills can help drive engagement, improve growth, and bring traffic to your platform. In today’s digital age, technology and marketing are ever evolving. As the digital world grows and users continue to lean more towards visual content every day, trends in marketing and social media are also becoming ever more visual.
As of 2017, Facebook has over 2 billion active monthly users and Snapchat has over 170 million daily users. Twitter has over 150 million daily users while Instagram has a staggering total of 500 million daily active users.
What does this mean for you as a digital marketer?
It means that having social media marketing skills is necessary to achieve success and grow your brand. Every day, more and more users online are engaging in visual content. 3.2 billion photos are shared daily on social media platforms and 90% of content viewed and shared on social media platforms are video. These are staggering numbers and send a clear message to us all about the future of social media marketing in 2018 and what skills you need to hone for a successful year.
So, what skills do you need to succeed in 2018? There are a lot of them, but here are five of the most important ones:
1. Creativity
To stand out on social media, you have to create engaging and unique content that attracts your target audience. Your content needs to be personalized, engaging, and outside the box. You must be able to think of things that other digital marketers and social media specialists are not thinking of. This will help you increase engagement, traffic, and exposure to your brand.
Content that stands out has a positive impact on your audience as well as your analytics. Be sure that your content is creative, visual, and encourage your audience to engage as much as they can. Content development is crucial in developing your brand and your voice. This means that your visuals, design, strategies, campaigns, and your copy all must be unique.
2. Video, Video, and More Video
Did you know that in 2017, video consists of 90% of the content shared on social media platforms? Video is quickly turning into one of the primary faces of advertising in the digital world and it is even suggested that video will take up 80% of consumer traffic online by 2020. Video is also one of the best tools you can use to reach millennials.
Ephemeral Content
The success of video in social media marketing can best be seen in the rising popularity of ephemeral content. Ephemeral content is content that has a short lifespan and lasts up to 24 hours, after which point it disappears. The success of this type of content can be seen in the widely spread popularity and increasing success of Snapchat and more recently Instagram stories. Ephemeral content is authentic to users and also makes an audience take quick action. Snapchat sees over 10 billion video views daily and offers real-time engagement. Over 200 million people use Instagram stories every month. These are huge numbers and cannot be overlooked.
In order to engage with your audience and market your brand, you have to do what users in the digital world are doing… and this means amping up your video skills and using the right tools to engage your audience.
3. Mobile
It is predicted that by 2020, 59 percent of the American population that use Facebook will be accessing their social media through mobile. Mobile is used by 51% of digital media users, as opposed to 42% who use desktop.
What does this mean for you?
This means that as Facebook starts to go more and more mobile, you will need to invest your time and effort in designing your social media pages to be mobile-friendly. If you cannot reach your target audience through mobile, users will turn to your mobile-friendly competitors instead.
4. Analytics
In order to know that you’re on the right track and that you’re getting the engagement and traffic you need, you need to be familiar with analytic tools like Google Analytics and Facebook Insights. Analytics shows you what performs well, what doesn’t perform well, and what engages your users the most. Being skilled and knowledgeable in analytics will help you understand the data and activity of your users. This will allow you to interpret that data, evaluate insights, and compare your digital strategies. To ensure that your social media campaign is successful, you must be able to analyze your social media data and your conversion metrics.
Social media data includes:
- Retweets
- Shares
- Comments
- Engagement
Conversion metrics include:
- Time spent on the website
- Bounce rates
- Revenue
- Conversion rates
5. Copywriting
Good copy and content on social media platforms is a vital skill for a successful marketing campaign. Copywriting ranges from anything like writing a profile description to writing tweets, captioning pictures, and engaging with your audience.
Your platform needs a creative and engaging story that is unique to users. To do this, you need copywriting skills that go above and beyond the standard social media page. Your copywriting will be the direct face of your brand. It will tell your story and will also determine the professionalism, creativity, and uniqueness that attract your target audience.
Do your best to improve the quality of the content you are creating and you’ll find success in your social media marketing campaign.
Strive For Success
Now that you know what you need to succeed in social media marketing in 2018, put your skills to the test. Hone your copywriting, improve your video skills, and be as creative as you can possibly be. Use analytics to measure your success (or lack thereof) and make sure that anything you design as part of your plan is mobile-friendly. With these skills in hand, 2018 will be your year for social media success.
