3 minutes
What do credit unions need to know?
This article was first published on kearley.com and is reprinted with permission. Read the original here.
It feels like we just published our article on social media in 2018. Now it’s time to talk about 2019.
Here are the top three things that are changing this year in social media. We will also talk about how you can best leverage these changes to be more strategic for your brand.
Pay-To-Play
Sponsored content on social media is no longer optional. As we progress into 2019, it will continually be more and more difficult to get any sort of traction on social media without paying for ads or sponsoring posts. Facebook is a prime example. Their updated algorithms have made it insanely difficult for your content to push through the noise and be seen.
Eric Ellis, the Global Social Media Lead for international tech leader Honeywell champions paid advertising on social: “It’s now almost always a given that if my businesses want to put something up on social, it most definitely needs funding.”
Draw More Attention
Ever heard of GIFs? By now, whether you pronounce it like “gift” or a well-known peanut butter brand, you probably know exactly what GIFs (or Graphics Interchange Format images) are. Facebook really started pushing the option to share GIFs in posts and comments in early 2018. Now, everyone is into movable and engaging content.
Interactive, animated, eye-catching content really turns heads. Motion graphics and dynamic ads will draw far more attention in 2019 than any basic static image.
“We’ve been talking about social video for a few years now,” says Christina Milanowski, social media manager for Regis Corporation, Minneapolis. “But, also (somehow) we’ll need to plan for videos to be shorter. Think: 6- and 15-second videos. Our focus on producing engaging content—augmented by short(er) video, disappearing stories, emojis and GIFs—will be more important than ever.”
User-Generated Content
Get your audience to work for you. Earlier this year, we talked on the Kearley & Co. blog about Influencer Marketing and how these organic posts and videos really draw attention because of their genuine and unpolished nature. But it’s not lucrative or feasible for every company to incorporate influencer marketing in their plan. However, you have a fan base full of potential “influencers” who are probably more than happy to make content for you, and have it featured. Run a photo contest, or ask your audience for content submissions. By this, not only are you garnering free content that will most likely get a response from your audience, you are also allowing some of them to have an emotional connection to the promotion of your brand.
As John Hall, CEO and co-founder of Influence & Co. put it, “At a time when organic social reach is on the decline, sharing authentic content straight from your audience members themselves can help you connect with your followers, and build a stronger relationship with them.”
In 2019, it will continue to get trickier to reach the audiences we want to, but that is only because social media has exploded in the last several years. So now is the time to take advantage of the recent updates to these mediums, before anything else changes.
Samuel Cook is the online content specialist for Kearley & Company, a full-service marketing and branding firm specializing in financial institutions and small- to medium-sized businesses. He joined the team in early 2018, coming from Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD)®, where he served as national communications coordinator and participated in social media promotion, national public relations initiatives and advertising campaigns. If you need aid in building your social media marketing plan, reach out at BigIdeas@kearley.com or follow us on Twitter or Facebook @KearleyAndCo.
