Social media didn’t only change how people communicate, but also forced itself into how companies reach their target audience. In fact, companies can no longer ignore its presence. Planning for social media marketing, help companies gain a leading position among competitors and a solid customer base. The authority that social media gives to people, empowers them to express their thoughts and feelings, and to judge companies. They also raise discussions and arguments, and if they felt unsatisfied, they post negative feedback that leads to PR crisis.

That’s why companies invest time, money and effort to make the best and most successful social media marketing strategy.

Here are some trends we, at Crowd Analyzer, believe are the best in social media marketing in 2016:

Social Analytics:

Social Analytics, also known as social media monitoring, social media measurement and social listening, is becoming essential and irreplaceable for companies and their marketing strategies, because it provides real-time insights from what people write and share on different social networks. Moreover, it allows companies to monitor their own performance on social media, as well as their competitors’ social accounts. The resulting analysis guides companies to better strategize for their marketing campaigns, especially social media marketing. It also helps them in creating opportunities that strengthens their products and services.

Social analytics can improve companies' social media marketing, and assist them in following up with their online reputation. They can also stay tuned to the marketing updates, which makes it a great trending value  in 2016 and beyond.

Video Content:

When discussing videos, there are two facts that explain why video content is becoming crucial for successful social media marketing. First of all, YouTube is still getting massive hits every single day, even after 11 years since launch in 2005. In addition, there are around 8 billion daily video views on Facebook. This partially reflects the power of employing video as a content medium. More importantly, it proves people’s preference of visual content, like images, photos, GIFs and video, more than text.

Studies have also shown that people engage with video content, more than they do with content that has text only. So for social media marketing, text won’t disappear, especially knowing that it is an authentic way of content marketing. Nevertheless, video content is growing fast, so, to form a more engaging social media marketing, videos must cooperate with text.

Video Content- Latest Trend of Content Marketing 2016#video #content #contentmarketing pic.twitter.com/aWaQGjoeOw

— Contentmart.com (@Contentmart_com) April 23, 2016

Mobile Optimization:

Optimizing websites to become mobile, is no longer a luxury or an additional feature that companies provide for customers. In fact, Google found that number of mobile searches  have exceeded the number of searches on laptops and desktops. This means that non-mobile companies aren't just losing to their competitors, but also not reaching their own clients.

Several studies have shown that mobile screens are the primary screens for social media users. This means  that social media marketing must be strategized for mobile as well as computer devices. Nevertheless, more importantly, Google algorithms started to penalize websites that aren't optimized for mobile, allowing only mobile-optimized websites to rank higher on search results.

SEO "Search Engine Optimization":

Searching for information or digging up a certain topic is no longer exclusive to searching on the web. People now are looking for information and details on social media as trusted resources, especially when looking for reviews. Therefore, social media marketing is considered to be highly authentic, and necessary for reaching customers and target audience. Optimizing company’s content to include essential keywords, will help pushing its website and social accounts to the top search results. Moreover, it will increase the traffic to its content and people’s engagement with its social networks.

Social Ads, Shopping and Commerce:

Marketing is all about improving the company’s brand-image, attracting more customers and increasing its sales. Social media marketing is not an exception. That’s why companies must consider social ads and sales when building their strategies. It is a simple equation, the more companies engage people on social media, the more their sales increase. Moreover, influencers are another important asset that social media adds. Influencers can deeply impact people’s opinions and make them like or hate certain products or services. So, it seems logical that companies increase their ads and promotional campaigns, as a part of their social media marketing.

Hello social shopping and better customer service! 5 trends that will change how we use #socialmedia in 2016. https://t.co/0AbMP8JH7r

— Alex (@akulas13) March 17, 2016

Social networks, from the other side, have started to show ads on their platforms, like Facebook and YouTube. Others added “Buy Now” buttons, like Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest, to allow advertisers to sell directly on their platforms.

Social Content:

As people look for information on social media, they are willing to spend more time reading longer formats of content. Whether companies are using it in their strategies for social media marketing or not, content on these networks is no longer exclusive to 140 characters and short posts. In fact, people are looking for long articles and blog posts, which is also helping companies rise their social content to the top of the search results.

Early 2016, Facebook launched “Instant Articles,” which allows users to open long forms of content quicker than through regular web links, and without leaving the app. How this helps companies plan for social media marketing? It doesn’t only provide a better user experience, but also eases the path for companies to reach their target audience. LinkedIn has improved their publishing features to suit long content forms. Twitter, also joined other networks, and will release a similar feature to Facebook’s articles, just to further encourage social content.

Emoji Analytics:

Emojis are rising as a new language of itself. People are increasingly using it, because they can easily express themselves. More importantly, emojis are almost universally understandable, as they share global meanings and references. Social media marketing, by default then, must include this language, especially knowing that social media is where it all originated. In a research conducted by Instagram, introducing emojis by iOS in 2011 and then to the Android keyboard in 2013, increased its use, generally and on Instagram, to reach 40% in 2015. Furthermore, one of the research’s conclusions expected that text on Instagram will be dominated by emojis.

Emoji analytics is detecting how people are using emojis in communicating, writing and sharing about brands. This helps companies build better opportunities for their social media marketing campaigns. In fact, some companies have already implemented some successful campaigns using emojis, like Domino’s Pizza #Easyorder, and Coca Cola’s #Shareacoke.

It's the cheers heard around the world! Tweet with #ShareaCoke to set a record for World’s Largest Twitter "Cheers!” pic.twitter.com/liGFMGofpJ

— Coca-Cola (@CocaCola) September 17, 2015

“What’s with @dominos tweeting all day?” - everybody

THIS. http://t.co/QWuQwnMXYM via @USATODAY#emojiordering #orderpizzawithatweet

— Domino's Pizza (@dominos) May 12, 2015

Featured image by: Freepik