Whether you have considered running your own social media accounts or have conducted research on what marketing agencies can offer to help you enhance your online presence, I’m sure you have come across influencer marketing and the benefits of running campaigns featuring influencers for your service or product. 

Back in the day (and some might still prefer doing it this way), it was mostly an organic process. After figuring out which influencers you wanted to collaborate with, you would start engaging with them, developing a relationship with your favourite influencers, hoping that when the time comes and you want to feature them in your campaign, they would be happy to do it. In more recent years, businesses have chosen to use influencer marketing agencies and platforms that specialise in this field and have an amazing database that you can choose from for any campaign you have in mind. 

Why not just choose the ones you like and reach out to them? Well, there have been controversial challenges within the influencer community lately, mostly relating to engagement rates, effectiveness, and industry-focused influencer marketing. With accounts able to purchase followers, there was an opportunity for some people to quickly grow their following overnight and to appear like a valuable influencer account to potential brands on Instagram. Of course, their engagement rate or conversion rates were not up to the standards the clients were expecting, leaving brands disappointed and bitter about this style of marketing.

However, influencer marketing can be an amazing marketing tool for your business if done the right way. According to Oberlo, about 93% of marketers are using influencer marketing and 9 out of 10 believe it is also effective. That being said, by looking at some of the influencer marketing trends this year, it will be easier for any brand to understand exactly what type of influencer they need, what to ask for before signing a collaboration and how to approach influencer marketing strategically. 

Influencer Platforms

An increasing number of brands make the choice to outsource their influencer marketing projects to platforms specialising in this. In recent years such platforms have become quite popular, providing marketers or businesses with a great influencer database, and also other complementary services such as tracking and monitoring campaigns, insights and analytics that will provide the client with a more clear understanding of the campaign’s success and the influencer’s reach and engagement. 

More Regulations

With little to no regulation for the influencer marketing industry, it became harder to create a system that is fair and transparent for online users, as well as brands and influencers. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has stepped in the right direction, establishing some ground rules that both brands and influencers need to follow before and after running a campaign, ensuring that there is a more transparent, as well as seamless process for the influencer marketing world. One example is that the FTC clearly states that influencers must disclose their relationship with brands and the products or services they are advertising are suitable for their followers. 

Going Niche and Micro

A very popular trend in the influencer marketing industry is going after niche and micro-influencers, choosing ambassadors for your brand who are not only perceived as trustworthy and relevant by their online community but also have quite high engagement rates as they only focus on a particular niche or industry, getting to really know what their followers need and want to see on the subject. With engagement rates of 6.3% for micro-influencers, more often than not brands are starting to redirect their campaigns and budgets towards these influencers who seem more reliable, authentic and engaging for their target audience. 

Long-Term Relationships

Going hand in hand with the reasons why you would opt for micro-influencers for your campaigns, maintaining long-term relationships with them is also a plus. By a long-term relationship, we understand working with the same influencer across brand campaigns, for at least a couple of years. Since you are choosing a niche influencer that is a thought leader for the online community in your field, working with them long-term won’t be a problem because as long as they stay within your niche, they will always be a relevant choice for your campaigns. Businesses around the world are embracing this new trend and they would rather focus on fewer influencers whom they work really well with, who deliver relevant results and contribute to the success of their campaigns. 

More Audio and Video 

Another trend in the influencer marketing scene is: more audio and video content! We all know by now that video content tends to get more attention and engagement on most social media platforms and it looks like this is not changing any time soon. According to Influencer Marketing Hub’s report, 81% of businesses use video as a marketing tool and mobile video consumption rises by 100% every year, meaning that video content is a key element to an effective content marketing strategy. What’s more, audio formats are gaining popularity by the day with more podcasts than ever taking over the online environment. 

While the social media world is constantly changing, there is no doubt that these trends are here to stay for a while. With influencer marketing you can elevate your business, raise brand awareness and increase conversions by choosing to collaborate with influencers that are relevant in your industry, have built an amazing online presence and have a close relationship with their community in the digital space. 

If you would like to know more about influencer marketing and how we can help, don’t hesitate to get in touch at hello@socialgamma.com.

In our previous article, we mentioned the most common On-Page SEO activities that you need to do before you go ahead with Off-Page SEO. Now that you have performed all On-Page SEO tasks and your website is all primed and ready to go, it’s time to have a look at what you can and should be doing for your website as Off-Page SEO activity. What is Off-Page SEO after all? It sums up all the activities and tasks you perform away from your website with the ultimate goal of getting your website to rank higher in the search results.

According to Dr Peter Meyers (Moz), website owners spend about 30% of their time on Off-Page SEO activities. Of course, content plays a crucial role in your Off-Page SEO strategy and while there are many techniques that you can use and should experiment with in order to find your sweet spot, here are a few of the most popular Off-Page elements you can consider approaching when it comes to Off-Page SEO:

Link Building  

Many might associate Off-Page SEO with link building and while this is an essential element of any Off-Page SEO strategy, there are other factors that will have an impact on your website’s ranking. However, still a crucial factor for your SEO success, link building is what will get Google’s attention. Without links pointing back to your website, search engines can’t really determine whether your content is valuable, meaning they don’t really have enough information to give you a high ranking position, even though you might have lots of useful online content. 

It might not seem that obvious, however, with link building, it all starts with your internal pages. It is important to optimise your internal pages as the first step before going ahead with your link building strategy. “Site owners are often tempted to skip initial preparations for link building. But it’s important that you give this top priority, because preparing a site will ensure that you’re mindful of the links you sent to them.” (Neil Patel, The Ultimate Guide to Off-Page SEO)

One of the most important aspects of link building is that you should build and chase quality links. There are three types of links you need to be aware of:

Natural Links 

Also referred to as “editorial links”, these are the ideal links that any SEO professional is hoping to get. You don’t need to ask for them, natural links come as a result of great content and industry knowledge on the topic you’ve chosen to write about. When someone links back to your website because they want to share it in their content, that is an example of a natural link. 

Manually Built Links

Probably one of the most common link building tactics, manually built links are the ones you ask for by reaching out to bloggers, influencers, website owners or other individuals within your industry. Having great, educational content that adds value to your audience is a great way to make sure that your links are worth sharing by other people. 

Self-Created Links 

Frown upon and generally seen as black-hat SEO, self-created links are used to trick the search engines into determining that your link is valuable, when in reality, it’s not. Nowadays, SEO specialists avoid this completely as new algorithms are penalising these practices and will make it even harder in the future to do link building. 

According to Moz, a few examples of self-created links may be:

• Blog comments that are not moderated
• Press releases with optimized anchor text
• Article directories
• Guest post signatures
• Advertorials
• Embeddable widgets
• Infographic embeds
• User profile pages
• Guestbooks
• Forum signatures
• Directories that are not moderated

Being a Guest Author

In the digital space, it’s likely that there are many blogs and websites out there that specialise in your field and there’s also a high chance they’re open to people contributing as guest authors. This is your chance to publish relevant and engaging content while building high-quality links for your business. You can find high-ranking websites that you think are appropriate for your content and reach out to them to suggest a guest blog on their platform. 

Find Broken Links 

A great technique suggested by the Digital Marketing Institute is to scour blogs (particularly influencer blogs) in your field for broken links, and then suggest replacing the broken link with content you’ve written on the same subject.

Keywords

Probably the second most popular term when talking about SEO, keywords play a crucial role in the organic traffic you are getting to your website as the keywords you associate your website’s content with should reflect the search queries, the words people type on Google or other search engines to find what they’re looking for. 

Keywords shouldn’t be just the words or short phrases you’re targeting, but they should also be part of your content so make sure you include your main keywords in the article, infographics, other digital assets you are publishing on your website. You can also look at working your primary keyword into your URL, an H1 tag on the page, the meta description, and alt attributes of images on the page; all of these places will help clue search engines in on what your content is really about.

They’re usually split into two categories:

Head Keywords – These can be popular search keywords that have a lot of search volume because they represent a broad topic or a well-known concept.

Long-tail Keywords – These are usually more specific and longer keyword phrases that visitors are more likely to use when they’re closer to a point-of-purchase or when they’re using voice search. 

Domain Authority

Also known as DA, the domain authority represents the search engine ranking score that ultimately influences and predicts how high your website will rank on SERPs results. Ranging from 1 to 100, the higher the score, the better chance of ranking high on search engine result pages. 

A large number of high-quality external links will help you increase your DA score, however, it’s quite difficult to influence your DA directly. This consists of a mix of metrics, as well as link data and together, they will determine your authority score. This was done intentionally; this metric is meant to approximate how competitive a given site is in Google search results. Since Google takes a lot of factors into account, a metric that tries to calculate it must incorporate a lot of factors as well. (Moz) 

Social Media Engagement

We often don’t realise just how much other marketing activities influence SEO and social media is definitely one of them. Engaging on social media with other accounts and getting people to connect with you and share links of your website, as well as redirect their followers to one of your links is a great technique to help your website rank higher on SERPs as all of this engagement adds more value to your online content. 

Videos and Static Visuals 

Believe it or not, videos, as well as images are considered SEO elements as well and it is important to integrate them into your content in order to maximise your results. You can then submit backlinked content to various sharing sites, including image, audio, and video sharing sites.

All in all, SEO can turn out to be an amazing marketing tool for you to grow your business, drive more organic traffic to your website and raise more brand awareness while providing your audience with great content that really adds value to them. This will boost your credibility as a company and will increase your chances of getting new customers. 

Do you feel like you could benefit from SEO activities but aren’t sure how to develop an effective SEO strategy? Luckily, we can help you with that, get in touch with us at hello@socialgamma.com and we can start creating an in-depth SEO strategy that will help you achieve your goals. 

By now, most people have heard of SEO regardless of their industry, department or company size. But what is the actual marketing impact of SEO and how can you use it as a tool to promote and grow your business? Let’s take a look at what SEO stands for and how marketers around the world use it to promote their clients.

SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) is the process of driving traffic to your website with the help of all of your organic online content (blogs, articles, social media content etc.). However, be aware that it is not just any content that will increase your website’s traffic; it is crucial that it is optimised specifically for SEO in order to maximise results. SEO entails optimising all of your digital assets, such as your website, your social media, website content, etc. for search engines. 

Okay, but do you REALLY need it?

Why can’t I just run paid advertising campaigns to increase conversions? Well, you can choose to split your marketing budget in any way you want and feel free to experiment with different marketing strategies until you find the sweet spot. However, the reason that SEO might be a better choice is that, with SEO, individuals have already shown an interest in a particular product or service. With online advertising campaigns, you are targeting people based on different strategies such as retargeting or lookalike audiences with the goal of persuading them to purchase your product. But you don’t need to do that with SEO because people are already looking for a specific product or service – you just need to make sure that yours comes first on the search engine results. 

Becoming increasingly popular by the year, SEO is a very effective way to fulfil your marketing goals, whether that is brand awareness or conversions as it’s been found that most people will never look further than the first page on Google. Imagine you are an organic tea brand in London. What if every time someone typed in “organic tea London” into Google, your brand would pop up first? That would have a dramatic impact on your sales, as well as your brand awareness. Even better, this could help you tremendously with your online advertising campaigns too. You now have an audience that you know have enquired about your product or are likely to recognise your brand in the online environment. It will give you an advantage when it comes to targeting different audiences and increase your chances of generating sales. 

Where do you start?

The two main types of SEO that you will be introduced to are On-Page SEO and Off-Page SEO. When thinking about search engine optimisation, most of us think of link building and complicated keywords strategies. While all of these elements are, of course, crucial to SEO, On-Page SEO serves only as a foundation for everything else that you implement later as part of your optimisation strategy. As most content will be published on your website, it makes a lot of sense to start with the website itself. Your On-Page SEO is a primer of the Off-Page SEO activities and you want to get it right. So, is your website optimised? 

On-Page SEO 

URLs 

Your URL structure is important not only for SEO but also for tracking purposes. Ensuring you have a clearly defined and segmented URL structure will give you a better understanding of what performs well and what is not working so well on your website. 

From an SEO standpoint, you want to keep your URLs short and concise for best results and remember to include relevant keywords wherever applicable. 

Sitemap

Another important On-Page element that you need to consider when performing On-Page SEO activities is your sitemap. This is (quite literally) a map or a blueprint of your website. Why would this be relevant for SEO? Well, it helps Google or other search engines to find, index or crawl your website’s content. By letting the search engines know which pages of your website are the most important, it will help to optimise your website and prime it for Off-Page activities. 

Title Tags 

While we’ve learned in recent years that your website content must include keywords and be SEO-friendly, placing these keywords in the titles of your website is probably still one of the most impactful positions. 

“The length of a title tag that Google will show will vary (it’s based on pixels, not character counts) but in general 55-60 characters is a good rule of thumb here.” (Demers T., 2020) 

Meta Descriptions 

Although you might be unsure what a meta description is, I guarantee that you see meta descriptions every time you search the web. 

The meta description is, put simply, a 160 character snippet of your website’s content. It’s used by search engines to let viewers know a bit about what they are going to find on a certain link before they actually visit the website. Seeing as many of us read the meta description before we enter a website, this is a crucial element for optimising your website. 

Alt Text 

It is highly likely that you have images on your website, whether they are in your blog posts, the home page, product or service pages, price lists, etc. Believe it or not, all of the images on your website are relevant for SEO. Since these are recognised as content by search engines, it’s essential to tag these pictures with relevant keywords in order to make it easier for Google or other search engines to find and push your website higher in the search results. 

“For example, if you have pictures of a customized Superman water bottle on your article, then save the alt-text for the image as ‘customized superman water bottle’, and then that picture will pop up whenever that keyword is searched for.

60% of consumers are more likely to contact a business or visit a site when a relative image shows up in their search results.” (Patel A., 2020) 

HTTP vs HTTPS

“A protocol is that “http” or “https” preceding your domain name. Google recommends that all websites have a secure protocol (the “s” in “https” stands for “secure”). To ensure that your URLs are using the https:// protocol instead of http://, you must obtain an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) certificate. SSL certificates are used to encrypt data.” (Muller B., Moz) 

Keep in mind that there are other elements that you should always check before starting Off-Page SEO activities, such as page speed, header response, redirects, fixing broken links, and even duplicate content as these are all key factors in your website’s health and they eventually will have an impact on your SEO efforts. 

Once your On-Page optimisation is complete, it’s time for you to develop your Off-Page SEO strategy and find out the perfect recipe for your brand in order to get more traffic to your website, rank higher in the search results and ultimately, grow your business. Next time, we are going to discuss everything you need to know about Off-Page SEO so make sure you come back to find out how you can start performing SEO tasks that will help you achieve your business goals. 

Are you thinking about investing some of your marketing budgets in SEO but you’re not sure where to start? Luckily for you, this is exactly what we do! As a digital marketing agency, we can help you with that, all you need to do is get in touch with us today at hello@socialgamma.com.

You have an IGTV account and you are ready to go! Except, you are not sure how to work around IGTV content. Luckily, you have us to guide you through how it works!

Instagram now allows you to share a preview of your IGTV video on your feed, which has been a game-changer for all social media content creators. It’s important to understand that while IG Stories are attention-grabbing short videos of a maximum of 15 seconds, IGTV will only get the engagement you are looking for if you treat it as it is: an online channel for long-form video content. Of course, big brands such as Netflix share full episodes of their shows, but even with a much smaller budget, you can share longer videos and get people to click “Keep watching on IGTV”.

Only a few seconds are enough for a viewer to decide whether they’re staying on our profile or keep scrolling for other content, so it’s crucial for your videos to be engaging and have a strong introduction. Not sure what your introduction should be like? Well, people will watch what is relevant to what they like, want or need. That being said, your introduction should give them an idea of what the video is going to be about and who is it for. Bear in mind that most people go on social media with the sound turned off which means they are less likely to hear if you are saying something. Adding subtitles or keywords is a great idea to ensure you are maximising engagement rates.

Understanding your target audience is a key factor when creating content for IGTV and social media in general. If it seems hard to define your audience, a good way to do it is by creating audience personas to get a deep understanding of who you’re targeting and what are their desires and needs.

Be authentic and consistent! Nothing works better than being yourself and posting constantly to start developing an actual connection with your followers and regular viewers, as well as any new users discovering your profile. Videos can last from 15 seconds to 60 minutes and you don’t have to worry about always posting a high-quality, branded video as long as you are promoting relevant and engaging content.

So why not have a go at IGTV and start using your new account today? 

Don’t forget to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter @socialgamma!

When you’re marketing a new product or service it’s tough to keep up with the ever-evolving online social space. Keeping pace with the millennial mindset, algorithms, demographics and new techniques can be near impossible! That’s why we’ve put together your new ABC’s, to help guide you in your decision making on Social Media.

Authenticity

If there’s one thing we know about millennials, it’s that they can’t stand things that seem fake. A recent campaign from Fanta showed a series of prank clips based around their new flavours. These videos were staged to look like common viral videos that quickly gain popularity – but these didn’t. Many of the Facebook comments were simply about how “clearly staged” and “cringy” these clips were.

This just goes to show that non-authentic content is an immediate no for millennials. Authenticity creates trust between you and your followers, something that is key for customer retention. This is one of the reasons that influencer marketing is overtaking celebrity endorsements on social media: it feels far more authentic.

Balance

It’s important to consider the main purpose of social media: to be social. If a brand’s account is all product pushing all the time, then followers can get bored quickly. They come to social media to be amused, to find fun content they want to share around, and occasionally for recommendations and shopping. A balance between personal posts that remind your followers there is a face/team behind the brand, and posts discussing the product/service can help with retaining followers and long-term brand awareness. However, make sure these personal posts are authentic and in keeping with the brand’s tone of voice.

Clarity

Make it clear who you are as a brand from day one. If you are a serious company then take your social media seriously by posting industry knowledge, important events and milestones within the company and present your product/service as a clear-cut solution to something. Memes have no place on a serious company’s feed and can cause confusion amongst followers. If you are a quirky, friendly brand then make it clear with a conversational tone of voice and humorous, highly personal content.

Having a social media marketing team behind your brand is paramount to hitting these key points regularly with your content, whilst keeping up with the finer details of the online world. Even great content needs expert knowledge on the best times of day to post, the best channels for a brand, and optimisation of hashtags. These things ensure your content is not just being seen, but being seen by the right people, in the right light. With all this behind you, there should be no trouble with increasing the number one thing that matters on social media: engagement.

With these simple rules in mind, you should have the components necessary for a flourishing social feed. All you need now is an excellent product or service to show people!

Contact us for further information on how Social Gamma can help you present your brand online.

Facebook and Instagram are major players in the modern social media marketing game. Any business worth their salt invest time and even money into excellently curated feeds, so that they can have that unique connection with customers that just didn’t exist before the age of social media. But what are the benefits of these sites, and is one better than the other?

Let’s look at Facebook first.

Benefits:

Facebook has a massive impact on how the public interact with each other and has been around far longer than Instagram. It’s a great place for businesses to update their consumers on upcoming events and happenings, as well as sharing articles they are interested in. Facebook’s algorithm supports video content beyond all else, so video ads or updates are a great way to get a bigger reach.

Negatives:

Most Facebook users primarily use it for social purposes. That is, they connect with friends and family while businesses are less of a priority. Even the name itself doesn’t promote “faceless corporations”. It also has an overall older audience than Instagram, which can be bad depending on your target market.

What about Instagram?

Benefits:

Instagram is a highly visual form of media, allowing businesses to showcase some design and aesthetic skill, and reinforce their visual identity. The more a company’s brand identity is seen, the more associations a customer builds with the brand, making it more memorable and more likely to be used. Instagram also has a more current feel to it, not just because it is a younger site, but because of the “instant” share element of stories. Companies can show themselves as more relatable by sharing day-to-day happenings through stories. While Facebook has this option too, it is used much less.

Negatives:

Instagram has a lot of content restrictions, for example you cannot share hyperlinks in posts. This means that businesses cannot make use of article and blog sharing as easily, something that is beneficial to the tech and finance industries. Another issue is that many companies use bots to increase their following, and Instagram is catching on. The anti-bot algorithms make it difficult to keep up with what is acceptable and what isn’t. Optimising hashtags is a constant job, discovering what is relevant but also unique enough that you won’t get buried. Having a social media team to keep on top of all the changes is the best way to get the best of both worlds.

There are plenty of positives and negatives to both sites, and which site you should focus on also depends on your intentions. If you have a younger audience, Instagram is the way, whereas if you’re more business focused, the lack of link sharing on Instagram might be detrimental. The best approach to social media is to make use of all the available platforms, and a combination of both Facebook and Instagram used in the correct way can be a powerful strategy.

Get in touch through the Contact page to find out how our Social Media Services can help your business bloom.

Businesses nowadays are no stranger to the cultural phenomenon that is Instagram. With over a billion users on the platform, those who don’t get on board risk missing out on a whole untapped double-tapping audience.

More recently, businesses have started to realise that simply having an Instagram account isn’t enough. There is a fine art to ‘gramming’ for your business, so read on to find out about some of the top businesses taking it in their stride.

 

 

1: @balletoperadeparis

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The ballet uses banners (pictures spread across multiple posts) on Instagram to elevate their already stunningly beautiful photographs. Amongst these is sneak peak shots at practices, to entice followers and excite them about shows and events to come.

2: @lego

 

 

 

 

 

 

You might expect a Lego Instagram to be full of cute shots of kids playing with bricks… but you’d be wrong. Lego have done something really clever by curating their feed to be Lego built images of popular culture, and beautifully directed images of their new products. See unique film announcements, or even a life size carriage for the Royal Wedding.

3: @gucci

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

This renowned high fashion brand ensures all their posts aren’t just basic product images. They contain eccentric, over the top foregrounds and backgrounds laid out in an almost obsessive manner, to give their feed the feel of excess. You are buying into the lifestyle, not the product.

4: @jessicavwalsh

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Whilst she might not be a business selling a product, Jessica Walsh is selling her design services, and he has a beautiful Instagram feed to show the world exactly what she’s all about. This kaleidoscope of colour and surprising imagery is designed to freak you out and challenge perceptions of modern life.

5: Haagen-Dazs (multiple handles)

 

 

 

 

 

 

The popular ice cream brand is updating themselves to be more accessible to millennials. Their redesign covers packaging, instore look and online presence, with the whole direction of the visual identity being to make it “instagrammable”. It’s said to be the biggest packaging overhaul in almost 20 years.

Instagram itself underwent a rebrand to keep up with the beast it evolved into. They understood that they were no longer just a photo sharing service, but a massive opportunity for businesses. To reflect this, they changed their logo to the simple shape with a gradient background you see today. People took a while to get used to it, but now curating your feed is a huge deal, with whole marketing teams dedicated to perfecting posts for business.

https://vimeo.com/166138104

To find out more about how Social Gamma can boost your social media, drop us an email via our contact page.

Are robots really taking over?

Well, kind of. But not in the way you think! A while ago, AI was considered accessible only to large multinational corporations which had big budgets, data and tech experts. Today, the situation is completely changed. Almost any business, big or small, has some sort of AI tool that helps them in their digital marketing efforts. Whether it’s a chatbot, tools for advertisements or email marketing, there are so many options on the market right now and it has become not only affordable, but also a way to reduce costs in the marketing budget.

According to Salesforce’s survey, 51% of marketers are already using AI, and 27% more are planning on incorporating this technology in 2019. Marketers around the world are focusing on AI technologies in 2019 and it’s surpassing even the popularity of marketing automatization and Internet of Things (IoT).

 

5 jaw-dropping changes AI brought to Digital Marketing:

 

 

Creating, Generating and Curating Content

 

 

Before all you creatives freak out, there’s nothing in this world that can replace imagination, spontaneity and creativity. So it’s safe to say you don’t have anything to worry about. YET.

Leaving jokes aside, AI has made it possible to generate content based on data and information you provide it with. Imagine not having to write that annoyingly long report ever again. I know, right? It sounds like a very, very, very distant possibility in the future. Except it’s here already, in 2019!

Quill, Wordsmith, Heliograf or Articoolo are just a few of the most popular tools that big publications like Forbes and the Washington Post are already using to drive traffic to their website by just allowing these platforms to access the news data and add it into templates. Associated Press, CBS, Reuters, BBC and the New York Times have plans to implement AI to generate content in the near future. Next time you read a piece on the New York Times, be aware that it might not have been written by a human.

 

Email Marketing

 

 

 

Companies are taking advantage of this more and more as AI technologies are now more developed and are able to perform as efficiently and at times, even more efficiently than humans. AI allows businesses to really customize their emails to the characteristics of each individual, which overpowers the abilities of a human being. Machine learning can track down any behavioral aspects, from the time the user prefers to open marketing emails to the type of content he likes and what type of titles will be more likely for him to click on.

Phrasee is one the AI tools that you can use for email marketing and according to their statistics, their “generation of email subject lines surpasses those of a human by over 95%”. 

 

Digital Advertising

 

 

We know what you’re thinking! This is one of the most obvious examples, but digital advertising had a really smooth and impactful transition to AI technologies. Platforms such as Google AdWords or Facebook Ads are always looking into what people like, where they work, what they do in their spare time and ultimately, their buying behaviour.

Digital Advertising is increasingly important for most companies which operate online and want to push their content/product/services at the top of our feeds or generate leads for their business.

While Google AdWords has been very innovative with their recent auction-based system which allows bidders to pay the lowest amount possible per conversion, we can’t wait to see what the next thing is going to be!

 

Chatbots and Image Recognition

 

 

This was exciting! Implementing AI technology to allow you to have an actual conversation with a chatbot completely revolutionised the sales process. You can literally find the perfect products from your favourite drug store by chatting with their bot. You want to find a new shampoo that’s suitable for your hair? Done! You can find it in minutes and it’s highly efficient.

It’s always easy, fast and reliable and that makes it so popular today. Consumer goods companies will have to up their game and make friends with the robots in 2019 because if they don’t, their competitors will and sales will go through the roof.

Sephora is one of the brands that upgraded their chatbot, turning it from a regular customer service assistant bot to a beauty-guru-make-up-artist-best-friend kind of bot. It’s called “Visual Artist” and it lets you virtually test out beauty products. It’s INSANE and wonderful at the same time. The AI recognises facial features and adds the eyeshadow, lipstick, contour to your face so that you can see what it would look like. Yes, it’s not the same as if having an in-store experience, but it will save you precious time when you decide to go in the store and buy what you’ve already tested.

Image recognition used to be just about objects, but AI has changed the whole game. It helped recognise facial features and emotions. This could be the end of long queues at the bank and a huge improvement for customer service. Amazon Rekognition is one of the tools that could make all of this possible in the next years.

 

Seeing Figures Into a Crystal Ball

 

Predictive analysis is another great transformation made by AI technology to digital marketing. An analysis made by a software on data from the past can be calculated into future probable figures. That allows you to understand what is likely to happen to your business in the following months or how engagement is going to go on your social media. This is an amazing opportunity for businesses to prevent losses or at least minimise them ahead of time.

 

Ultimately, AI is making everyone’s lives so much easier as far as digital marketing is concerned. It helps marketers get an in-depth understanding of their audience and their buying behaviour, as well as transforming the user experience. AI is also increasing productivity, efficiency and eventually, ROI. We can’t wait to see what this year brings on next!

As the end of the year is approaching fast and we are getting ready to decorate our Christmas trees and wear our Christmas jumpers, we looked back on the amazing year of 2018 and the best Social Media trends. So get comfy and grab a hot chocolate to enjoy next to your fireplace before checking out:

Our Top 5 Favourite Social Media Trends of 2018

 

 

Video, Video, Video!

GIFs, Boomerangs, Live Videos, and many more. One of the top trends that have marked 2018 is video content, which has taken a leading position on all platforms as the most preferred content. We’ve seen Instagram integrate live videos, IGTV etc; Facebook lives have taken over and are used by brands and businesses to create a connection with the audience.

According to these statistics, 87% of marketers utilise videos into their campaigns and viewers believe that 95% of messages from videos are retained on their minds.73% of B2B organisations using videos in their marketing campaigns are reporting positive results to their ROI. Video has really taken over 2018 and people feel the need to share moments from their lives even in more detail, video providing them this option. 

 

Brands and Engagement

The world of social media has allowed both consecrated and new businesses to grow and improve their customer engagement. In 2018, most brands realised the power that engaging on social media can have for their brand and opened up communication channels for their customers by using Twitter, Instagram and Facebook. Brands can now address their customers’ issues much quicker and more effectively, reinforcing the concept of brand loyalty, a key feature for a brand to succeed in today’s marketplace.

An example of a brand that has used social media to build up their brand loyalty is the very well known coffee chain Starbucks. Since the beginning of the year, Starbucks saw the power that social media has in engaging with their audience and launched a campaign that encouraged their customers to tell them what the next Starbucks drink should be.

 

InstaStories

InstaStories have taken over the year of 2018, brands have been using it for promoting their products in a more innovative and interactive way. They got even better when Instagram implemented the “Swipe Up” feature. Brands can now post stories that contain products and by adding the the “Swipe Up” feature, viewers can get redirected to the brands product page, making shopping through Instagram an even easier for users.

Besides the powerful effect that InstaStories have had for product promotion and brand growth, it has also become more and more popular with users as well. The majority of people now use InstaStories to communicate daily activities and are more conscious on how they are curating their Instagram feed. Instagram stories are a fun way of sharing your moments with your followers, the great thing is you can add stickers, GIFS and filters.

 

Influencer Marketing

 

Influencer Marketing has reached a culminating point in 2018, brands from all industries are using influencers to promote their products and ideas. Why? Because audiences trust influencers and also identify themselves easier than with ads/models etc.

The statistics on influencer marketing show that the conversion rate for ROI for brands is 10x and that 50% of social media users trust influencers and the products they use. It is the leading marketing tool in 2018, we have seen more and more people become influencers and can now find influencers for all industries.

 

 

Filters, Filters, Filters

Our last favourite trend is the most fun and makes us remember that social media is for sharing what you are up to with your friends. Filters are essentially augmented reality and this technology is present on most social media platforms.

Snapchat was the first to integrate it but soon Instagram and Facebook took over the filter game and made them available on stories so now turning from an unicorn to a cat is easy just with a swipe. In 2018 everybody took on augmented reality and even the new iPhone adopted the fun trend.

Click here to find out more about Social Media trends in 2018!

Overall, 2018 has been a great year for Social Media as more and more technologies are being introduced in the digital space. The rise of social media in marketing is an opportunity for brands to share an equal marketplace for both new and old brands, bridging the gap that has existed so far. Communication and fun have become easier and social media is a tool that is now part of most of our lives. Are you excited for 2019? So are we!