Sharing stories has been an integral part of society for centuries. We share information about ourselves to help us relate to others and forge connections. The same applies to businesses. If a company shares insights into their history, the challenges they’ve overcome and their thoughts and ideas through a well-told brand story, customers feel connected to them and are therefore more willing to place trust in their products and services. What’s more, stories are much more memorable than facts alone. In fact, research has found they can be up to 22 times more memorable. This explains why tales are passed down through generations and why we still know and love to share the ancient stories of Greek Mythology, for example. So, crafting your experiences into an engaging story can also help to keep your brand at the forefront of customers’ minds. But, how do you know what to include in your brand story? How do you know what your customers are going to care about? We’ve put together some guidance on crafting a story that is interesting, accessible and of course, authentic.

For a story to create those all-important connections, it should be relatable to its audience. Therefore, the first step in writing a compelling brand story is to know who your audience is. If you have a good understanding of your customers, you’ll find it much easier to create a story that truly resonates with them. Learn how old they are, where they live, what they like to do in their free time and what kind of jobs they have. This will all inform how you present your story to ensure maximum engagement.

To give your story the relatability factor, it should be very much personality-driven. The focus should be on the people behind your brand and their experiences, rather than on the products or services that you sell. Think back over the history of your business – the ups and the downs, the times when everything seemed like it was going wrong and the times when you’ve had massive breakthrough moments. When considering all the pivotal turning points that helped get your business to where it is today, think about how your target audience might relate to them. Stories that trigger an emotional response, a sense of familiarity or significant learning experience will be more appealing and memorable for your audience.

For many companies, the heart of their story will lie at the conception of their idea. This may have been an event, a conversation or some other experience that prompted the founder to identify an issue requiring a solution. Think about what it was that prompted you to start your business. Was it something you experienced? Or maybe a story you heard sparked an idea in your mind? Think about the needs you aimed to fulfil, why this was important to you back then and why it still is now. Your story should provide an answer to the question: “Why does this business exist?” The answer to this can usually be found at the early stages when your business was being held up by an idea alone, long before it became a fully-functioning, profit-making operation.

You probably started your business with some idea of what values were important to you; however, these may have evolved over time and become better developed as your business has grown. Company values can drive the success of your business, especially if your employees and customers relate to them. Therefore, these can also form a great starting point for your brand story. Think about where your company values have arisen from. Did you have an interesting, unusual or eye-opening experience while setting up your business which has led you to take a firm stance on environmental and/ or social issues? Many businesses win customers through their strong values, so narrating these in your brand story can be a great way to engage with your audience. 

A brand story should give your business a purpose. Once you have formulated a story, you need to integrate it into the way you market your business. Show how the values that drove you at the very beginning are still upheld in your operations today. Demonstrate how the key milestones in your journey have been influential in improving the way you do business. Discuss how the major lessons you learnt while growing the business still resonate with your employees now. Use social media to highlight your story and relate it to the present-day operations of your business. The most memorable brand stories will be intertwined with every action that the company makes and every message that they share.  

One company with a well-known brand story is Patagonia. Its founder, Yvon Chouinard, was an avid climber who noticed the equipment that he (and many other climbers) used was causing damage to the rock faces. In an effort to protect the landscape that he loved, he began producing his own environmentally-friendly equipment, later expanding into clothing too. This love for and desire to protect the environment still informs the ethos of the business today, making it a firm favourite for environmental activists. While their story begins with a simple idea, it is the values behind this story that make them so successful. These are values that Patagonia uphold in every action they take, even pledging 1% of all sales to the preservation and restoration of the environment to offset any negative impacts caused by the operations of their business.

A brand story is a very powerful marketing tool but only if you can successfully engage your audience using emotion and personality. When crafting your brand story, you need to ensure that your target audience will relate to it. Discussing your company’s origins and values are great ways to achieve this while relating it to the present-day operations of your business is also important. Remember that your brand’s story hasn’t ended yet. It is constantly being written and it is possible that major changes on the road ahead may impact your business philosophy further. Your brand story should be honest and authentic. It takes time to craft a story with both interest and meaning but if it resonates with your customers, you will create trust, loyalty and a much more memorable brand.

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.

Widely known in the marketing industry, your target audience is key to the success of your marketing strategy, regardless of budget spend, chosen channels or industry. Whenever you are looking to determine your target audience, you must pay attention to demographics, taking into account geographic location, age, sex, religion, marital status, income and other important elements. 

Whether you have just a rough idea of who you’re trying to target or you have already developed a more complex description of your target audience, it is important to dig deeper and really narrow it down to factors beyond demographics in order to start building up your marketing persona. 

Sure, knowing that you want to target young women in the 25-30 age group based in London begins to paint a picture of who your audience is and, while this is helpful, it’s just the first step in the journey of determining your marketing persona. Now is where you want to look at psychographics and learn which of these young women would genuinely be interested in what you’re offering. What are their psychological tendencies? What are they passionate about? What does their lifestyle look like? You also should find out their interests and hobbies, where they get their favourite products from and their expectations and experiences with products or services that are similar to yours. 

Understanding their lifestyle will help you to really determine what impact it has on their consumption behaviour and that will contribute to your overall strategy and get you a step closer to achieving a better conversion rate. 

All of this might sound overwhelming but follow these steps and you will have gathered a lot of useful information about your marketing persona before you even know it. 

Firstly, you need to really define your target audience as a group through the demographic characteristics. 

When looking at demographic factors, they might not all be relevant for your target audience, but you should still consider them all when determining your ideal audience.

Here are some elements you should analyse:

• Age
• Sex
• Ethnicity
• Education Level
• Income Level
• Marital Status
• Occupation
• Living Status
• Nationality
• Political Affiliation
• Religion

Once you have already created a group of people that you plan on targeting based on demographics, it’s time to narrow it down and research the psychographic information to start building your marketing persona.

These should consist of:

• Lifestyle
• Interests and Passions
• Beliefs
• Personality Traits
• Activities
• Preferences
• Values
• Opinions 

When you supplement your demographic persona with psychographic elements, you will have a much more complex profile. All that’s left to do now is make sure this profile is relevant to your brand. You now know a lot of information about your marketing persona. You know about their behaviour, their personality, where they are located and a lot of additional information from researching their generation. This can all be incorporated into your marketing strategy when creating campaigns targeted at them. Your final milestone is taking all this information and using it to understand how and when your brand is relevant for your marketing persona. 

To achieve this, create a document or a slide and add everything you have learnt about the persona you’re building, adding as much detail as possible, even assigning them a name. A good strategy, suggested by Quicksprout, is to use your marketing persona’s demographic information to identify when they were born, look for the top baby names in that year and choose one for your persona. By the end, you will be able to see a complex profile which will provide valuable insights into which marketing techniques will maximise conversions and really speak to your audience. 

If you’re not sure where to begin, a good starting point might be to look at statistics and research general psychographic information for the generation of your target audience. From there, you will be able to find out more about other details and don’t forget to look into credible and multiple sources to ensure you have accurate data. 

“When times are good, you should advertise. When times are bad, you must advertise.”

This classic adage saying is probably one of the most used phrases on all marketing blogs, websites, social media channels and ad magazines at the moment.

As an entrepreneur and founder of a digital marketing agency, I wanted to write this article and share with you some reasons why I believe this is the time when you need marketing the most in order to make it through, especially as a small business. My experience in the marketing field has enabled me to gain a better understanding of the digital space and today, I thought sharing a potentially different perspective might change your mind before you make important decisions regarding your budget. 

The COVID-19 pandemic is not only affecting our lives right now, but it will definitely have a great impact on the world economy. Small and large businesses alike are faced with new challenges regarding their budgets, investments, employees and that could also mean a very difficult time for startups as well. With different strategies in mind, business owners are thinking of any expenses they could reduce in order to save some money. Marketing might be one of the expenses that come to mind first, but that could turn out to be a huge mistake. According to Forbes, “In the aftermath of the last recession in 2008, ad spending in the U.S. dropped by 13%.” and businesses who kept their marketing activity managed to do better in terms of profits once the recession was over. A great example of that is Amazon, who released Kindle during that year and became stronger because of it, increasing its market share in a time where the global economy had collapsed.

That being said, there might a valuable lesson we learned from that when it comes to marketing. Here are three reasons why you should not cut your marketing budget: 

Exposure

As the marketing budget might seem like an obvious cut for many small companies at the moment, it will only have a short-term potential positive effect that will trigger a long-term negative impact on your business. It is important to continue to stay active on your social media, website and any other digital channels. Brand awareness is going to benefit you in the long run, long after this crisis is over. Even though engagement and traffic rates might be a bit lower than usual right now, as people are adjusting to the new changes in their lifestyle, they will soon return to their interests, needs and habits. This means they will be able to notice you in the digital space and start recognising your brand. 

Sense of Stability

In fact, many would argue that this is the time to maintain your marketing budget and increase your online activity in order for your business to continue to get digital exposure and providing your audience with a sense of stability when it comes to your brand. With most people transitioning to a very different lifestyle than the ones they’ve been accustomed to, such as working from home, staying indoors a lot of hours and dealing with social distancing, fear and uncertainty can become overwhelming. From panic buying to being reluctant to go outside, it is crucial that they get a sense of stability in their lives and being able to continue your usual marketing activities will prove that while you’re aware of the crisis we’re facing, you are choosing to keep pushing and stay active for your audience. It will provide them with some certainty and will definitely benefit your brand in the long-term.

Support 

Another reason why you shouldn’t cut your marketing budget right now is that along with the sense of stability that your audience hopes to see from your company, it is also important to use your digital channels to provide support to your clients, audience and your industry/community. It is more important than ever to show you are a brand that understands the needs and concerns of your audience and clients and show that you have the ability to help and support your stakeholders during this difficult time.

It can even be about sharing positivity and empathy to help people emotionally overcome this situation that has disrupted people’s lives around the world and has brought fear and anxiety to most of us. Whether it’s tips, advice, some inspiration or a virtual pat on the back, it is relevant for your audience to understand your brand cares and is there to show support to those around it. 

If you are struggling with your marketing right now and would like to discuss it further, you can always get in touch with us at hello@socialgamma.com and we will be happy to assist you.

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!

Having done a lot of reflecting on our beliefs and our ethos at Social Gamma, we are embarking on a new chapter in our company story: Social Good.

Social Good is a mission, a way for us to apply our individual and collective beliefs to our work every single day. The most fulfilling projects and clients we have taken on are the ones trying to make a positive change in the world, and we want to build them up to something greater than ever before. We’ve made the decision to make a change and a difference.

We’re focusing in on just a few key industries:

• Health, Wellness and Nutrition
• Non-Profit
• Sustainability
• Education

Having worked with many clients in these industries so far, we’ve come to love not just what they do, but what we can do for them. For our health, wellness and nutrition clients we have carried out a variety of web and app development services, as well as investor and lead generation digital ads. We have helped our clients gain key investors, find leads and even maintain and develop their online presence to ensure their continued success. Our non-profit and sustainability clients have benefitted form our social media expertise. We’re proud of the achievements we have made on their channels, both in engagement and follower retention. We have also helped them to achieve fundraising goals and launch successful events and projects. Our education clients found new leads and an increased following through paid lead generation and social media ads.

And this is not just a side project. The team has always had a passion for giving back, from their university days to now. One of our Account Managers, Ana, has volunteered at a special school, helping children from the ages of 8-14 with learning difficulties and autism. She also worked with toddlers in foster care. Our Lead Creative, Rebecca, was a Team Leader for breast cancer awareness charity “CoppaFeel!”, promoting the cause, educating young people on campus and raising funds. The team won a fundraising award and ranked 3^rd on the UK CoppaFeel! University Fundraising Leader board the year she graduated. Our Managing Director and Founder, Ria, led a group called Remedy Through Music, who visited children’s hospitals every week to sing to the patients. We are inspired to this day by the people we worked with and the plans we helped carry out.

So now, our mission is clear. We will use our skills and know-how to spread the positive waves out into the world! If you are in the health, wellness and nutrition, sustainability, non-profit or education industries and you’re looking for a Digital Marketing Team who share an affinity with your values and passions, then give Social Gamma a call. We look forward to doing Social Good with you!

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

Copyright @balletoperadeparis on Instagram

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

Copyright @lego on Instagram

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

Copyright @gucci on Instagram

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

Copyright @jessicavwalsh on Instagram

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)

Copyright @haagendazs_us on Instagram

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.

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!