We’ve been keeping a close eye on small business marketing trends especially when it comes to the latest features.
If you’ve been following along for awhile, you’ll know one of our epic marketing tips of the day #EMTOTD, is to stay on top of the trends.
This guide will help you discover what new social media best practices and features should be looked into in order to grow your brand in 2023.
Not every platform will or should be utilized for every brand. In fact, knowing your stronger networks and focusing on them will optimize your quality of work.
Let’s start with Instagram
As of December 2021, Instagram has reached 2 billion active users worldwide. As the number of people continues to grow, so do Instagram’s functionalities. Last year in June, Instagram announced they will be focusing on four things: Creators, Video, Shopping and Messaging.
This is important because just last week they added the functionality of scheduling posts 75 days in advance, including Reels. This is every business and creator’s dream! You now don’t have to have another app in order to keep up with your social media calendar. It can all be done in one place.
With this “spare” time you can now shift your focus to videos However, not all videos. Generally speaking Instagram’s regular videos have a lower rate than Reels. Based on an analysis of 352.612 Reels, Social Insider found that regular videos have a view rate of 1.74% on average, Instagram Reels record an average view rate of 2.54%.
Look, if you’re not interested in reels, we have a few more tips up for grabs.
- Using all 10 slides mixed with videos and photos for carousel posts will increase your engagement rate.
- Limit your stories to no more than 4-5 and take frequent 24 hour breaks to help reset the algorithm into your favor.
Creating Ads?
Instagram is in the beta stages of offering capability to add an augmented reality filter to create an ad, available both in feed and Stories. Users will be able to do many features like join games or contents. Through the AR experience brands can encourage people to interact with the effect through their surroundings.
If I were you, I would start thinking about how this could relate to your brand so that when the feature officially launches, you already have your campaign out before your competitors.
If your Facebook has been quiet, you’re not alone. Though the engagement rate has dropped the last two years, we are here to say this platform is still popular to those in the age group of 25-35 years old.
Here’s what we know about Facebook features
- Posts without any links gain DOUBLE the engagement than those that have a link inserted.
- Vertical videos are the most opted format.
- Albums are the most engaging type of post on Facebook.
All based on Social Insiders intensive research.
In the end, Facebook should be DIFFERENT content compared to Instagram and other platforms. Like we mentioned at the beginning, sure, it can tell the same message but you’re less likely to get the same person to engage with your content if it’s exactly the same.
Cheers to LinkedIn
Familiar to native documents?
A study analyzing 141.474 LinkedIn posts showed in-depth insights on the preferred type of content on LinkedIn. The same study shows that native documents generate 3x more clicks than any other type of content.
What are Native documents?
Ok so not really a “new feature” but according to the same data mentioned above, native documents have an average click-through rate from 3.5% to 8.6%, while all the other posts barely exceed 2.00% adding that it does all depend on the account size.
And very much like the other socials, people like visuals.
Business posts that show an image in their post are likely to attract more users and encourage them to comment more.
It sounds like as formal Linkedin is, people would still like it to be entertaining and I don’t blame them! Give them something fun to talk about and share.
Lastly but surely not least TikTok
A good reason but not the only reason each platform should be treated differently is because each brand has a different target audience. It’s clear that the more successful brands in marketing know where their audience likes to live on the internet.
That being said, TikTok is more popular among Gen Z’s users, while Instagram is still a Millennial favorite and depending on your brand, you might find yourself switching over to TikTok to reach a more desirable audience.
TikTok posts get 44% more comments compared to Instagram Reels. This can only offer you more reasons to invest time and resources when it comes to TikTok content.
Below are features in the ad realm you might not be familiar with.
TikTok has launched 3 types of shopping ads with expanded placement options. They are Catalog Shopping Ads, Live Shopping Ads, and Video Sharing Ads. Within catalog shopping ads you can choose a format to tell the brand message that will help drive use of a product specified in order to drive more sales. Live shopping ads will allow catalog listings to place product images in more shop-able placements and live shopping ads, the user will move from the “For you page” to your shopping event.
The one thing you’ll want to work on if you’re not there already is reaching the “level one” status on TikTok. You can achieve this status by linking the product cat
This TikTok pdf guide explains everything.
Moral Of The Story
It’ll do you no good waiting until 2023 to start thinking about these features. We are here to help you feel ready with these tools we shared for your marketing tool belt. Let us know what features you plan on utilizing, what worked and what didn’t work, and we’ll be looking forward to hearing from you.
