Two Marketing Trends You Should Try This Summer!

Trends in social media are constantly changing. This can be stressful OR you can see it as fun! Here at Digital EDG, we recommend the fun approach :-). These 2 trends are hot this summer! They are easy to implement and you’ll be able to see pretty quickly how your customers are responding.

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Stories! 

I’m sure you’ve heard of social media stories by now. It’s a feature made popular with Snapchat and now most popular in the United States on Instagram and Facebook. Basically, stories are posts (videos or pictures) that are uploaded to their own “story feed” and disappear within 24 hours. 

 

 

According to the consulting firm Block Party, stories are growing 15 times faster than feed-based sharing. Facebook’s Chief Product Officer Chris Cox shared that over 300 million users on Instagram alone access the stories daily and that Facebook has 150 million daily users and that’s steadily increasing.

 

Getting started with social media stories is really easy. For one, it’s a very forgiving platform. People expect to see smartphone quality video and more of the day-to-day moments in your business and life. It’s a great way to share things that don’t necessarily feel like they fit on your Instagram feed for instance. You can also share quick vertical videos that you can capture featuring yourself, employees, and products. Don’t forget to make use of the fun boomerang feature too! You can find that on Instagram.

 

A great way to get started is to capture a day’s worth of content and then upload it the following day with the best 5 to 10 images and video. Focus on sharing a story or at least a timeline. You can experiment with batch posting or posting one or two things sporadically throughout the day and see which generates the highest number of views.  

 

 

Working with micro-influencers!

At one time or another, you may have thought about hiring a celebrity or big-time influencer to help get your brand out there, but thought about the cost and reconsidered. It is true that having someone that people know and trust vouch for your product/service is very valuable – and potentially very expensive. 

 

However, it’s time to rethink how “well-known” that person really needs to be, which can considerably affect the affordability of working with them. Often times, there are people right around us who’d be great “celebrity endorsers” of our business and they don’t come with the high price tags that bonafide celebrities and big influencers have. What’s more, their involvement will probably generate an even better return on your investment and they’ll be genuinely invested as well.

 

These “micro-influencers” are people with smaller followings in your local and regional area. They can even be super fans/loyal customers of yours. Asking them to be representatives of your brand can be a great win/win. 

 

For a clothing brand, for instance, the local college fashionista with a large Instagram following might be a perfect person to collaborate with and it might just cost you a few dresses she can showcase. The local chiropractor’s office might consider partnering with a local personal trainer or fitness person with a large social media following in exchange for complimentary services and cross-promoting. There are many exciting opportunities when you start thinking creatively. 

 

Micro-influencer marketing works so well because people are starting to crave more personal interaction. They are prone to trusting people that they feel more familiar with over big names that they only know as fans. 

 

So which of these are you going to try next week? If you need someone to bounce ideas off of, feel free to reach out! Any of us here at Digital EDG would be happy to help!