Social Media Marketing: Why The Next Ten Years Will Look Different

Social Media Marketing: Social media played a different role ten years ago than today. At the time, hardly anyone could have imagined, how important social media marketing would one day become. Think about the role social media played in your life ten years ago. You probably used to visit Facebook on your computer regularly, and Instagram Stories didn’t exist yet.

Plus, companies hadn’t figured out how to use the power of social media to support their marketing efforts. Could you have guessed how important social media marketing would one day become for companies? And how many different ways would you use social media to reach your target audience?

Brands Need A Strategy For Social Media Marketing

The role of social media in marketing and branding has changed significantly over the past decade. According to a Bytom study, 87 percent of digital companies rely on social media marketing to win new customers. Brands now need a uniform and comprehensive strategy on the one hand, but which can also be tailored to the individual format and target group of each channel at the same time. Gone are the days of companies posting on just one channel. And simple text contributions with archive images are also a thing of the past.

Today, social media platforms offer a variety of rich media formats to target your audience. It is up to those responsible for social media marketing in the company to find out how they develop the right content and keep up with the constantly changing algorithms. Creating the content that works best is often very time-consuming, and the need for content increases exponentially. To meet the demand for content permanently, the way brands handle social media content has to change again. So how will the next ten years in social media marketing be any different from the last?

Changes In People And Processes

Before companies make drastic changes to their social media strategy, they should first change their internal structures. This is the only way to meet the different requirements for content creation. Senior creative directors who previously had to review all social media posts are becoming a thing of the past. Instead, increasingly younger employees are taking over the reins of corporate social media channels. Because they often know better which type of content is well received on the respective channels, especially with a view to the shift towards more unadulterated and authentic content on the newer platforms.

For example, the scripted speech of a company boss about the challenges in the home office on LinkedIn could be well received but would be entirely out of place on TikTok. Someone less familiar with the intricacies of the newer platforms probably doesn’t know this. Younger professionals, in particular, understand the new functions and venues more quickly, as they often use them in their private lives. Nonetheless, they are also familiar with traditional social media platforms. So a younger creative may still be sharing the CEO video on LinkedIn, but at the same time hiring the same CEO to create more casual content for TikTok. So it’s little things like this that make social media marketing different from other companies.

Meet Social Media Marketing Requirements

In addition, much of this work is increasingly being done in-house. Social media is all about reacting quickly. As a result, social media activities are difficult to outsource. Producing content quickly enough can be a challenge for an outside agency. This, in turn, increases the pressure on the internal teams and further limits their resources. Such processes will no longer be sustainable in five years or possibly five months if the demand for social media content continues to grow exponentially at the same level. Therefore, many companies are already looking for ways to meet the complex requirements of social media marketing through technology.

Changes In Tools And Technology

Therefore, the changes in social media affect not only the structure of internal teams but also the skills and tools that social media managers need to be able to do their work effectively. Functions such as Spotlights from Snapchat place increasing value on fast, informal and yet visually appealing content – but starting a complete design project for every post would not be sustainable due to the associated quick response time. Instead, companies are increasingly turning to creative automation to hand off some design work to the social media manager.

It does this through master video and image templates that the design team creates, and the social media team can update as they see fit. This allows them to keep brand elements like colors, fonts and logos consistent across multiple channels. And at the same time, you can adapt each asset to the specific requirements of the respective platform. This makes it easier for social media managers and designers to meet the need to create something new constantly. And it’s easier than ever for them to maintain brand consistency.

Create Brand-Consistent Content With Social Media Marketing

Technological innovations happen unexpectedly and are hardly predictable – social media is no exception. Even if almost every platform has implemented a story-like function by now, the next significant innovation is definitely in the starting blocks. It’s hard to prepare for the unknown. But the more companies try to adapt their tools and processes to the rapidly changing social media industry, the easier it becomes to create new, appealing and brand-consistent content within a short time. It remains to be seen how the industry will evolve and which current trends we will see as ghosts of the post on social media in ten years. 

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