Highs and Lows of Social Media Marketing in 2018

Social media marketing professionals are finding themselves quite busy these days. The Facebook US congressional hearing, the GDPR regulations, fake news and AI developments are creating quite the buzz.

There are a lot of things to consider. The budgets for marketing are being closely examined. Marketers have to show the business some value by providing more efficiency or better ROI.

Keeping that in mind, there are a lot of things that expert social media marketers are discussing. Here are a few of the most prominent topics about the highs and lows of social media marketing.

Influencer Marketing

There is a significant shift in the budget when it comes to associating with influencers. Instead of blindly throwing money at influencers, the approach is being strategically taken. There are more considerations being made. The investment towards micro influencers are more likely to become popular.

The mid to top level social media influencers are going to be involved in the same campaigns as the micro influencers are.

The reputation of influencers came to a head recently. Logan Paul, a major YouTube influencer disrespected a person that committed suicide in Japan.

There was action taken by YouTube. They suspended the advertisements on his channels. Things didn’t stop at that. There have been guidelines given and sanctions applied to content producers. they can no longer resort to dubious approach to get more subscribers.

There has been more discussion about the importance of metrics which ensure that things like this don’t get out of hand.

Artificial Intelligence and Bots in Social Media

There has been a growth in the use of AI and bots on social media platforms. The use of these things have extended beyond that into marketing communications, brand experience and the customer experience.

These are exciting times in the world of social media platforms. The development of better AI applications has to be reviewed. It is a critical aspect that needs to be considered.

We have learned that through social media, technology can be used for great things. The likes of environmental action and civil action being just two of them. It is also giving a rise to the more sinister aspects like fake news and cyber bullying.

There needs to be an adoption of Artificial Intelligence within ethical bounds. Otherwise we risk far worse than just reactive legislature being applied.

Social Media Growth is Now Slowing Down

The growth of social media users across the world is constantly increasing. There has been no sign of it slowing down.

According to Global Digital Report, there are over 3.2 billion social media platform users. That accounts for half the population of the planet and 5% more than last year.

Despite the growth, the growth has not been as fast over the past 3 years as the decade before it. Yes, there has been a lot of excitement about new social media platforms. The likes of Mastodon, Vero and Ello allow for advertisement free user experience. The thing is that none of these new platforms have been making significant strides. There is no real sense of mass adoption for any of these new platforms. The domineering social media platforms seem like they will continue to prevail.

Final Thoughts

These are but very few of the considerations in the constantly evolving world of social media marketing. This is a reminder that social media marketing has to be viewed from different perspectives. Marketers need to consider the political, social, technological and economic framework as well.