The world of social media marketing has changed drastically over the last couple of years, and it will continue to change. This makes staying ahead of the digital curve a critical factor in the success of businesses around the world. Understanding how to take advantage of new features social media platforms continually roll out is key and to do that, marketers have to be perpetually looking forward.

So what’s next in the world of social media marketing? For those looking to get the most out of their campaign, marketers will need to channel their efforts into live video, engaging influencers, and creating buzzworthy content. Let’s examine each one individually.

1. Live Video is the Way to Go

Video content has become an important avenue for social media marketers to reach their audiences. However, live streaming has proved itself to be an even more effective way to generate views. Studies show that people are watching live video three times more than pre-recorded videos on Facebook. The social media platform has even altered their algorithm to ensure live videos remain closer to the top in news feeds than pre-recorded content.

Videos have become imperative to marketing strategies, since they have a vastly greater organic reach than photo posts on most social media platforms. Also, live video takes things one step further by allowing your audience to engage with you directly. This makes live streaming an ideal platform for real-time Q&As, a great way to create brand advocates, and an effective tool to promote conversation about your product, service, and brand.

Social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram have made the ability to go live incredibly easy. However, there are still some crucial aspects to consider before you make your live stream debut:

• Make sure to test your connection. Use a dedicated hot spot to ensure that your live stream broadcast doesn’t drop unintentionally due to bandwidth issues.
• Make your headline enticing. Your headline plays a major role in drawing in people to join your live stream. When creating a live stream title, make sure that you give the audience a reason to want to watch your content.
• Promote before going live. An impromptu live stream won’t have nearly the same success as one that is scheduled and promoted. Promotion will help encourage participation from your audience.
• Sound is important. Sound can make a huge difference in your live stream, which makes it crucial that you have the proper sound amplification.
• Prepare for audience participation. Live stream allows a two-way conversation, and engaging your audience this way can be incredibly beneficial. It’s important to be prepared for potential questions and to monitor them so no one feels left behind.
• Repurpose your live video. Just because you’ve wrapped up your broadcast doesn’t mean the live video has no further usage. You can repurpose your video by either posting it again at a later date, or even using portions of clips and GIFs from the stream.

2. Engage Influencers

Collaborating with an influencer has become one of the most effective ways to get a brand in front of a massive targeted audience. Influencers have proved themselves to be incredibly valuable to marketing campaigns, drastically increasing conversion rates and retention.

Considering the benefits that come with influencer marketing, it seems the only reason more businesses aren’t utilizing it is that they don’t know how or where to begin. Follow these tips to successfully secure and build a relationship with an effective influencer:

• Work with a credible influencer marketing agency. There is much more value in developing a long-term engagement strategy with an influencer rather than a one-off stint. A qualified and experienced influencer marketing agency, can help develop the right strategy for you and will then find and build relationships on behalf of your company with influencers that best relate with your brand’s mission, goals, and target audience.
• Build collaborative relationships with influencers. Successful influencer marketing takes a collaborative effort between the brand and the influencers, and the right agency can help ensure the collaboration efforts are as effective as possible. They are the experts of their arts and audience, and to get the most out of your campaign, work with the influencers to develop content that relays your brand’s message in an organic and authentic manner.
• Build relationships. Don’t process transactions. When developing relationships with influencers, it’s crucial to find avenues that benefit both them and your business. When both parties are getting what they want out of a campaign, success is inevitable. Establish an influencer marketing program rather than treating it as an occasional project to ensure the most effective strategy is being put forward.
• Use the right tools. There are a plethora of tools geared towards influencer marketers that will help you identify a campaign’s effectiveness and measure ROI of your influencer marketing initiatives. Use these tools to your advantage to ensure that you have chosen the right influencers for your brand and to help you better understand how to engage and measure your return on any investments.
• Be creative. Influencer marketing is still fairly new and continues to evolve with each passing day. Think outside of the box and generate ideas of new ways to create and build relationships with your influencers. There are multiple uncharted avenues in influencer marketing that are just waiting to be explored.

3. Quality Content Is Key

The convergence between content and social media is continuing to become more frequent. It’s important that your business is rolling out quality content for your social media strategy to be successful. Content that resonates with users will prompt them to share it, which will only work to increase engagement.

Analyze the engagement your content is generating to understand what your target audience is responding to. This will help you learn to develop content in the future that further parallels the audience’s interest. Content and the audience have a relationship where they inform and depend on each other, which becomes amplified in the vein of live streaming.

Quality live video content can be reworked into an array of future content options, including:

• Extract blog content. A blog post covering the video’s ideas and topics.
• Produce multiple short clips. Highlights from the live video can be repackaged as 1-minute clips.
• Create original memes and infographics. Eminent quotes from the live stream can be further promoted through graphics.
• Develop podcasts. The audio from the live stream can be converted into a podcast.

Change is inevitable when it comes to social media marketing. Social media platforms are perpetually under renovation in hopes to serve users with innovative and unique features that separate themselves from competition. To stay ahead of the digital curve, it’s crucial to always be looking forward and finding ways to take advantage of what’s coming next.

Article Written by Steven Tulman of Business 2 Community