Future of Social Media

Social media has become an evolving and revolutionary factor that more than 5 billion people worldwide are social users. Just a few years ago, we enjoyed getting likes from friends and family. Today, for business owners, if you are not active on social media, your company is irrelevant. Companies use social media to connect with their followers and customers, becoming essential marketing strategies to build and find potential clients. The world, especially the technological world, is rapidly changing, so there are many questions on what is next for social media. So, what should we expect for social media marketing in 2021 and beyond?

Influencer Marketing

According to Google Trends, social media marketing suppressed print marketing in 2020. Being an influencer can build so much leverage and "influence" to collaborate with top-named brands and assist brands in reaching their unknown audience to becoming a potential client or customer. Mirco-influencers are on the up and up, allowing small businesses to get on the trend. Small influencers have the advantage of achieving a higher engagement when posting for their audience. It's a great and affordable way to promote brands to the desired audience for business growth. Now you are conceived; however, you as a business owner do not know where to start. There are platforms where you can find influencers for your business. Fourstarzz is for small to medium companies with access to 800,000+ creators and influencers with various followers.

Revolution of Social Commerce

Clothing and other e-commerce brands have been essential to incorporate shopping for the user. Facebook was the pioneer, and social media platforms like Instagram and even recently Tiktok have built a fully integrated system for users to purchase while scrolling. Due to this pandemic, many establishments had to close while social commerce accelerated to continue creating revenues. According to a report by Business Insider, social commerce is expected to increase to almost 8% of all e-commerce sales in the US by 2024. Also, a Statista study found that approximately 50% of all Americans aged 18-34 have purchased social media. Instagram has a feature called Instagram Shopping to market products within a post to engage with the audience.

Here's how you can start making e-commerce sales on Instagram:

The shop is curated and personalized to you. As a brand, if a user has you at the top of their page, you can assume they are an active follower of your page. So there is a way to convert your follower to a customer.

Instagram has requirements when it comes to setting up the shopping feature.

You would need:

• Business located in one of Instagram's approved countries for the shopping feature
• Business Instagram account
• Facebook Business Page connected to your IG account

Add a Shop Section to Your Facebook Page

1. Navigate to your business page and locate the Shop tab.
2. Click "Set up Shop"
3. Select the currency and enter an associated email address
4. Add tax registration number for the state or country to do business in
5. Press Finish and add products

Product Catalog

Go to the Facebook Page that is linked to your Instagram profile

Either find or create a new catalog

Once set up on Facebook, go to Instagram, review, and approve shopping features.

When finished setting up with Instagram Shopping, you can now add Shopping Tags to highlight the products you want to sell. Usually, to tag, upload a photo, and then tap "Tag Products" to tag a product in the picture. When users tap the image, they will see a product description and a link to direct them to your website to purchase it.

Augmented Reality

When we think of AI or Augmented Reality, we only believe this is possible in the future. However, many do not realize that we use AR on Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat. We just call them filters! Filters allow us to alter your face to provide it with a different look and snap a picture. Apple has even developed a feature on FaceTime where you can be an animal or a cartoon of yourself when speaking to friends and family.

One example of brands or even artists uses Augmented Reality is for an album rollout. Artists like Travis Scott, Justine Skye, and others had a team develop a filter for their upcoming albums. Millions of fans see the filter, engage with it, and post using the filter that would incline them to buy or stream the artists. AR makes people actionable, and that could become a trend in the future of social media marketing.

Social media has the force to promote a product, brand, and company. It is the businesses' (or agencies') job to stay in the know and recognize trends that are coming up that could help catapult sales for businesses.

If you want to improve your social strategy, you could go the do-it-yourself route and hope for the best. You could contact one of the best Atlanta social media agencies and go to tryhyperchat.com to schedule a demo with us to see how we can help you Turn Social Into Sales!