How Do I Do Social Media Marketing? 5 Tips for 2020

For small brands and businesses starting out in 2020, social media marketing is a ubiquitous but often taxing necessity.

Today, nearly 50% of the world’s population and over 79% of the U.S. population have at least one social media profile. Of those social media users, over 54% use social media to research products and services.

Instagram touts over 1 billion monthly active users and Facebook over 2.6 billion. Of that staggering 3.6 billion people, over 69 million are business accounts.

Thousands of brands and businesses are created each day across the globe, each vying to generate leads, expand their reach, drive conversions, and promote their products and services.

Since the advent of COVID-19, e-commerce and social commerce have increased dramatically,  108% for a total jump of $52 billion with Memorial Day sales spiking 75% from $2 billion in 2019 to $3.5 billion in 2020. 

As a result of the pandemic, a new type of customer has formed: one that eschews brick and mortar in favor of delivery options, intuitive mobile UX designs, and contactless payment methods. 

As shelter in place orders and social distancing have changed our daily routines, social media use has grown: countries hardest hit by the virus saw a 61% increase in messaging across Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp. 

Social media users more than ever want and expect their favorite brands, products, and services to maintain responsive and dynamic social media accounts not just as a form of social proof, but as a means of shopping products and services and receiving new and relevant information, offers, and promotions.

As social media marketing constantly evolves, brands and businesses are compelled to adapt to new platforms, trends, and features or risk being outpaced by the competition.

The question has shifted from, “Should I do social media marketing for my brand or business?” to “How do I do social media marketing for my brand or business?”

While social media marketing has changed greatly even over the past year, its original purpose has not.

Brands and businesses use social media marketing as a cost-effective form of marketing that allows them to interact with their target audience, generate brand awareness, and establish brand trust.

Your social media marketing strategy this year should embrace and implement all the emerging trends, tools, and tactics without losing sight of your goal: marketing your business and making sales. Let’s review 5 social media marketing tips to implement in 2020.

1. Interactive Instagram Stories and “Storytelling”

The advent of Instagram Stories drastically changed the way people interact with content on the platform.

Over 500 million users use Instagram Stories daily, with more than 25% of Millenial and Gen-Z users searching for products and services they want to buy using stories and more than one-third of the most popular stories coming from brands and businesses.

Stickers and other interactive or “gamified” elements have also increased engagement on the platform in general, contributing to the platform’s 23% increase in ad spend over Facebook in 2018. Brands now use stories to communicate their ethos and share user generated content. 

Stories also include the convenient “swipe up” feature for accounts with 10,000 followers or more, which enables customers to access shoppable pages and other social media profiles by swiping up on the story.

For brands and businesses, stories offer a cost-effective form of advertising and customer engagement, with nearly 31% of Instagram ad budgets going toward stories in 2019.

Social ad impressions have also risen 20% year over year, climbing to nearly $43 billion in 2020 while CPC for Instagram feed ads remains low at $0.60 and Stories at around $0.50.

2. Shoppable Posts

A popular new technological advancement in the realm of social media marketing is the “shoppable” post, or a piece of content, static or video, that allows users to shop for an item or items without exiting the photo or video. With 72% of Instagram users making purchases on the app, shoppable posts represent a huge opportunity for businesses.

Shoppable posts are a useful tool for mitigating assisted conversions while boosting direct sales by decreasing the amount of time a customer has to spend visiting a website, searching for their item, and checking out. They can also help brands decrease actual ad spend.

Users are able to check out items directly from your page, potentially turning your thousands of followers into easy-to-convert customers. On Instagram and Facebook, you can tag any item featured in your content as a “shoppable” item, allowing you to generate ROI on the content you produce.

Shoppable posts are a double-edged sword, however. For service-based businesses, shoppable posts provide less of a use-case as fees are seldom fixed.

Additionally, brands that want to drive traffic to their website may experience fewer unique impressions from users who have no need to visit the website after buying.

3. User Generated Content

The most cost-effective and authentic form of content marketing is user-generated content, with more than 86%  Customer reviews, photos, and videos involve little to no overhead costs and help humanize brands for customers. 

Ads based on user generated content receive 4x higher CTRs than traditional ads and posts of user generated content receive 28% higher engagement compared to standard posts.

UGC not only promotes authenticity for your brand, but also helps drive purchasing, with 80% of Instagram users reporting that UGC impacts their decision to purchase. 

Successful brands in 2020 will incorporate user generated content through hashtag challenges, guest posts, testimonials, and more to build a content library that spurs brand desire and creates brand loyalty simultaneously.

4. Locally Focused Featured Snippets

Brands and businesses that rely on brick and mortar foot traffic or want more locally-sourced customers should focus on shifting their social media marketing efforts toward voice search optimized featured snippets.

Featured snippets are answers that rank in Google’s search results at “zero,” ranking before the first search result. When you Google a question, featured snippets appear as the “first” result you see at the top of the page, usually including a link and image or video while taking up more space than the search results below. 

Featured snippets drive click-throughs from SERP to your landing page and dramatically increase CTR. Voice search tools like Alexa and Siri also rely on featured snippets to answer search queries.

When you ask Alexa, “what is the best Taco truck in Los Angeles,” it uses the most relevant featured snippet to answer your query.

In 2019, mobile search traffic surpassed desktop traffic and over 55% of mobile users used voice search to find local businesses. By the end of this year, 50% of all searches will be done using voice search, especially as COVID-19 increases the desire for more hands-free search options.

Posting locally-relevant search terms, hashtags, and verified addresses linked to map locations in your social media posts can help improve your position in local organic search rankings.

If YouTube is a part of your brand’s social media strategy, for example, optimizing your featured snippets can drive your videos to the number “zero” result as answers to certain search queries.

If you own a taco truck in Los Angeles, you should structure your content to answer queries like “what is the best taco truck in Los Angeles?”

5. Incorporating Customer Service

Brands and businesses on Instagram have the unique opportunity to communicate with their audience and provide customer service using social media. Customer service not only improves the customer experience; it expedites customer conversions.

Learning customer pain points and gathering customer data can help inform your paid social ad campaigns and allow your customers to more quickly navigate to their desired product or service.

Implementing customer service through direct messages and responding to tagged posts with customer questions or concerns keeps your audience engaged while providing a valuable form of social proof.

Setting up a sentiment analysis stream to monitor positive and negative customer comments in @-mentions, comments, and shares can help brands gain valuable and authentic audience insight.