If you’re not promoting your webinar on Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms, then you’re not doing it right. Since nearly everyone is on social media these days, it’s a no-brainer that increasing your social media. But it’s not just about having the accounts, it’s about how you use them.
Being strategic with your social media accounts will benefit you more than simply putting posts out and hoping they get views. An entire industry has been built around making the most of social media marketing to increase traffic and conversions. It’s always changing and experts are finding new and better ways to reach broad audiences. With that in mind, we’ve written up of the projected top trends in social media for 2016 and how they could impact promoting your webinars.
Table of Contents
Updates will be faster and more in-the-moment than ever
While social media is already a platform for instant updates (something happens, it gets posted on Twitter), that sense of immediacy is becoming even more prominent. Platforms like Periscope and Meerkat allow for capturing and broadcasting events with live streaming video as it happens. That’s a much different experience for the viewer (think watching live news coverage versus seeing it on YouTube later) and has an impact on the conversation around and reaction to the content. If this trend picks up, scheduled social media posts could become much less effective, as users will be tuned in to what is happening in the here and now. It could also mean that live webinars will dominate and become more integrated directly into social media, as they can be live-streamed via multiple platforms.
New options for managing and publishing content will arise
A recent increase of in-app functionality within social media platforms has broadened the capabilities for content managers to use them for marketing. Facebook is a leader in this trend, with the development of their Instant Articles feature for publishing content. Twitter’s new Project Lightning, set to release this year, gives users full reign of publishing diverse content. Instagram and other platforms are following suit, expanding their platforms to give social media managers more publishing options. Businesses should take advantage of these opportunities to increase their reach to broad audiences using the full capabilities of each platform to market their webinars.
Consumer concerns about privacy will heighten
With a rising number of serious security breaches putting the public ill at ease, user privacy concerns will only go up. Snapchat has become a social media favorite, appealing to users due to its security and privacy features. Other platforms, like Facebook, have taken initiatives to tmore candidly engage with their users about privacy features. More intrusive forms of publishing, like personalized ads created with big data, will be a turn off for many consumers. Webinar marketers should pay attention to these trends and engage in publishing on platforms that pay attention to privacy, a feature that will attract the most number of regular users (and their biggest audiences).
Gaining organic visibility will be more of a challenge
Social media marketing is becoming more mainstream, as its return on investment becomes more tangible and online marketing resources are increasingly available to more businesses. This means that businesses in the same markets will have to compete for organic visibility that comes from content publishing. Adding to the challenge is the fact that Facebook is now throttling organic visibility to increase revenue through ad purchasing – and other platforms may follow suit. When marketing a webinar, businesses will want to compare platforms for the best organic visibility, as well a for ad costs, which will see an upward trend overall.
New platforms will be few and far between
In past years, there has been a plethora of small-sized new platforms that struggle for the chance to become the next big thing. Most don’t make it, but some manage to find a comfortable spot in the middle of the pack. In 2015, that trend got a new spin when large platforms like Facebook and Twitter bought out the more successful smaller ones, leaving the others to perish. The great takeovers will likely continue in 2016, so fewer small platforms will exist on their own. This means that there will be fewer platforms to keep up with overall, and most of the opportunities for reaching new audiences will come from the social media giants. Webinar marketers won’t have to spend time keeping up with so many platforms and will be able to focus on the largest and most effective ones.
Social media is an ever-changing landscape, and seems to be updated as quickly as the most popular Twitter accounts. These trends will lead social media managers into 2016, but anything could upend them. Still, they’re a good start to planning for the coming year ahead. Use these to guide your webinar marketing and get ahead of the competition, and stay current on new developments so you’re ready to switch gears at a moment’s notice.
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