Marketing is all about targeting a consumer and satisfying their needs. Digital marketing is a subset of marketing that is used to promote a product or brand using one or more electronic technologies. The goal is to influence and target maximum amount of consumers. As 21st century is digital, modern, internet era, we have two remarkable cases. First is social media and second is web shops. The growth of both number of social media users and number of webshop users is rapidly increasing. Talking about social media, predictions are that in 2018, there will be around 2.67 billion social media users around the world. So to prepare you for the changes to come in 2018. Below are the top social media trends you need to know about.

Video on demand:

Nothing on social media is more attractive as compared to video content. Whether you’re marketing on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Instagram or Snapchat, it looks like social video engagement stats are going to be through the roof in 2018. According to a survey, about 82% of Twitter’s audience views video content on the platform, Facebook users consume over 8 billion videos every day and YouTube viewers watch a billion hours of video each day. Which is actually a big amount of users. Now we are having a various variety of formats in which we can take video content from 360-degree videos to live streams. It provides flexibility in running video campaigns.

Focus on Mobile Ads:

One thing to keep in mind, though, is that mobile comes first. After all, most of the user use mobile as compared to a laptop, tablet or other devices. 90% of Twitter video views and 60% of YouTube views are now from users on mobile devices. The marketing community has seen the writing on the wall 65% of marketers are preparing to increase their budgets for mobile ads to focus more on video and infographics within the next few months.

Use Of Chatbot’s:

Chatbot’s is a program which is designed to conversation with human users, especially over the Internet. 2018 will be the year that brands need to start thinking about social media bots. More and more brands are working on using chatbots for customer support and perfecting their Chatbots marketing strategy. Right now, chatbots are mostly used for customer service over 61% of consumer chatbot interactions are centred on customer service related questions. Future of bots is looking bright, 85% of customer interactions managed by chatbots by 2020.

Storytelling:

Social media “stories” will be impossible for marketers to ignore in the coming year. The “stories” format was first introduced by Snapchat has now stapled to the social media world. First Instagram created Instagram Stories than WhatsApp created WhatsApp stories and now YouTube has released a stories format of their own called “Reels”. Each offers unique features and presentation, but they all follow the same concept. 2018 is sure to be a big year for stories. It’s time to think about stories as a key part of your social marketing strategy. All these above trends will shape the social and digital marketing in 2018. To keep your brand ahead, you’ll need to update your content and strategy to reflect changing consumer desires.