8 Social Media Resolutions for 2019

Emma Gibb

January 7th 2019

Tips and Trends for 2019

We’ve combined some of our best practice tips for digital marketing with what the experts say will trend in social media in 2019 – so if you’re looking to set some new year resolutions for your social media marketing, here’s what we suggest.

1. Reflect and review

Take a step back and think about why you are using social media in the first place. Creating a social media strategy will help to ensure that your social media goals align with your business objectives. If you already have one in place, the start of a new year is a good time to review your social media strategy and to do an end of year social media review. This will help you to see what worked for you in the last 12 months and for planning in 2019.

2. Plan your social media

If you don’t plan your social media activity, your content may be rushed and chaotic. Using a social media calendar can help you stay organised and make it easier to visualise your content across your platforms over a specific time-frame. It also helps to plan your marketing around key events in your industry/company and create a consistent flow of content. It could be as simple as an Excel worksheet, but make sure you have somewhere to note what is happening over the next three months and what you plan to post when. Take a look at this blog post by Hootsuite with social media calendar templates for some ideas on where to start.

3. Create content that your audience wants to read

Creating engaging content is key. Think about who your audience is and what questions or problems they have. How can you help them? Before you create content you should think who is going to read it and what stage they are in the buyer’s journey. For example, is it intended for people who haven’t heard of your business or to help in the consideration stage? Following on from above, it is important to plan out your content for the coming months. Once you have created a bank of quality, engaging content you can focus on promoting it across your social media channels.

4. Claim/review your Google Listing

Claiming and improving your Google Listing is important for your local Search Engine Optimisation. This is managed through Google My Business. Optimising your listing ensures that potential customers can find out when you’re open and where your business is located, as well as attract new customers. It is important to update your listing with photos (businesses who regularly upload photos are more likely to have a higher search ranking). We also recommend using the new Post feature to help with SEO and encouraging people to leave reviews.

5. Personalise your content

Personalisation has come up again and again in the recent wave of posts on social media trends for 2019. You can’t personalise content unless you know and understand your audience, so first of all do some research. Check your Analytics to find out more about your audience (you can use Facebook Insights, Instagram Analytics, Twitter Analytics and Google Analytics). Use this data to help you create different personas so that you can then create content for their interests and needs. This is particularly important when creating adverts on Facebook or sending out email newsletters.

6. Create visual content

Visual content is still key, with video continuing its reign as king. Video content gets the most engagement on social media, and video is an effective way of storytelling. Video, and live streaming in particular, should definitely be factored into your social media marketing plan for 2019. Experts predict that Instagram will invest heavily in IGTV (its video platform) in 2019 and that the rise of video will only increase.

7. Create Stories

Some experts are predicting that in 2019 stories will become the primary way to share content on social media. Stories disappear after 24 hours (on Instagram you can save them to Highlights) and users love the raw, ‘in the moment’ content. Instagram has 400 million users watching Stories every day, Facebook has around 150 million daily viewers of Stories and both LinkedIn and YouTube are testing Stories. There are a host of different ways you could use Stories to build brand awareness and engagement: share behind the scenes content (which ties into number 8 below), post exclusive offers, share sneak peeks, use poll and question features to gather feedback etc. There are no ‘peak times’ to post as they remain there for 24 hours and the content isn’t expected to be polished. (And with its massive growth over the last few years, we’d suggest looking into whether Instagram can help you achieve your social media goals in 2019 if you’re not currently using it).

8. Be authentic

Many posts on 2019 trends mention transparency and authenticity. Building strong relationships with your customers has always been important but after some of the events of 2018, such as the Facebook scandal, it is more important than ever to build trust with your audience.

Sharing user-generated content, showing the personalities behind the business and taking users behind the scenes can all help to build trust and create meaningful engagement with your audience. Remember, people buy from people.

Key resolution for 2019:

Factor some of the key trends into your social media marketing (video/live streaming, Instagram Stories, personalisation etc) but, most importantly, make sure you are engaging, authentic and show the human side of your business.