Top 5 Social Media Trends for 2021

Social Media Marketing Trends

 There are huge earning opportunities to be met by when you incorporate these social media trends into your marketing mix. For one, it’s free!! But like everything else in marketing, the success of your efforts will be directly related to your strategy.

Randomly posting content that doesn’t interest your target audience is a waste of your time. Before using any of these social media trends, make sure that you know your target audience, what they are passionate about, and how they want to consume your content.

The top 5 Social Media Marketing Trends for 2021 are: 

1. Authenticity

2. Livestreams

3. Video

4. Relationships

5. Goodwill

Authenticity

You are one in a billion users on any given social media platform. But you aren’t going to let that statistic scare you! You don’t need a billion followers to grow a successful business – you just need a few loyal people.

The key to successfully standing out among such a massive crowd is finding your niche audience and creating a dialogue that speaks directly to them. And your dialogue should come from a place of authenticity and genuine interest in meeting their needs.

Your content should provide value, promote trust, and grow a relationship with your followers.

Authenticity comes from being you. No one can replicate you and your individuality. When you share content that showcases your personality, your passions, and your creativity, you are creating unique and authentic content.

Livestreams

Throughout the past year, while we all endured what seemed to be an endless quarantine that confined us to our homes, many of us found comfort and inspiration from some amazing live streams on social media. For me, I looked forward to each evening when I would tuck my son into bed and we would listen to Josh Gad read bedtime stories live on his Instagram and Youtube channels. Josh Gad was able to turn a bad situation into something unique and fun for families in a very scary and uncertain time. 

You can take this social media trend and put it to use for your business by asking yourself, what sort of content can I share with my targeted audience that would be uplifting, enlightening, and entertaining?

Your live streams don’t always have to push a sale either. Take the idea of authenticity and create a demand for more content of you and what you represent. 

Live Streaming does not have to be a daily ritual. Create a strategy for providing your audience with some regularity – weekly, bi-weekly, monthly, etc… Create a concept that will showcase your expertise. For example, if you teach yoga, provide a free weekly 15 minute class for your followers. See how they share and save your promotion and make changes to this offering as needed.

Video

We can no longer ignore the importance of using video to promote ourselves. I will be extremely vulnerable with you here and admit that I personally hate making videos of myself. But in order to be successful, sometimes we have to break free from our comfort zone and just do what we have to do! It can be easier when we remember that we are usually our own hardest critics. 

You can create video content that can be shared on multiple platforms from your Youtube, TikTok, Instagram Reels, Facebook, and more. You can then embed these types of videos on your website. 

You can even monetize longer video tutorials, speeches, or lessons and to promote them, break them down into shorter clips to be shared on your social media platforms. 

The only limitation is your imagination! And again, keep your videos on point with your strategy and targeted audience.

Relationships

Growing your social media following takes more than just posting content. These platforms are designed to promote those who engage in all aspects of their site. So, for example, if you’re trying to grow your Instagram following, you need to be sharing, liking, commenting, and saving other people’s content. The more active you appear as a social user, the higher reach you are going to experience.

Additionally, developing relationships within your industry creates networking opportunities where you can use each other’s audience to grow your own. One of the best examples of this that I recently saw was when two women with similar target audiences used their Instagram accounts to challenge each other to “a dare.” The outcome for each was hilarious and because they tagged each other in their Instagram stories, I ended up following a new account. 

Goodwill

Consumers have caught on to the archaic and underhanded tricks that advertising agencies once used and got away with. Today, consumers demand transparency and higher purpose from the companies they promote. They want to invest in businesses that use their voice, clout, and financial standing to promote goodwill within society. 

Even as a small business, this is very important. When you add a “mission-driven purpose” to your marketing message, you provide your audience with the added value of “doing good,” which in turn, adds value to your product without any added expense on your part. 

The consumption and use of social media is just going to keep growing! It’s easy to become overwhelmed by all of the new platforms and apps but the worst thing you can do is give in to overwhelm and say, “I just can’t keep up!” Instead, you need to focus on 1 to 3 specific platforms and focus on growing a loyal following. 

Conclusion

Using social media to grow your business requires you to stay current with the top social media trends so that your content matches what your audience is looking for.

It also requires you to stay consistent with your efforts – posting on a daily basis and keeping your content focused on your strategy.

One of my best suggestions for you is to find a social media app that allows you to schedule your posts in advance. Check out my blog, “5 Reasons You Should Automate your Social Media Posts” to learn more about the app MeetEdgar.

Additionally, I recommend IconoSquare as a social media app as well.