The State of Social 2019 Report: New Data and Social Media Marketing Research

Thank The State of Social 2019 Report: New Data and Social Media Marketing Research for first publishing this post.

6 Powerful Psychological Biases and How They Influencer Human Behavior Online

A large majority of marketers wouldn’t consider themselves psychologists. Yet understanding the growing field of marketing psychology can help persuade and influence audiences in powerful ways online.

Great campaigns happen at the intersection of marketing and psychology. The sweet spot where your content and messaging connects with your audience on a deep, human level.

Which, in a sense, makes all marketers aspiring psychologists at heart.

This week on The Science of Social Media, we’re exploring six powerful psychological biases and how they influence human behavior online. Knowing the factors that affect decisions will help take your social media marketing to the next level.

Let’s dive in!

Marketing Psychology: 6 Powerful Biases That Influence Human Behavior

What follows is a lightly-edited transcript of the Buffer Podcast episode #130 for your reading pleasure.

Table of Contents

• • • • Psychological Bias 1: The Bandwagon Effect
      • Psychological Bias 2: Zero Risk Bias or the Certainty Effect
      • Psychological Bias 3: In-Group Favoritism
      • Psychological Bias 4: Confirmation Bias
      • Psychological Bias 5: The Endowment Effect
      • Psychological Bias 6: Not Invented Here

Hailley: Let kick off the show by quickly exploring how a psychological bias is defined. In this case, we’re talking about cognitive biases:

Cognitive and psychological biases are defined as repetitive paths that your mind takes when doing things like evaluating, judging, remembering, or making a decision.

Just like instincts, they evolved so that we don’t have to think as much for every decision that we make and they help us conserve energy.

Brian: More than knowing these for marketing, it’s also really interesting to be able to pinpoint your own cognitive biases to be aware of what goes into your decisions, judgements, and opinions.

Let’s get started looking into each of the biases we’ve identified and how they relate to marketing. And just a note that there are a lot of cognitive biases in our brains, these are just a select few that we found particularly useful for marketing but this is in no way a complete list.

Psychological Bias 1: The Bandwagon Effect

Hailley: Let’s start with one that most people have probably already heard of, it’s called the bandwagon effect. You’ve probably seen the expression “they jumped on the bandwagon” and that’s what this cognitive bias is referring to.

The idea is that the rate of uptake of beliefs, ideas, fads and trends increases the more that they have already been adopted by others.

In other words, the bandwagon effect means that it’s more likely for someone to do, say, believe something if a high number of other people have already done so. This is sometimes also called groupthink or herd behavior.

Brian: In social media I’ve seen this happen before where maybe a new social network opens up and then it feels like everyone, celebrities, other marketers, friends, are all joining up so you end up joining to.

It’s pretty easy to imagine how helpful this can be with marketing. If it feels to a new users like everyone loves your product then they’re more likely to love your product too.

Some of the ways we can work to use this perception to our advantage are for example testimonials. If you have a lot of testimonials it might feel like everyone loves your product, company, or business.

Hailley: Exactly. And it’s interesting because I really think user generated content can help a lot here, if you share photos on Instagram of all the other customers enjoying your product for example.

And even influencer marketing can add to this effect if it starts to feel like a lot of influencers love your product then people are more likely to jump on the bandwagon.

Ultimately, this cognitive bias is all about critical mass so you have to have the numbers for this feeling to really take root.

Psychological Bias 2: Zero Risk Bias or the Certainty Effect

Brian: Next up let’s chat about zero risk bias or the certainty effect. It is exactly what it sounds like. Essentially our minds have a tendency to favor paths that seem to have no risks, they are certain.

This is why you see many brands and businesses offer money-back guarantees and risk-free trial offers. This feeling of zero-risk is really appealing to customers especially when it’s a new product or service that they’re experiencing.

Here, the more you can reassure customers and potential customers of limited risks, the more they are likely to feel better about their decision and that decision will even come to them more easily.

Hailley: I’ve seen this done in a lot of great Instagram video ads recently where on top of showing the product there’s always text that says “money back guarantee” or “risk free.” Or in social media posts with a photo of your product you can also play to the certainty effect in your text as well.

While it’s easy to use this one on your website for copy it’s also definitely possible to use it in your advertising and social posts as well and that will really help leverage the zero risk message to your advantage.

Psychological Bias 3: In-Group Favoritism

The next bias on our list is in-group favoritism. This means that people prioritize products and ideas that are popular with a group they’ve aligned themselves with.

Brian: It really makes you realize how powerful your identity is. Let’s say you’ve aligned yourself with a certain sports team, well the data shows that you and everyone else who identify with that sports team are more likely to buy similar products and use similar services. Essentially, you and the others who identify as a group favor specific things.

However, experiments have suggested that group identities are flexible and can change over time so keep that in mind as well.

One really good example of a company leveraging this was Apple. They really built an “us vs. them” mentality among their customers with their marketing campaigns and essentially created their own in-group.

Hailley: What this means in terms of marketing psychology is that if you can find these identity markers and you know what in-groups your customers and potential customers are aligned with you can choose your marketing strategy accordingly.

For example, you can join a bunch of communities where your ideal customer hangs out to learn more about their identifiers or create surveys among your current customers to learn about identifiers. And it might take a bit of work but you can also create your own community and in-group if that’s a good fit for your social media marketing!

Quick shout out, check out www.buffer.com/slack if you want to join our Buffer community on Slack.

Psychological Bias 4: Confirmation Bias

Brian: Another really popular bias is called confirmation bias.

This is the effect where our mind searches for, interprets, favors, and recalls information that confirms or amplifies beliefs that we already have.

This effect is even stronger when it comes to emotionally charged issues and for deeply entrenched beliefs so in those cases instead of looking for new information people stick to what they already believe.

It’s easier and less work for your brain to stick to your current beliefs than to have to go through the decision making process and choose a whole new set of beliefs all over again.

Instead your brain is looking to back up your current beliefs and reassure you that it was a good decision.

It’s interesting to note that even scientists fall prey to this bias, it is very common.

Hailley: When it comes to confirmation bias, it also tends to contribute to overconfidence in personal beliefs.

When it comes to leveraging this type of marketing psychology there are a few things to consider.

First and most importantly you really need to know your audience and what their existing sets of believes are. You can do this by checking out a few of them on social media and looking for articles they share, or asking them if you’re in touch with customers often. There are quite a few ways!

From there, you can share information from your brand that they already believe to be true. And if you do that well, they’re going to already agree with the content that you’re sharing and they’ll put more trust and belief in your brand as well.

Brian: Another way to incorporate this is to have really detailed product descriptions that assure people of the things they likely already believe about your product or business, maybe related to the quality or customer service, or value.

Psychological Bias 5: The Endowment Effect

Hailley: We have two more cognitive biases for you today. One is called the endowment effect and this is already quite popular among marketers.

It’s the idea that people assign more value to things merely because they own them.

So as marketers there are a lot of ways to play to this effect. Think of free coupons, free trials, and sample products.

All of those experiences create a sense of ownership that people are less likely to want to give up.

Focusing on marketing psychology, we offer free trials at Buffer and once someone has spent the time importing their social media accounts and incorporating Buffer into their routine they are less likely to want to give up the ownership they feel over their account when the trial ends.

Brian: The strange thing about the endowment effect as well is that people tend to pay more to keep something they already own than to get something new that they do not own—even when there is no cause for attachment, or even if the item was only obtained minutes ago.

If you’re in a mall and you buy an expensive sweater and then go to the store next door and see another nice sweater for even less money, you’re more likely to keep the original expensive sweater because you’ve already claimed ownership over it.

This point in marketing psychology is also related to status quo bias. This bias talks about how people like things to stay the same. So it sort of works in tandem with the endowment effect because once you have ownership over something you want that to stay the same, you don’t want to give it up.

Psychological Bias 6: Not Invented Here

Hailley: Let’s talk about something called “not invented here.”

Not Invented Here is the aversion to use products or accept ideas that are developed outside of a group. As a social phenomenon, this can manifest as an unwillingness to adopt an idea or product because it originates from another culture.

If you as a customer don’t recognize, identify with, or understand a product or service you’re less likely to use it.

Brian: Exactly, and a very common way to overcome this bias is for newer companies to align themselves with well-known brands in content partnerships or swaps.

We do a lot of those at Buffer and they are effective for so many reasons and it seems like this could be one of them.

Say you’re a product from another part of the world and you’re trying to get U.S. customers, maybe you align yourself with a few U.S. companies on social media to help overcome the “not invented here effect.”

Another common way to use this marketing psychology is to feature the logos of well-known media companies on your website because if someone trusts the opinion of a place like.

FastCompany for example, and you’ve been featured in FastCompany, then that person is more likely to trust your brand because you’re associated with them.

State of Social Media 2019 Report [New Research]

Get the inside scoop from more than 1,800 marketers across the globe think about social media, what’s working, how the industry is changing, and more in our brand new State of Social Media 2019 Report.

How to say hello to us

We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!

• Hailley on Twitter and Hailley’s Website
• Brian on Twitter and Brian’s Website

Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

—

About The Science of Social Media podcast

The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode.  It’s our hope that you’ll join our 20,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

Thank 6 Powerful Psychological Biases and How They Influencer Human Behavior Online for first publishing this post.

The Most In-Demand Skills of 2019 (According to LinkedIn), YouTube Advertising, Our Ultimate Facebook Engagement Guide, and More!

Each week on the Science of Social Media we cover some of the most important trends, news, research, and insights in social media marketing.

In episode #129, we discuss the most in-demand skills of 2019 (according to LinkedIn), why we’re bullish on YouTube advertising, a brand new guide on Facebook engagement, Instagram’s latest feature, and much more!

Whether you’re just getting started in social media or a seasoned marketing veteran, you’re sure to learn a few tips and tricks to help take your social media to the next level.

Let’s dive in!

The Science of Social Media: Episode #129

What follows is a lightly-edited transcript of the Buffer Podcast episode #129 for your reading pleasure.

Table of Contents

• • • Part I: The most in-demand skills of 2019 (according to LinkedIn)
    • Part II: Why we’re bullish on YouTube advertising in 2019
    • Part III: The ultimate Facebook engagement guide
    • Part IV: How to use Instagram’s “Close Friends” feature for your brand

Hailley: Recently, LinkedIn released some brand new research from their platform.

The most in-demand skills of 2019 (according to LinkedIn)

Cloud computing.

That is the single most in-demand skill for 2019, according to LinkedIn’s latest research.

Linked pulled data around both the hard and soft skills that companies are working diligently to fill right now. Cloud computing came in at number one.

Brian: While we all may not be cloud computing experts, you may be surprised to find what skills companies are looking for this year.

And just for a quick refresher, hard skills are defined as specific, teachable abilities that can be defined and measured. You know, things like typing, writing, math, reading, etc.

Hailley: On the other hand, soft skills derived from the right side of the brain, are less tangible and harder to quantify, such as communication skills, empathy, getting along with others, listening and engaging in small talk.

We’ve found that having a framework in place allows us to identify opportunities for growth and skill development at Buffer. We call it the T-Shaped Marketer Framework:

Brian:

Here are 10 of the most in-demand hard skills:

1. Cloud Computing
2. Artificial Intelligence
3. People Management
4. UX Design
5. Mobile App Development
6. Video Production
7. Data Science
8. Social Media Marketing
9. Animation
10. Digital Marketing

Hailley:

Here are the top 5 in-demand soft skills of the year:

1. Creativity
2. Persuasion
3. Collaboration
4. Adaptability
5. Time Management

Brian: I really agree with the fact that creativity was at the top of desirable soft skills.

Businesses and brands everywhere need people who can innovate and conceive fresh ideas and solutions.

Time management is also a big one as I think that as the world becomes more connected and remote work continues to rise, time management and productivity skills are crucial for professionals.

Brands’ YouTube advertising opportunity in 2019

Hailley: Let’s talk about why we think YouTube advertising is the next big opportunity in social media, well, advertising in general.

As you might know, YouTube advertising is very different from running a PPC or paid social campaign.

Brian: Which could be a positive or negative, depending on who you ask.

Either way, there’s no arguing that YouTube is a behemoth of a platform:

• Nearly 2 billion monthly users
• 8 out of 10 18-49 year-olds watch YouTube every month
• Second largest search engine and third most visited site after Google and Facebook

Yet for some reason, YouTube ads rarely seem to be talked about.

Hailley: I think it’s one of those things where businesses aren’t quite sure how to approach YouTube advertising and businesses seeing success with YouTube ads aren’t sharing their secrets.

And if you’re comparing to something like Google AdWords, keywords are relatively less expensive to target on YouTube than in traditional search.

Views cost an average of $0.06 per click on YouTube, compared to the average Google Search cost per click, which is estimated to be between $1-2.

Brian: I think the bigger question is how YouTube advertising performs vs. Facebook ads, which most marketers are used to.

Our friends over at Agora Pulse ran a pretty interesting study testing the two and found that not only did YouTube drive more traffic to their website, but that YouTube traffic converted 66% better than Facebook traffic.

Hailley: Exactly and when comparing costs of video views, believe it or not, YouTube also came in lower than Facebook.

While everyone seems to be flocking to Facebook advertising because of these success stories you hear, many forget about YouTube and AdWords, and many other advertising networks that have always gotten results.

Brian: Obviously we could and probably will dedicate an entire episode to YouTube advertising. Actually that’s a good idea!

But in the meantime, a few quick things to know before you go.

First is that there are lots of different YouTube ads that you can run, giving you some flexibility like video TrueView ads, In-Stream Ads, Discovery Ads, and Bumpers.

Hailley: Second is that there are a ton of targeting options available, just like within Facebook. You can target folks based off of options like gender, age, and parental status. You can also target by their interests, such as beauty mavens, cooking enthusiasts, comedy movie fans, etc.

Lastly, if you want to learn all about YouTube marketing and how we grew our channel by 59% in 30 days, go check out episode #95.

Our ultimate guide to Facebook engagement in 2019

Brian: One of the biggest questions on all marketers’ minds in 2019 is, “How do we get more engagement for our brand on social media?”

And how do we do that on big, but competitive platforms like Facebook?

Hailley: Though there’s probably no silver bullet to success, there are some things to know if you want to increase your chances.

Remember that BuzzSumo study we chatted about last week in episode #128?

Well, there’s more to the story…

Brian: Yes there is!

These are the more technical aspects of our findings. Starting with the fact that, and we mentioned this last week, but it’s worth mentioning again, video posts get at least 59% more engagement than other post types.

Although photos are widely accepted by marketers to be one of the most successful post types, video outperformed photos by 73%.

Hailley: Wow.

We also have some brand new stats for you as well. When it comes to Facebook post timing, posts published between 9pm-11pm EST seem to perform the best.

Try saving some of your best content for those hours and see how they perform against other hours of the day. Your audience may be different, so be sure to consider their daily routines and cater to the times when they may be surfing their social feeds.

Brian: Speaking of daily routines, according to the data, Saturday and Sunday are the best days to post to Facebook engagement.

Many businesses take the weekends off and therefore may be choosing to only post Monday through Friday.

Which of course, might be a mistake. And we’ve found this at Buffer on our own Facebook page as well. Saturdays and Sundays always seem to perform better than during the weekdays.

Hailley: How about caption length?

Well, if you want the best chance of engagement, keep your Facebook posts no longer than 50 characters. Characters, not words. Which is super short.

But I think this makes sense — Facebook consumption is extremely passive, and attention spans are short. You need to be able to grab people’s attention quickly and effectively if you want to be noticed.

Brian: Shorter the better!

Let’s talk Facebook video marketing specifics.

This first one was really surprising to me..

The data showed that the optimal length of a Facebook video is between 3 and 5 minutes.

Hailley: Wow. That’s a lot different than some of the stats that we found last year.

And just to get specific here, the most effective videos were between 3 minutes and 3 minutes and 20 seconds.

However, looking at the data, videos between 20 seconds and 2 minutes are still super effective. I have a feeling that there were a few larger pages skewing the results there.

Brian: The takeaway is that no matter how you look at it, video works. 20 seconds 3 minutes, you name it.

In terms of the topics that worked best, no surprise here:

• Food
• Fashion
• Animals
• Beauty
• DIY
• Humor
• Gaming
• Technology

Which leaves the table pretty wide open for brands creating video in 2019.

Hailley: Agreed, no matter what kind of brand you are or product you sell, video can absolutely be the focal point in your 2019 Facebook marketing strategy.

And last, but not least, one of my favorite parts of the study talked about why people share online. According to a study from The New York Times, people share:

• To delight others with valuable & entertaining content
• To identify and present ourselves to others,
• To foster relationships
• For self-fulfillment
• For spreading the word about issues, products & brands

And we talked about this in episode 128, but essentially, people are using social media to reflect who they are – or who they want people to think they are.

Seems intuitive, but I think sometimes as brands we share content that we ourselves like. Not what our audience likes and resonates with. If that makes any sense at all!

How brands can use Instagram’s new Close Friends feature

Hailley: To end the show we have a fun new social media strategy to try. Shoutout to Social Media Examiner for this one.

Some of you may have heard about Instagram’s latest “Close Friends” feature. Well, a few savvy brands have started to use that new feature to their advantage.

The Close Friends feature allows you to share Instagram stories with only a select group of people from those you follow.

Brian: To set up your close friends list from your profile settings, go to your profile on Instagram and tap on the three-line button in the top-right corner. From the menu, select Close Friends.

The close friends list will open, providing you with recommended users to add.

You can also use the search field to find specific users to add to the list. Simply tap the green Add button to move that user to your close friends list.

Hailley: Once you have your Close Friends list set up, you’re set to go. Now as you are probably already thinking at this point, brands can get super creative with their close friends list. You can use the new feature to:

• Add top customers or influencers to the list.
• Host a social media contest
• Stream live or private events
• Engage with your most active followers
• Share updates with your employees to add to their own stories
• and more!

The possibilities to get create are endless.

How to say hello to us

We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!

• Hailley on Twitter and Hailley’s Website
• Brian on Twitter and Brian’s Website

Thanks for listening! Feel free to connect with our team at Buffer on Twitter, Buffer on Facebook, our Podcast homepage, or with the hashtag #bufferpodcast.

Enjoy the show? It’d mean the world to us if you’d be up for giving us a rating and review on iTunes!

—

About The Science of Social Media podcast

The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode.  It’s our hope that you’ll join our 20,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

Thank The Most In-Demand Skills of 2019 (According to LinkedIn), YouTube Advertising, Our Ultimate Facebook Engagement Guide, and More! for first publishing this post.

What 777,367,063 Facebook Posts Tell Us About Successful Content in 2019 (New Research)

5 Data-Backed Social Media Trends You Need to Know for 2019

2019 is here and gone are the days where generating audience engagement on social media was primarily a passive process. The always-online audiences of today want to be involved, interact, and co-create.

The brands that are successful in delivering personalized experiences to their audiences are the brands that are likely to thrive with their social media strategies in the coming year.

But in order to be able to capitalize on this and everything else social media has to offer, you have to know what’s coming!

Which is exactly why today we’re covering 5 data-backed social media trends you need to know to make 2019 your best year yet with social media marketing.

Let’s dive in!

5 data-backed social media trends you need to know for 2019

What follows is a lightly-edited transcript of the Buffer Podcast episode #127 for your reading pleasure.

Table of Contents

• • Trend 1: In-the-moment content will win out over highly-produced content
  • Trend 2: AI-driven personalized customer experiences
  • Trend 3: Brands can no longer afford to ignore social media ads
  • Trend 4: Rise of social media TV and vertical videos
  • Trend 5: The evolution from multichannel to omnichannel marketing

Kicking off our most popular show of the year: Social Media Trends 2019.

1. In-the-moment content will win out over highly-produced content

Brian: Our number 1 trend for 2019, and by the way these 5 trends are in no particular order because we feel that they are all hugely important, is that in-the-moment content will win out over highly-produced content.

Stories and rise of ephemeral content across social networks, which I’m sure we’ll see a lot more of in 2019, is capturing the hearts and minds of audiences everywhere.

Hailley: One of the key parts of that trend is that we’re predicting that stories will become the primary way to share content on social media, overtaking the News Feed. Only time will tell, but we’ll count on you to let us know if that prediction was right or not next year!

But this is why social media marketers have to continue to pay close attention to the rise of Stories and how it impacts how people consume content. And it’s why we talk about it so much here on the show. We’re witnessing a fundamental shift in media.

Brian: Mobile usage and even shorter attention spans will continue to increase the popularity of short-lived content in 2019, especially with Millennials and Generation Z’ers, who thrive on their relationships with brands being authentic and meaningful.

Which is exactly why it’s crucial that social media marketers establish a solid video strategy for ephemeral content.

More and more brands will embrace this personal, authentic and in-the-moment style content vs. overly produced, pre-packed content.

Hailley: What exactly does that mean for you?

Well, this means an increased focus on the people and personalities behind your brand. Think about how you can use video, Stories and images to connect your audience with the human – maybe even, dare I say, the vulnerable – side of your business.

You can accomplish a lot of this by taking your audience behind the scenes and showing the work your business day-to-day.

If you’re a coffee shop, create a story of how you brew the perfect cup.

If you’re a service business, take your followers on a tour of your office or show your team working.

Brian: Overall, the key thing is to experiment.

Imagine at one end of the spectrum there’s the old social media with pre-packaged, very produced content. At the other end you have in-the-moment, super raw content. For brands, there are millions of untapped miles of opportunity in the middle of those two ends to try new things.

2. AI-driven personalized customer experiences

Which, brings us to our next social media trends 2019 and that’s that we’ll start to see AI drive a personalized customer experiences across lots of different channels.

Hailley: From chatbots to ad optimization, platforms like Google and Facebook have been continuing to adopt artificial intelligence to enhance customer interaction.

But it remains a huge opportunity and is underutilized by many brands.

Where we’re seeing this develop particularly fast is in the form of online customer service.

In 2018, the growth in AI-driven communication has been undeniable, with tools like Intercom and Drift starting to appear on websites everywhere.

Many experts predict that by 2020, more than 80% of all customer service interactions will be powered by AI bots.

Brian: Again, with the younger generations leading the charge.

Millennials are the quickest adaptors of chatbot-based customer experiences. According to Huffington Post, 60% of the millennial population already uses chatbots and 71% of Millennials have implied that they would like to try using one.

In 2019, more and more brands will strengthen their online customer service practices and even move to new platforms that may potentially offer more effective technology for customer service to thrive online, such as WhatsApp and Messenger.

Hailley: Let’s talk about WhatsApp for a second because I think marketers forget that they have over a billion users.

In 2019, we should begin to see the rise of WhatsApp as a primary social customer service channel. The release of the WhatsApp business API in August 2018 will continue to be a total game-changer in the industry.

With this new API, WhatsApp allows businesses to respond to customers for free within 24 hours. This shift means businesses are now incentivized to reply to their customers faster. It puts the focus firmly on improving customer experience.

Brian: What I love about how WhatsApp is set up is that customers can talk to a business on a channel they are already using for communication (with friends and family) without being spammed with marketing messages. The power with WhatsApp really is in the consumers hands.

But in terms of personalization, given the vast amount of information being uploaded by people each day, it’s become very easy to get insights into all kinds of information about your customers.

This has opened the door for enhanced personalization, and that has increased consumer expectation for the same. So in other words, consumers are coming to expect it.

Hailley: Content, products, emails, ads – all can now be based on the consumer’s purchase history, clicked links, social media posts, and other behavior.

Like for example, Airbnb now sends personalized trip and activity ideas based on your upcoming trips. And Netflix offers shows to watch based on your taste. Amazon and eBay show products similar to the ones you’ve bought before. All of that is personalization.

Brian: It’s on you as a business to figure out what personalization looks like for your company.

As long as you are respectful of personal privacy, personalization is a solid way to go for marketers to boost campaign performance in 2019.

3. Brands can no longer afford to ignore social media ads

We’re already seeing a ton of businesses jump on board with social media ads. Marketers increased social ad budgets 32% in 2018 alone and produced more ads than ever before.

In fact, one of every four Facebook Pages now use paid advertising as part of their strategy. And Facebook accounts for 23% of total U.S. digital ad spending. All of those numbers are sure to increase in 2019.

Brian: What happens when we see this trend emerge is that it gets more competitive and more expensive to advertise.

To counter this, social teams should make sure they pair their ad money with equal time investment and creativity..

In other words, you won’t be able to just create any old ad and have it work. You have to invest some time in creating great content. One of the easiest ways to do this is to just boost your top performing organic content.

Hailley: If you’ve noticed, lots of brands like Spotify, Blenders Eyeware, and others are leading the way with creative social ads that are both personalized and entertaining, rather than just banner ads squeezed into a news feed.

It’s the brand awareness type ads that are really thriving. Even if you’re selling your product, you can do it in a way that doesn’t feel intrusive to other types of authentic content in the news feed.

Brian: Content should feel like something coming from your friends.

We wanted to give you a few tips on creating better ads.

First, you must must must, understand your target audience.

Each ad campaign should target a focused group based on interests, jobs, relevant competitors, and previous interaction with your brand.

Hailley: Next, make sure to define your goals and metrics up front.

It’s important to show that social media has a positive bottom-line impact on your business.

Awareness campaigns, for example, might focus on impressions, while conversion campaigns should put more value on click-throughs.

After goals, it’s all about investing in high-quality content.

With more brands competing for people’s attention on social media, ordinary posts just aren’t going to cut it.

Brian: At the heart of great content are compelling visuals, which are essential for clicks and high conversion rates on social media. Not every brand will have the budget for expensive equipment or a professional team, but even just learning some video basics or even hiring a freelancer can make a difference.

But one thing every brand and marketer can and should be doing is repurposing ideas from top-performing organic content.

Creating high quality social ads takes time and money. Test your ad concepts as organic posts first to see how they perform. Once you see what’s working, you can adapt and repurpose your top performing organic content for ads.

Hailley: Doing that will help increase ROI of your ads right from the beginning.

And one more thing on that topic is to embrace new ad formats

Instagram Stories ads, for example, have been around since 2017. But this year Instagram gave brands the ability to use three consecutive photos or videos.

Pinterest, on the other hand, recently rolled out wide-format promoted videos.

And Facebook Messenger ads now allow brands to connect with customers directly via instant messaging.

4. Rise of social media TV and vertical videos

One of the biggest social media trends since 2018 has been the launch of IGTV by Instagram.

This along with other developments from social networks points to the rise of what we’re calling “social television” lead by the vertical video format.

Hailley: I think that this fourth trend is one of the most exciting social media trends 2019 and is going to fundamentally shift the way that brands and marketers create content.

Plus, Instagram is just going to continue to grow exponentially. Other platforms will probably follow suit with their own version of vertical video and Stories.

According to data collected by Statista, more than 50% of digital videos are now viewed on mobile in vertical format. And it has been showing a general upward trend since 2013.

Brian: I hope at this point everyone is starting to realize that these trends for 2019 are all connected. Personalized experiences, advertising, and vertical videos are all a part of the overall way the social media industry is heading.

Each platform is working hard to create experiences that people want to return to every single day. Which is exactly why things like IGTV are so compelling—that content sits right there at the top of the feed, and is top of mind each time someone logs on.

Hailley: Your daily authentic content creation approach that businesses will inevitably take advantage of in 2019.

The way we see it is that savvy businesses will create content for each type of consumer:

• The daily consumer that Stories really helps to attract.
• The shoppers and scrollers that the News Feed is perfect for.
• The power users that longer form content, like what’s found on IGTV, is perfect for.

Brian: Thinking about your target audience as these types of personas and then matching your content to their intentions on social will lead to the biggest engagement.

Which, is a great transition into our 5th trend to look forward to in 2019 and that’s a shift in marketing best-practices.

5. The evolution from multichannel to omnichannel marketing

Hailley: Now this one isn’t solely about social media trends 2019, but social media plays a critical role in your overall marketing strategy.

If you’re wondering what omnichannel marketing is and why we’re talking about omnichannel, Omni is based on the Latin word Omnis, which means ‘all or every’ – and this obviously emphasizes the importance of reaching and interacting with customers in all channels.

Brian: There’s a quote floating around out there from John Bowden, VP at Time Warner Cable, and I think he explains omnichannel marketing perfectly:

“Omnichannel is viewing the experience through the eyes of your customer, orchestrating the customer experience across all channels so that it is seamless and integrated. It anticipates that customers may start in one channel and move to another as they progress to an end point. That end point is your product or service.”

In other words, you have to think about the digital experience as a whole.

Hailley: A buyer’s journey is still a mystery for the most part because there are so many touch points with your brand along the way, but what we do know, is that nobody today shops exclusively through a single medium.

Consumers of all generations buy online and in stores, they read reviews, listen to peers, do their research and it all makes up part of a bigger picture.

Brian: The best part about thinking of marketing like this is that paid ads, social, content, and email channels don’t have to compete against each other for sales or customers.

You can grow your business by strategically integrating all these channels together.

So while email may not convert a customer immediately, readers might visit your website from your newsletter. Then you might then use that traffic to re-target visitors with a special offer on social media.

Hailley: Exactly and those people might read a review on Google or Amazon about your product.

But it all originated with that email. And even though the email won’t get credit, you still were able to add a new customer to the list.

Which I think every business would consider a win.

How to say hello to us

We would all love to say hello to you on social media – especially Twitter!

• Hailley on Twitter and Hailley’s Website
• Brian on Twitter and Brian’s Website

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About The Science of Social Media podcast

The Science of Social Media is your weekly sandbox for social media stories, insights, experimentation, and inspiration. Every Monday (and sometimes more) we share the most cutting-edge social media marketing tactics from brands and influencers in every industry. If you’re a social media team of one, business owner, marketer, or someone simply interested in social media marketing, you’re sure to find something useful in each and every episode.  It’s our hope that you’ll join our 20,000+ weekly iTunes listeners and rock your social media channels as a result!

The Science of Social Media is proudly made by the Buffer team. Feel free to get in touch with us for any thoughts, ideas, or feedback.

Thank 5 Data-Backed Social Media Trends You Need to Know for 2019 for first publishing this post.