The Future of Social Media Marketing

Social media marketing is constantly evolving with new trends that keep companies on its toes. It’s important to ensure your marketing strategy keeps up with those trends to retain strong brand visibility and engagement with customers.

Many brands maintain a consistent presence on social media, and it’s challenging to stand out against competitors without a solid social media marketing strategy in place. Home builders and developers must stay aware of the top trends to maintain a successful online presence and consistently engage homebuyers and potential leads.

Let’s explore the trends that will be dominating the social media marketing landscape throughout this year and beyond.

Greater Use of Chatbots

This AI-powered tool is rising in popularity as it offers a great way for brands to respond to customers more quickly. Many brands use chatbots on social media to easily answer customer questions and resolve issues. When common questions arise from homebuyers, chatbots can step in and save time for home builders and developers. Although chatbots may not be able to resolve the more serious issues of homeowners and potential homebuyers, it’s a helpful tool to ensure customers receive a message that indicates someone will respond soon.

More Authentic Communication Through Social Groups

Social media communities such as Facebook Groups are rising in popularity as a way for home builders and developers to offer an additional channel for interaction with their customers. Many social media users enjoy participating in genuine conversations with brands without the emphasis on making a purchase. This is where Facebook Groups come in. They offer a great place to interact and build meaningful connections with homebuyers. Along with boosting interaction with the brand, these groups also offer customers a channel to interact with like-minded individuals and form a community that is founded on their love for the brand.

These communities are also a helpful channel for home builders and developers to open discussions, receive honest feedback on their products and services, and gain insight into their customer base. Facebook Groups offer several features to increase engagement including live videos, story updates and participation as a business page.

Greater Accountability for Brand Transparency

Today, studies show that 86% of Americans say transparency from businesses is incredibly important. Transparency is about communicating clearly, openly offering information and maintaining honesty when it comes to failure. Online audiences find it harder to forgive companies that avoid discussing missteps or mistakes, and they prefer brands that face problems head-on.

Target audiences don’t just prefer this behavior from brands, they expect it from the brands they support. Customers are much more willing to reward brands with higher loyalty when expectations for transparency are met.

Brands that approach social media marketing with higher transparency raise customer trust, boost their brand reputation and the opportunity to increase sales. When home builders and developers focus on offering transparency to homebuyers, they are more likely to place trust in the business. Trust is exceptionally powerful, especially when it comes to selling homes and master-planned communities.

Showcasing the Faces Behind Brands

As part of building authenticity, many homebuyers love to see the face behind the home builders and developers they follow online. It’s important to feature the team or specific employees to demonstrate that the brand is personable and cares about the people that make up their business, as well as the customers that they serve. Highlighting real people paves the way for meaningful engagement and authentic interaction with homebuyers and followers.

Emphasis on Ephemeral Content

Ephemeral content refers to content that is available for a brief window with a time limit. As time progresses, attention spans grow shorter and social media users are constantly looking for short, bite-sized content to consume. Every day, about 500 million people use Instagram Stories, offering home builders and developers a fantastic opportunity to reach a high number of users. These stories only last a few seconds, offering a great opportunity to quickly engage homebuyers with short, convenient content. As these stories quickly and continuously roll over onto the next piece of content, many users are often glued to this active format.

As this content only lasts 24 hours, this offers an advantageous opportunity for brands to discover what works best with customers and strategically create consistent content. Not only can a brand create original content, but it can also share relevant content from other users to generate greater engagement.

Continued Popularity of Video Content

Video is an essential content form for capturing attention and boosting engagement that continues to dominate social media marketing strategies. A study indicated that by 2022, video content will make up 82% of all content.

Short videos – Today, shorter videos reign supreme in the social media landscape. This content follows the trend of accommodating shorter attention spans and grabbing interest in a quicker period. Shortening content down to 90 seconds or less is recommended to keep audiences entertained and lower the chances that they scroll away.

Live Videos – Now that the COVID-19 pandemic has proved the ability of many brands to adapt and find new ways to interact with customers in real-time, many social media users expect this expanded engagement to continue. For many brands, their interaction with customers and followers has grown through live stream videos. This is a great opportunity to provide more authenticity and add a personable touch to the brand by openly interacting with customers.

Leveraging Virtual Reality for Convenience

Since social distancing has become a priority, many customers are less likely to venture out when it’s not absolutely necessary. In these cases, virtual reality offers home builders and developers a prime opportunity to invite buyers into their master-planned communities and model homes through immersive virtual experiences. This technological trend has become a great way to engage homebuyers and showcase homes while they browse these offerings from the comfort of their own home or personal space.

Customizing Ads For Specific Audiences

Personalizing content for target audiences is trending, and it’s most effective when it comes to delivering social media ads. Customizing social media ads is an effective way to show specific homebuyer audience segments the most appealing ads that will be most likely to influence their online behavior. Dynamic ads on Facebook allow brands to customize ad formats with several content options to cater to each individual’s advertisement interactions. Targeting ads this way allows the right audience to see the most relevant content while also providing brands the chance to lower the costs of ads for results and receive more high-quality leads.

Sharing More User-Generated Content for Higher Engagement

Although user-generated content is not a new trend, an increasing number of brands now leverage this content to bolster engagement rates among customers. A study by Social Media Today showed that user-generated content received a 28% higher engagement rate than standard posts from a brand.

The best way for home builders and developers to generate this content is by encouraging happy homeowners to share their stories for the opportunity to be featured on the brand’s social media. While this allows customers to feel important, this content also creates a wonderful opportunity for brands to build greater authenticity, improve their brand reputation and provide touching social proof to potential leads.

Utilizing Geo-Targeting To Reach Local Audiences

To reach and attract an audience within a specific location, many brands utilize geo-targeting that draws attention to relevant local content. Home builders and developers can use geo-targeting by tagging posts with the locations of their homes and master-planned communities. This instantly attracts a local audience as several social platforms offer the option to search posts for specific or nearby locations.

Geo-targeting also allows brands to pinpoint local audiences more easily in specific locations when promoting posts with advertising spend. If the home builder or developers’ offerings are based in certain locations, geo-targeting allows ads to solely focus on audiences in these areas to whom the content will be the most relevant.

Develop a Powerful Marketing Strategy to Match Trends with Milesbrand

To keep up with everchanging social media marketing trends, it’s crucial to form a strong marketing strategy that positions your brand for success. When you work with Milesbrand, we can amplify the brand through comprehensive digital marketing and complement messaging with award-winning creative design. We’ll help your brand build meaningful relationships with potential buyers from the first time they interact with you by using impactful marketing strategies and communicating creatively to express brand differentiators. Reach out to us today to begin your transformation from land to brand!