The Top Social Media Marketing Trends For 2018

Social media marketer Socialbakers has unveiled its latest Social Media Marketing Trends report that will do little to allay fears ad dollars are continuing to flood to the likes of Facebook and Instragram.

Commenting on the report, Socialbakers’ CEO, Yuval Ben-Itzhak, said: “While Facebook has made a lot of changes in the first quarter of 2018, which on the surface look like they made it more challenging for brands and publishers to reach and engage their audiences, in fact they present a great opportunity.

“For marketers to capitalize on this opportunity, they will need to be more data-driven, better understand their audiences, and experiment with different content types to drive meaningful conversations with communities,” he said.

Facebook News Feed trends

Since Facebook first announced they would update the News Feed algorithm January 12, 2018, there has been a notable impact on organic reach for the top 500 brands on Facebook by the number of fans. End of the Q1 data 2000 shows that organic reach has levelled.

The overall engagement trend while moving from the year 2017 to 2018 hasn’t changed. Over the course of 2017, brands have seen a far more prominent decline in engagement compared to media pages. In fact, there has not been a noticeable drop in engagement for media pages post Facebook’s algorithm update.

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Facebook advertising trends

In Q1 2018, daily USD spent by brands has declined. With the decline in organic reach and engagement, less spend on ads opens up a market opportunity for Facebook advertisers as costs decrease in Q1.

Cost-per-Click (CPC) and Cost-per-Action (CPA have both declined due to seasonality as 2017 closed, but have been increasing since.

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Distribution of ads

Majority of advertisements, 48 per cent on Facebook and 31 per cent on Instagram, are aimed at driving engagement – a top priority among marketers. Second are link clicks.

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Facebook Live vs. native video adoption

Largest brands are still relatively slow to adopt Facebook Live video, adoption only at 17 per cent, while 86 per cent of brands use native 80 per cent video formats each month. In 2017, 63 per cent of brands tried at least one Facebook Live stream, meaning that nearly two-thirds of brands have tried the format, but haven’t found a way to make it a part of their marketing strategy on a regular basis.

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Facebook Live vs. native video reach

When compared to native videos, Live videos have higher reach. Business Pages usually reach 2.6 per cent of their audiences with traditional videos. In contrast, broadcasting Live allows them to reach 7.3 per cent of their audience – which is 2.77 times more users reached.

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