Welcome back, trendsetters! At the beginning of the year, we made some predictions about which social media trends and awesome tools would be blowing up in 2019. Now that we’re over half way done with the year, we thought it would be fun to see how well we did with those predictions! Let’s revisit our 2019 Social Media Forecast Report:
Prediction: Expect to see more Instagram Stories and Story Ads!
Reality: This March, Instagram announced the release of full-screen, vertical story ads. Now with the addition of this awesome tool, businesses have a more creative way to inspire users to take action while viewing a story! This is a great alternative to News Feed ads since Instagram Stories have become such a prominent feature on the platform.
According to embedsocial.com, Instagram Stories are now being used by half a billion people EVERY SINGLE DAY, and a third of the most viewed Instagram stories are from businesses! If they haven’t already, homebuilders should take advantage of this audience pool and start utilizing Instagram Stories to reach their target market.
Prediction: Long-Form content engagement will increase on Facebook.
Reality: Long-Form content may be great for SEO, but it looks like short and sweet is ideal for increasing engagement on a Facebook post. In order to keep your readers’ attention, stats continue to show that you will receive the best results by not exceeding much higher than a 50 character word count. (source: buzzsumo.com).
Prediction: Video will continue to be incredibly important, specifically short video.
Reality: As far as posting creative content goes, videos by far get the best engagement numbers and benefit marketers the most. 51% of marketers worldwide name video as the type of content with the best ROI, and marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than non-video users. (Source: wordstream.com)
According to wistia.com, videos between 30 seconds and 2 minutes long will get the most engagement, and videos start to see a drastic decline in engagement once they hit between 2 to 3 minutes long. So, when making a well-produced video to post on your businesses’ Facebook and YouTube pages, remember to keep them short and include your most important and interesting information toward the beginning of the video.
Prediction: There is a huge potential for text-message marketing in the homebuilding industry.
Reality: Millennials are a generation that grew up using their mobile phones and are now at the age where they are entering the housing market, so homebuilders should jump in and start using text message marketing to reach this demographic. Not only does text message marketing have a greater potential for reaching your target audience, but text message marketing is cheaper than email marketing and also has a higher response rate (45% vs email response rates at 6%!). (source: rebradly.com)
Based on the current rate of subscribers for SMS marketing, Techjury.net predicts that by 2020 23% more people (than in 2016) will opt-in to receive SMS messages from companies. Considering 64% of the world’s population owns a smartphone, this is a service homebuilders can’t ignore when trying to engage and build relationships with potential and existing customers.
Overall most of our predictions were correct as far as what would be trending in 2019. YAY!
Sometimes it can be difficult to know what trends will take off because digital marketing is always evolving, but that’s also what makes it so exciting! We’re constantly getting the opportunity to challenge ourselves to create content that resonates with people, and we get to offer our clients the most up-to-date services to help market their product in the most creative and efficient ways possible. We can’t wait to see how the rest of 2019 plays out, and we’re keeping an eye out for what trends we believe will be big next year!! What do you think is the next big trend for digital marketing in 2020?