A couple of years ago, you could live with a simple social media marketing strategy in your company's marketing plan. But, not anymore!

In 2018, every business must have an online presence and you got to mold your marketing strategies to beat the competition. It is more like that you thought something had worked for you last year, but it might not be relevant this year (in the social media space or elsewhere). Social media audiences are spreading like a wildfire or maybe has reached every nook and cranny of the world where people can access the internet( more than half of the world is actively surfing through the social media). People are glued to the plethora of information at just a simple click on the pocket gadgets. If you aren't having a social media presence, your business is going to have a #FOMO (fear of missing out) feeling and consequences. But just having an online Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest, Twitter, or XYZ account is enough for your business success in today's gadget city. You need to have a full-fledged social media marketing strategy which is constantly updating with the changing norms.

Needless to say, these advancements have brought us to the world where the attention span of the audience is shrinking rapidly because more and more businesses are connecting with their target audience on the social media handles. It is now becoming a challenge for businesses to reach their users with the most amazing and relevant content today. Therefore, it is more important for the brands to build ideas that work for the need of feed with the required speed. Woah, did that rhyme? Anyway.

We are here to enlighten you about the successful approaches for the social media marketing strategies in 2018 which would help you in achieving your business goals.

Ephemeral Content
All of this started with the Snapchat, Snapchat popularity has increased when it appealed interestingly to the millennials and Gen Z with the ephemeral content strategy.

Ephemeral content is the short-lived creative writing which can last at the most for 24 hours on social media or anywhere rather. Post that, it going to 'poof' forever.

This is quite heartbreaking for the marketers as they work really hard to come up with the strategic copy and it can only be appreciated for a limited period (only if someone sees it). However, the social media marketers have no choice as this is the most successful trend on almost all the platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and even WhatsApp (out of subject example). That's why brands are assigning a dedicated separate strategy for the social media content and the ephemeral content.

Ephemeral content makes it a mandatory need to be original yet creative with the content ideas. Many brands are mostly using the Instagram platform for constant stories with the most engaging high-quality content to reach their audience. This content evaporates within some hours which is positively pushing your target audience to take a quick action on the stories and makes your marketing team smile.

Why is the Ephemeral Content Working?
Short-life makes content more authentic in comparison to sponsored ads.
Stories vanish within some hours which makes audiences anxious about missing the information (basically, #fomo) and leads to quicker responses.
Captures more attention than the "usual" social media posts.
In short, you need to have a strategic plan to make this work. You can't expect it to work with the random posts always. You need to keep the content (could be images, videos, GIFs, and boomerang videos)) authentic, interesting and engaging to the audiences to get a turnaround within 24 hours.

Chatbots
Chatbots can also be a very useful social media marketing strategy. People are always reluctant to change or alien technologies at the beginning stage and chatbots weren't treated any different. But not anymore, they aren't ignored as a robotic machine now. Bots are being used to enhance the marketing strategies and are being successful in providing the instant responses to the customers or doing things like ordering your food. What we see in those sci-fi movies is soon going to be real, but let's not get carried away and talk about the role of chatbots as a social media marketing strategy. In fact, we have seen many companies using bot technology already this year successfully.

As per Garter, the business content creation using chatbots will be 20% by 2018. If the machines will be able to generate brand specific, creative, innovative and continuous content for social media handles, it can excitingly be another milestone in the tech world where marketing and advertising companies would love to invest.