7 Social Media New Year's Resolutions for Brands

As social media continues to evolve and messages being shown to consumers multiply, it takes a strong strategy to cut through the clutter. Each new year provides an opportunity to review your current tactics and think about new trends your brand can test out. But before throwing out the old strategy, your brand should build off of your success by elevating the strategies that are performing the best and trying out new technology, platforms or content that could help grow your presence.

Here are 7 social media New Year’s resolutions for brands this year:

1. Implement a video strategy. Everyone has experienced the popularity and growth of video on social media this year--just looking through their Facebook feed. Visually telling your story is proving to be more impactful for users’ short attention spans. While most brands will need to invest in new video creation, keep in mind that every piece of content created should still align with your strategic goals. Jumping on a content trend without delivering the right messages won’t provide value.

2. Utilizing live content. Instagram Stories, Snapchat and Facebook live are all examples of the live content trend on social media and users’ willingness to share live and constant updates with their networks. Today, everyone is a reporter and brands can follow suit. Users want that behind-the-scenes look at product development or events that they can’t get elsewhere.

3. Use influencers to tell your story. Not everyone will have a large budget for celebrity influencers, but the rise of micro-influencers this year is a trend more brands can start to consider. Micro-influencers are influencers with smaller audiences that are more focused on specific interests. For the price, they may provide a bigger return on your investment if your audience aligns. Having someone else tell your story and explain why your brand is great gives you more credibility instantly.

4. Invest in the right platforms for your brand. Although tracking social media ROI will continue to be a challenge for many brands, knowing which channels are working for your brand will help you prioritize which you should continue to invest in. With the number of social media channels growing, marketers have realized that having a minimal presence on many is not as valuable to your brand as mastering one or two platforms where you audience spends long periods of time.

5. Budget for social media advertising. Organic reach continues to die on most social media channels and many brands are willing to get their content in front of more eyes with extra budget. Knowing this fact now enables you to plan ahead for the budget you will need next year. Not only will social media advertising increase your reach and views on your content pieces, it gives your brand the opportunity to use a targeted approach with tools like Facebook interest targeting and lookalike audiences.

6. Resolve to repurpose good content. Content creation is incredibly important within a social media strategy, but is your brand using its content to its full potential? One article can create many social media posts, which can engage users to comment, which in turn, provides you with more content to report back to your audience.

7. Differentiate yourself from others in your industry. Like with any marketing tactic, if you are doing what every other brand in your industry is doing, you won’t be able to stand out. Look at the Unicorn Frappuccino from Starbucks and the social media attention it received. Without even being a drink people really enjoyed, it got people talking and wanting to visit their local store to try it out and share their opinions. Throw out the playbook once in a while and get creative.