Live Videos
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As far as social marketing analytics, live videos beat prerecorded in having longer view times. People that watch live videos feel more engaged to the video they’re watching, as they can have real-time conversation with the person live-streaming.

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If live videos weren’t such a hot trend, the bigger social media platforms wouldn’t be jumping on this bandwagon. Now, there are live stream features available on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter. The one booming social media platform that hasn’t found a way to jump on this bandwagon is Snapchat, so it will be interesting to see how and if they find a way to merge into the livestream world in 2019.


Voice
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Voice is booming. For people on the move with busy lives and not enough hours in the day, time is priceless. Why stop cooking raw chicken to wash your hands to check your phone and look up the recipe when you could just talk to your Alexa or Google Voice, while continuing to cook. Voice is the way to use technology while doing things that you don’t have spare hands for. Want to listen to music while in the shower? Voice helps you do so without stopping your shower to dry off and turn it on. Have your hands full with your kids and need to call someone immediately? Voice can call for you and put the call on speaker.
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Chatbots (Conversational Marketing)
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Chatbots are helping online businesses become more streamlined and credible. When going to a new site you’re unfamiliar with, being able to talk to a real person (even if it’s through a bot) helps gain credibility. It shows that the company and the people behind it aren’t trying to hide from the customers, but are on the home page, ready to help virtually. This also helps the customer know how to find help easily when they go from site to site. Chatbots are the new and improved version of the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) and are knocking out the need for most sites to even have an FAQ page.
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Micro-influencer Marketing
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Micro-influencer marketing is a secret weapon for small businesses. While major influencers are celebrities and well known across the country, they charge significantly more to do a sponsored post on social platforms, and they oftentimes reach such a broad audience that it misses most marks of your brand’s objective. Micro-influencers are influencers with a more niche audience with under 10,000 followers, so they cost less to hire as a brand influencer than a major influencer would.

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If you own a small business selling furniture in St. Louis, having someone like Kylie Jenner post on her social media will help persuade some people near your market to buy your products, but it won’t do much for the rest of the world that sees her posts. Someone in California seeing a post about furniture being sold in and to the St. Louis area will help gain brand awareness, but won’t help turn that engagement into sales conversions.