Instagram Stories
We’ve known for years now that content is king and visuals lead the way for optimum engagement, which means Instagram Stories are prepped and ready to take marketing by storm in 2018. With lots of cool recent updates, this Snapchat copycat feature easily got ahead of the game with their pre-existing audience becoming avid early adopters. Now brands and organizations have the potential to engage with their audiences in real time using live stories. The fact that the content disappears after 24 hours resonates with our natural sense of curiosity and fear of missing out!
B2B Marketing on LinkedIn
We’ve always been avid supporters of business-to-business marketing opportunities on social media, and have the campaign results to back it up, but we think this year is the time to focus specifically on LinkedIn. This platform’s features support everything from traditional brand awareness, thought leadership and solid lead generation, and an active brand presence here is going to become essential in 2018.
Voice First
Google Home and Amazon Alexa are increasingly becoming home staples, and the whole world knows Siri’s name – meaning AI and voice-first technology is something companies need to start thinking about! We’ve recently seen great examples of this enhancing the user experience, for example with CIBC enabling voice prompts for Interac Transfers (“send money!), so thinking about how to adopt voice commands on your interface should become a priority. It will also certainly affect how marketers think of optimizing content for SEO. Lots of opportunity in 2018 for this one…
Chat Bots
While thinking of AI, it’s time to expect the rise of the bots! Customer Service on social media has long been a way to get efficient responses from a brand or company – a quick tweet or instant message online saves listening to infuriating hold music and enables both agents and customers to communicate efficiently. But with the advent of conversational UIs, you’ll likely be provided with a solution from a bot in 2018.
Bold and Brutal Design
The overall look of 2018 is set to be big, bright and bold with intense colour choices, large typography and the emerging trends of asymmetric grid layouts. Brutalism is back, with repetition and stark lines and angles – giving way to our favourite design trend – new stock photography that looks less and less like stock photography!
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