Social media provides a relaxed platform for businesses to connect with consumers, find new audiences, and build their brands. With approximately 3.5 billion people currently active on social media, platforms constantly adapt based on user interests, which causes new trends to grow overnight. Participating in the right trends at the right time can skyrocket the popularity of your business and turn a small, engaged audience into loyal brand ambassadors.

Take advantage of small-scale influencer marketing

Influencers may not be new in the digital marketing scene, but the way marketers approach influencers is steadily evolving. While many businesses immediately think of big-name celebrities to advertise their brands through paid testimonials, individuals with slightly smaller followings may yield better results and convert more customers.

Take advantage of social media platforms like Instagram to see who your best customers are and how much engagement they get on their posts. Using existing customers who have meaningful connections within a small community can build on real relationships to generate genuine interest in your business.

Implement chatbots to engage your audience

Chatbots generate dialogue with customers and direct them to the resources they need to learn about your products, with Facebook alone hosting over 100,000 chatbots for different pages and businesses. Adopting new trends like chatbots to improve the user experience can help you market through smaller interactions and passively grow your business as the trends increase in popularity.

Using chatbots on your social media profiles helps customers find your business, reducing the amount of effort you need to expend to attract customers. When customers message chatbots on social media, it shows interest in your products and a high level of initiative compared to the average social media user you might reach through traditional advertising.

Use video outreach

Although making shareable videos is a great social media marketing strategy, encouraging others to make videos to promote your brand is even better. Companies like Chipotle are starting to take advantage of new, non-monetized apps like TikTok to spread video challenges that expand product awareness. By creating a dance challenge based on an iconic menu item, Chipotle generated effective peer-to-peer advertising.

Used by over 500 million people worldwide, TikTok allows users to shoot, edit, and share videos quickly and easily, encouraging people to share audio clips and film themselves doing viral challenges. The carefree environment of video-making apps like TikTok helps users enjoy your marketing content as entertainment.

Connect with mobile users

Many people primarily use social media on their mobile devices, making it more important than ever for marketers to engage with users on their smartphones. Mobile-exclusive apps like Snapchat create tight-knit communities of users who visit the apps for exclusive content. Building a social media presence that allows you to create and share user-friendly mobile content gives consumers more opportunities to develop a lasting relationship with your brand and products.

Using new trends as marketing techniques can increase your business's visibility to potential customers, especially if you adopt the trends early on. Pay attention to patterns in the content your customers share and the platforms they use to share it, then tailor your marketing campaigns to meet their needs. Staying on top of social media trends based on user feedback can expand your reach and create a more involved audience.