1. What are the innovations taking place around the digital/social media marketing sphere?

If you're looking to engage audiences, convert customers, and boost sales in the coming year and beyond, it's important to keep an eye out for the latest trends in digital marketing in order to stay in line with your competition. Following are few of the innovations in the marketing space which have shook the marketing world, for good!

TikTok: This app saw an untapped potential in helping creators by helping the content which is highly integrated and innovative. Such short clip videos go far beyond as garnering attention of its users is important in the world when they are surrounded by content everywhere!

It is a short form mobile videos maker. Due to democratization of content creation it became an innovation in digital sphere. It is new innovative and technical feature of “reaction” function, which allows users to react spontaneously to their friend’s video, have levelled the app. The sudden and quick rise to fame has resulted in the celebrities use this platform to influence and engage more with their audiences.

Short film ads: Going against the general norm that ads generally run for few seconds, such ads go beyond the scope of normal ads as their running length goes over few minutes. But, since they are able to invoke people’s emotion and are able to connect to them on personal level, such ads with valuable content can easily gather millions of views and shares, extending the company’s scope far beyond their target audience.One instance for such kind was the dove ad, it was a short film kind of ad which received the best ad of the year as it touched the emotional side of the customer.

Micro video-blogging: This is the type of content that people share because they feel that it reflects well upon them to share it. They think sharing it makes them look smarter and are being helpful to others. An example of such content is Nas Daily who has a daily reach of over 13 million people as his content is majorly focused on community issues and inspirational stories, making the content voraciously sharable. He is a video blogger who created 1,000 daily 1-minute videos on Facebook and YouTube.

Social Listening:Social listening is monitoring your brand's social media channels for any feedback from your customers and direct references to your brand or discussions on specific keywords, topics, competitors or industries, followed by an analysis to gain insights and act on those opportunities. This concept is now being used across industries to gain insights and leveraging social media to present content which is well received by its users and change their products accordingly.For instance, Paramount (American Film Studio) used social listening to understand which aspects of films people most connectedwith. Their team would observe the films that did well and pay attention to what peoplewere talking about. Was it the story that captured their attention or the characters? This isvaluable information that helped them understand how to market current and future films. Ithelped them learn what people were excited about.

AI based technology:Both Amazon and Netflix already have built-in AI features that help with recommendations and transactions. We will continue to see it being used in a range of up-and-coming marketing applications, including content creation, voice and face recognition, chatbots, digital assistants, and highly targeted marketing strategies. AI will become the norm in terms of marketing strategy because of its increasingly accurate ability to analyse consumer behaviour and feed into a better, more interactive and personalized purchasing experience.

If you're looking to engage audiences, convert customers, and boost sales in the coming year and beyond, it's important to keep an eye out for the latest trends in digital marketing in order to stay in line with your competition.

2. How can one become a Social Media Influencer?

Days where only celebrities were the influencer and had millions of followers have passed, now, content creators are our new celebrities, in part because they are able to specialize in niches.

For instance, Gary Vaynerchuk started out by working long hours in his father’s wine store before eventually taking over and exploding the business’s growth through an effective content strategy. By creating a daily video show where he talked about different wines, he became the go-to guy in the wine industry and his shop’s sales went through the roof. Gary Vaynerchuk is a great example because he used this same strategy to then become a social media marketing influencer by sharing his insights and his strategies.

Before you start out on your journey to become a social media or Instagram influencer, you need to first figure out whether it is the right path for you. Being a social media influencer takes a certain type of person to exert social media influence and it is not a short-term commitment, as there are no guarantees that you’ll even be successful, and indeed the odds are stacked against you. One should be ready to take the risk.

Things that one must take care while becoming an influencer are:

• Find a niche: If you are having difficulties figuring out which niche you should be in then try drilling into what you are good at or what your weird quirks are.  Sometimes our weirdest things become our more valuable assets. Once this is done then it is easier to find audience as you would love to work on it.
   
• Select which social channels you will use,which involves Facebook, Snapchat, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, TikTok, LinkedIn etc. As this is especially important for an influencer to choose which platform will gain them more success.
   
• Target your audience. Knowing who your target audience is much more than just guessing who you think will be most attracted to you content. It takes thousands of testing of different types of content and continuous vigilance on trends to understand what sort of content is getting most attention and then profiling the people who is watching that content. A prime example of this is Zara (Spanish Apparel Retailer) completely rely on their buyers’ suggestions for tweaking their designs on social media as well as offline.
   
• Content:Creating good content that your user like and interact with is of maximum importance. Without this, you will not be able to retain followers for long. For instance, if you have a business profile, you can use the insights page to see your most viewed posts in the last year. This helps you understand which content your users are actively engaging with and allows you to create more content of this nature. Use your “funny” behind the scenes content to intrigue people and bring to your other platforms.
   
• A powerful message and story that you can share with audience. Content strategy, as an influencer, the heart of what you do revolves around creating and distributing top quality content that other people find valuable, not just you. For instance, Jay Shetty, he is a popular motivational influencer. People hear him out because the content is worth listening to. It is important to have a good content for your post.
   
• Consistently engage with your target audience. Once you have garnered and retained enough followers, it is crucial that the fans feel included in your ventures and are made felt special. Taylor Swift once did 13-hour fan meet up (which got extended for 17 hours and met 3,000 fans! Even each of them had 338 friends on social media, it would mean reach of over million people!She still attends fans’ birthday parties, weddings, bridal showers. She even redesigned her website and made it possible for her fans to change their Facebook profiles into their customizable personal fan page! This changed the time spent by fans on her website from 30 seconds to over 22 minutes.
   
• Track everything. By tracking everything, you can try different content types and approaches and see what your audience responds to. By learning what works and what does not on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, you can make sure that everything that you post is a hit.
   
• Be consistent and authentic. The most important is to be consistent in your work and be original and authentic. Try not to copy, paste or any illegal things, you might end up losing your audiences. Think big and play big, if you’re not willing to put your personal brand on the line and to get your name out there on your social media channel of choice, there’s no way that you’re going to attract big brands and make money on Instagram.
   
• Constantly build an email list. Email marketing is a way of engaging with people. Network all of the time, being a social media influencer is not an easy task, you have to be updated and active on social media and also engaged with your audiences.
   
• Give value, support, and a sense of community, a photographer then that could range from showing off your work to offering up tutorials or taking people behind the scenes of your latest Instagram post. OR Mad over marketing (MOM) has now introduced tutorials for marketing and designing ads.
   
• Lastly, Learn and research every day, what is the trend going on or is there any change, what variety should I introduce in my next post or story.

3. What are the trends that dominate the industry at this point?

Most people spend a good amount of time on social media. It has become an integral part of people’s live and daily routine. Given the importance of Social Media in consumers’ lives, marketers and businesses flock to social platforms in the hope of connecting with their target customers. However, there is a content overload on social media and the competition is very high.

• Ephemeral Content will Keep Gaining Popularity: Just like Instagram and snapchat stories as perfect examples. Today, people’s attention spans are short and the way they like to consume content has also changed. Therefore, content formats like Stories have become popular. They are short, engaging, and addictive in a way that people can spend hours scrolling through one Story after another.
   
• Nice Social Platforms will perform well:  The most trending platform is TikTok currently.  Celebrities and influencers are now there to engage with their audiences better.
   
• Going Live: As audiences spend most of their time now on social media, so influencers like Meghna Kaur goes live every week to have an interactive session with her audiences as well as introduce celebrities in her Instagram live for her audiences.
   
• Focus on Audio-Video content: Video content is one of the most engaging forms of content and will soon dominate the social media a clear winner over all other types of content. Whether it is short-form videos like those popular on TikTok or Stories or long-form content on YouTube, videos are the future of social media content.
   
• Rise of social media communities: Social media communities are basically social groups that are created by brands to provide a networking platform for their customers. These are usually private groups that like-minded people can join to talk about their shared interests. Facebook Groups are a brilliant example of such social communities. Brands can also utilise their social media communities to launch new products, seek customer feedback, and gain valuable customer insights. Check out this “Women Who Travel” Facebook group by Conde Nast, for example. They created this group for women travellers to discuss their travel stories, seek advice, and a lot more.
   
• More brands will incorporate social listening into their strategies: Brands and marketers are using it for a variety of use cases. From understanding the impact of a social media campaign to understanding how people perceive a brand, you can get a lot of information using social listning. This has made social listening an integral part of most marketers’ social media strategies.

4. How can companies make the most of Digital Tools to Communicate with Customers and Expand their base?

Communicating with audience and making them interact with your content is an ART, different people have different perspectives and hence, what works one for might not for other. That being said there are several strategies for brands to communicate with their audience, however, it depends on one’s target audience, brand and their industry as to which strategy would work for them.

Face-to face video communication:Communicating with your followers over online video platforms like zoom, Instagram Live for a webinar for communicating with the customer. Customers expect an omnichannel service. Recently, YouTube too has been emphasizing on its Live platform as other platforms like Twitch have entered the online streaming services.

Real time message: Having 1:1 with the customer either on Instagram DM / live and other social networking site.

Call to action: Video or photo of content reaching out the audiences and shared by your audiences.  For instances, Mother’s Day campaigns, after having the “test” we understand that the target audiences is not 30-40 ages group but their daughter’s age group who shares the content on social media. This is how company can maximise their reach to customer and understand their them.

Bots (and AI) will help professionals.

Capture attention with popular content like inspiration, entertainment, politics, pets, comedy. Capitalize on this fact and make your information relevant. Create messaging that your audience is interested in.

Google AdWords helps to look for what people are already searching. It helps you understand the keywords that you are targeting.

Search-based tools allow you to test messaging and observe how people are talking about different topics. You can see if there’s search activity on keywords related to your brand or product—if people are actively wanting to discover more. Search gives you a good indication of how your message may perform.Facebook can also give you a sense of interest by telling you that ten million people “like” yoga, but a search-based tool shows you how many people are actually searching for a specific product or term.

Social listening: Monitoring digital conversations to help you understand what customers are saying about a brand, person, or industry online. It’s used to surface feedback that can help YOU. For instance, Arneson’s team atParamount used social listening to understand which aspects of films people most connectedwith. His team would observe the films that did well and pay attention to what peoplewere talking about. Was it the story that captured their attention or the characters? This isvaluable information that helped them understand how to market current and future films. Ithelped them learn what people were excited about.

When a movie ismade, a rough cut of the film is tested in market research screenings. The purpose of thesetest screenings is to get the ideal target audience into a theater to screen the movie before itsrelease. Producers and studios bring their intended audiences into the theater, have themwatch the film, and then give them scorecards to record their observations, feelings, andopinions about the movie. The movie producers and marketers then use that information totruly understand the people with whom the movie resonates. The data from these testscreenings is then used to direct the marketing strategy/positioning as well as to improve thefilm.

5. How can one boost their online visibility to increase leads conversions?

Being a social media influencer, it is very important to boost the online visibility which leads to increase leads conversion. Things to keep in mind are:

Search-based tools allow you to test messaging and observe how people are talking about different topics. You can see if there’s search activity on keywords related to your brand or product—if people are actively wanting to discover more. Search gives you a good indication of how your message may perform.

Alliances have been the key to success for some of the biggest social media influencers that exist. For instance, 1) Shazam which got acquired by Apple is a perfect example of a company that started small with a unique offering. 2) If you are a fashion blogger or designer, you could do featured article for another, slightly bigger (huge) fashion blog.

Leveraging other people’s content to grow fast may help your brand. example Netflix is a perfect example that employed a similar strategy. It originally started with a group of popular licensed content that people already loved. Once the audience was large enough, Netflix created and released original content.

Promote content that is generated by your users: Content that has been generated by users is significant, in that it plays the part of being a social proof of your brand’s reliability. This sort of content helps you gain your clients’ trust. When your potential customers can see other customers, who have bought your products, they can see the context in which they can get maximum use out of these products. Another advantage of using this is that customers tend to find products being promoted by people who have used them to be more trustworthy and genuine. For instance, The influencer like Radhika Seth using the product of Nyka to promote it. Uploading her audiences following it by buying the product and style in her story.

Using hashtags: If you want to increase your conversions, you need to ensure that all your posts on social media have hashtags. Hashtags really work in boosting sales and traffic to your brand. When people are looking for information and content that is related to your brand, they can see your posts because of the hashtags you use. It also means that people who will be viewing your posts will be relevant clientele because they will be people who are interested in the type of product or service that you provide.

Coming up with offers and discounts: Social media makes it possible to have a direct connection with your clients. You should, therefore, maximize this to improve your conversion rates. You should often come up with offers and discounts to your customers. Offers and discounts attract many new clients and thrill your existing customers.

Use of analytics: Analytics are key, as they help you analyse the effects of your marketing strategies and in turn plan for your brand’s future. When you use analytics in social media, you will be able to gauge how effective your strategies are, and what more you need to do for you to improve your e-commerce conversion rates.

It is very important to boost the visibility not only to increase the lead conversions but also for the growth of your career. For instance, Game of Thrones’ Sophie Turner explains that she has been chosen for roles over better actresses because she has more followers. The above is true in many industries today. I was also personally selected for a new TV Series Hi Emirates, a Tv Show to represent the Women in UAE and I was also selected based on my Social Media Engagement.