According to Hubspot, from February 2020 onwards, mentions of fake news, misinformation, and conspiracy theories increased dramatically. Consumers could not identify an authoritative source they felt they could trust, leading to an influx of people seeking trustworthy brands. Tim Williamson, Managing Director of APAC, Telum Media, says, “Trust and authenticity will be key themes. Weary consumers are gravitating to trusted media brands to help navigate uncertainty. The tech giants are under greater public scrutiny. There is an opportunity for brands and marketing and communications teams to build trust by engaging authentically with their audiences.”

Hubspot shares “66% of consumers state that brand transparency is one of the most attractive qualities in a brand.” Position your business to be open and honest about your brand, behind-the-scenes, etc. Consumers will appreciate it and be refreshed by the willingness to share.

Hackers don’t hesitate to take over authentic channels to share false information, especially if you’re business has a trusted foundation. Ensure your channels, social media accounts, email platform, and other communication platforms are secured.

If your business hasn’t already, put in place communication guidelines. Ensure your team knows that they must be certain of a source’s authenticity before sharing it or posting it. Don’t assume something is accurate information; dig deeper and fact check.

Check who controls your social media accounts, and verify that rogue employee, or recently made ex-employees don’t take over your channels. Minimize admin access to your accounts, and have a plan in place if there is about to be a shift in positions.

Expect the continuation of social media channels to actively tackle misleading information. Hubspot says, “It’ll be a challenging task [to tackle disinformation], as platforms find the balance between transparency, open communication, and managing the issue, so expect numerous fixes to appear throughout 2021 as a fitting solution is found.”

As consumers become more discerning about disinformation on social media platforms, they are increasingly engaging with authentic and more real content. Take that to your advantage and build trust with your audience through your social media content. For your business success, implementing brand transparency into your business social media strategy is a wise move for 2021.

Hubspot shares, “old-school marketing tactics such as newsletters and podcasts may lack the finesse of more recent methods, but they’re easy to establish by marketers and most importantly, easy to consume by customers. 55% of Americans now listen to podcasts, while newsletter mentions were up 14% during the lockdown.” This year, we will see continued growth in these methods.

Hubspot has shared that “31% of B2B marketers say newsletters are best for nurturing leads. With creative segmentation of your database, you can have hyper-personalized messaging that really cuts through to the information that your consumers are looking for.” Newsletters are a great way to increase customer loyalty and move prospects into the sales funnel. Be sure to effectively harness the power of newsletters.

Podcasts have become a broad marketing tool. It is another effective old-school method to build consumer relationships. Feel free to get creative! Set up interviews with guests that your target audience would like to hear from. Use it as an opportunity to connect with prospective customers.

Work across multiple channels. Combine newsletters and podcasts with TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook content. Bring on an omni-influencer who has multiple connection points with their audience. This is a great strategy for maximum engagement and impact.

Audio analysis ensures that you won’t miss a brand mention. Social listening is important, but with the rise of voice usage in podcasts and social media, spoken mentions could be missed. Collaborate with advanced social analytic platforms that include audio analysis.

Like trends mentioned in previous weeks, this social media strategy trend is about building communities. Hubspot states that “it isn’t about how the content is shared— it’s that the content is good and easy to access making for a great user experience. Expect brands to focus more on providing consumers with more content to fulfill their information voids with a particular focus on content over style.”

With the absence of a physical office, podcasts, blogs, and newsletters allow a trust to be built up. There are a deep audience engagement and strong host/listener rapport that come with old-school marketing. For your business success, implementing old-school marketing into your business social media strategy is a wise move for 2021.

Currently, the three biggest social media platforms include Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Hubspot shares that despite differences in audiences, demographics, and users, these channels hold similar positions in consumers’ minds, and it’s extremely unlikely they will lose that dominance. Hubspot adds that these platforms have the size and capabilities to adapt quickly to changing trends and consumer habits. Releasing new features helps large social media platforms react to trends, giving your business the opportunity to do the same.

If you haven’t already gone all-in with social media platforms, especially using the new features they release, then you’re not using this free marketing tool to its full potential. The channels are growing in numbers and in reaching audiences. Your business needs to be a part of that.

It is tempting to use all the platforms under the sun for your marketing strategy because it is free. Resist this and instead find platforms that fit your brand best. Find where your target audience spends most of their social media time and place all your efforts there. If your audience has a larger spectrum of demographics, a safe place to push your marketing efforts would be in Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. These large platforms are the main places that large and broad audiences spend their time.

Study the platforms your business uses. If you become an expert at the features available, you’ll be able to use them more effectively. The strategy doesn’t stop at becoming familiarized with it; it comes from reviewing what features your audience engages more with on each platform. It may be difficult to adjust the strategy you’re used to, but it’s about being the most effective. Don’t place efforts in an Instagram post if your audience is mainly spending their time on Instagram stories.

Channel monitoring helps if your audience is changing. According to Hubspot, “these analytics will give you vital consumer insights, which can help influence your content ideation and planning. While native analytics give you an overview of each channel, a complete channel monitoring solution makes the process much simpler.”

Monitor paid social media if you are investing in it. Paid and organic social media are effective when they are aligned in your marketing strategy. Both should be included in campaign strategies. Monitoring provides data of what is and isn’t working, which then can provide adjustment recommendations for the campaign, social media strategy, and other marketing efforts.

Hubspot states that you can “expect to see these major platforms continue to dominate the landscape, even encapsulating more elements into their structure (such as Facebook’s acquisition of GIPHY). Though things are unsettled now, they will remain a vital element of every marketing strategy, especially earned and paid marketing.”

In 2021, large social media platforms will continue to have a grip on the social media market, adapting to new trends and implementing new features. Because of this, we highly recommend using these strong marketing outlets and adapting as they change. For your business success, adapting your business’s social media strategy to these social media platforms is a wise move for 2021.

As Hubspot puts it, brands can no longer shout their messages into the void and hope for the best. The pandemic has made it to where consumers would rather have conversations, shifting your business to create sales by building relationships. Technology advancements are making it possible to have a more personalized conversation with your audience. According to Hubspot, technology is starting to catch up with the conversational marketing potential, with more AI-powered solutions, omnichannel conversations with hyper-realistic chatbots are now possible, enabling conversational marketing’s full potential this year.

Conversational marketing has a lot to do with how you position the business brand. Content must allow a way for your audience to start a conversation with the business. Use chatbots, direct messaging, live-streamed demos, and even questions on Instagram and Facebook stories.

Replicate an in-person conversation when it comes to your business marketing strategy. Traditional marketing had a way of hardly listening to the consumer. On the other hand, conversational marketers do not dominate the conversation and instead listen and strive to understand. Use the information taken in when listening because it makes the interaction feel authentic; each builds on the ones before it. The essential part of this type of marketing is engagement. Aim for intimate, personal trading of information.

Give your brand a human side! Lose the sales-talk and create a tone that is approachable, conversational, and engaging. Implementation of this combination will bring a human voice to your business social media. Your business audience will more likely connect with your brand if they feel like it’s an authentic conversation and it doesn’t feel like it’s sales-driven.

According to Hubspot, it is beneficial to integrate your customer service data, from chats, emails, and calls, into your analytics platform. “This will provide additional insights into all aspects of your customer journey, from identifying key messages that engage consumers, revealing pain points causing speed bumps in the sales process, to postsales complaints that could cause impact on your brand.”

Hubspot predicts that 2021 will bring brands and platforms to engage more through AI opportunities to connect with more consumers. “Promotions will become less forced and derive more from natural conversations and established relationships with consumers.”

Conversational marketing moves buyers through marketing and sales funnels by using the power of one-at-a-time questions, mirroring real conversations. Facebook AI suggests engaging use of personality, knowledge, empathy, and the ability to blend all three seamlessly has shown to be effective. For your business success, implementing conversational marketing into your business social media strategy is a wise move for 2021.

Studies show that as soon as the lockdown occurred in 2020, mentions of keywords to nostalgia or remembering the good-old-days increased significantly. According to Hubspot, mentions “shot up from a baseline of around 13M mentions to 24.4M (+88%).” Nostalgia marketing was used more during the 1920’s depression, the late 2000’s Great Recession, and your business should take a page from that marketing strategy. Hubspot suggests, “Connecting with positive memories from the past helps people disconnect from their current struggles. Connect that positive memory to your brand and that sense of positivity will build an emotional relationship with your consumer. You made them feel good, therefore they associate your brand as a good brand.”

You have to know who your audience is to determine how you will use nostalgic marketing. Referencing a GameBoy won’t have the same effect on a Baby Boomer as it will a Millennial. For nostalgia marketing to work, you have to discover your target audience. Once you know who your audience is, or where the range is, create a fun campaign that ranges between the 10-year bracket and keep it connected to your brand.

If you don’t fall into your main target audience generation, don’t be afraid to do some deep data digging! You want to know what was trending back in the “good-old-days” and what will connect with your audience. Think outside the box and don’t just stick to what was trending in your industry but also what was trending culturally. It’s easy to stick with items of the past, but consider foods, experiences, or even songs that can connect to your business and stir up nostalgia.

If your business has been around for years, or if your business is one that pushes new products consistently, consider reintroducing favorite products. It will be nostalgic to faithful customers as they see products they saw years ago, especially if it was sold out by the time they wanted to purchase it. This recommendation will also target your newer or younger audience since it will be introduced as a new product for them.

This year, you can expect marketing strategies to dip into nostalgic elements. Content and media will be presented more in old school ways. Hubspot even adds, “We may also see brands segment their audience further. Nostalgia marketing will only work for one generation at a time—we could see content themes being adapted to suit the targeted audience.”

Nostalgia is a powerful marketing tactic because it has something special to offer all customer groups. As Libby Margo from AutoPilot puts it, “Through nostalgia marketing, brands are able to invoke positive emotions from their audience, put their products in the spotlight, and generate more revenue and visibility.” If fitting to your business, implementing nostalgic marketing into your business social media strategy is a wise move for 2021.

According to Hubspot, “memes are big amongst younger generations, with 55% of 13-35-year olds sending memes every week. Over the last year, that number has grown. Mentions of memes increased over the last 13 months, from 19.8M mentions in August 2019, to 24.9M in July 2020 (+26%), with a peak of 28M during April 2020. Users turned to them for engagement and escapism while under lockdown.”

Hubspot suggests you use image recognition to monitor and see if your brand is in a meme. This is a great way to monitor memes since they typically appear with little to no text mentions. You want to make sure you keep track of memes being created with your brand and keep track of your memes that are being shared.

As previously mentioned, connecting your content to popular memes can help encourage engagement, while creating more virality for your business. Find memes that are relevant to your business and adjust them to fit your brand.

When you find a user-generated meme that is relevant to your business, try to share it on the channels they’re effective on. Be sure to credit the creator. Hubspot advises it’ll build a stronger brand connection while encouraging others to create branded content too.

Memes can be difficult to get right since culture moves fast. The last thing you want to do is jump on the trend too late. Be careful with what your business posts. Before creating or sharing a meme, make sure you are certain of what it means and how it can be taken. Humor can be tricky and your business needs to make sure it doesn’t offend or alienate customers.

Meme marketing took off last year, but it has morphed into something larger in 2021. According to Komal Gupta, Head Content Marketing and Storyteller at Ferns N Petals, memes have evolved from simple stickers to GIFs and now video memes. The old school style of Satire is the new-age catalyst in marketing. Hubspot suggests that memes are sure to appear across social media in the coming years, even filtering into mainstream media. “As they arise, expect to see an increase in monitoring the format, for brands, and to minimize the propaganda potential of the medium. We may even see new regulations appearing as platforms attempt to mitigate the risk of challenging memes.”

According to eMarketer, when done right, memes can help your brand achieve upper-funnel marketing goals, such as brand awareness, and deepen customer engagement. Memes are a fast and easy way for consumers to respond to your brand and business as a whole. If fitting to your business, implementing meme marketing into your business social media strategy is a wise move for 2021.