3 Facebook Marketing Predictions By Market Pros
Facebook marketing is an ever-changing market, and 2017 doesn’t look like it will change that at all.
However, if the changes Facebook made in 2016 are anything to go by, 2017 is going to wind up being especially impressive.
To get a firm understanding of what the future is liable to look like, we talked to 3 social media professionals.
We picked their brains to learn everything we could.
1. Facebook Groups And Paid Ads
It’s likely that Facebook will choose to reduce Facebook group reach so that they can introduce paid ads. People interact far more often with groups than they do with pages.
The more people who use groups over pages, the more Facebook is liable to reduce the reach. It’s somewhat underhanded since it’s essentially charging for something that was once free merely because they notice it’s more profitable, but the fact remains that it’s liable to be useful.
Ian Cleary, founder of RazorSocial, world’s top marketing tech sites focused on content marketing and social media.
2. Facebook Launches Ability To Create Video Stories For Messenger
Mark Zuckerberg released a function like Snapchat in Messenger, which is a huge sign that he’s taking it seriously as a competitor.
The tools let users edit and add to videos and images, allowing them to draw, filter, and add text if they so choose. Right now, these are only available via direct messages to individuals, though that’s expected to change.
Facebook is planning to allow even more functionality similar to Snapchat to be made in Messenger in 2017. The plan is that video stories can be posted as videos either to your feed, or your page feed.
You can expect video stories will be coming to Facebook Messenger. As if that wasn’t enough, their live video tools continue evolving.
This is just a single step to an overall video strategy showcased by Facebook. It’s a natural extension of already existing tools such as scheduled live videos, trimming finished videos for better replays, and broadcasting from a desktop.
You should expect to see even more tools for studio editing and post-production offered to Facebook Live users. These tools and features are likely to be released for both apps and desktop use.
Facebook seems to want to provide content creators with plenty of tools to create professional and well-polished content.
Not just that, but you can expect Facebook Live to start showing up on Smart TVs. Facebook seems to intend to position itself as a broadcast network, which means it will appear alongside things like Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Netflix.
3. Expect To See More End-to-end Communication Tools For Facebook Messenger
These days, consumers want to be able to communicate immediately with companies. The companies that provide that opportunity are the ones that are going to start getting the sales.
It’s not uncommon these days to do all business communication through Facebook Messenger. There are stories of people setting up looking for apartments and signing leases via Facebook Messenger!
You can expect 2017 will see Facebook developing and releasing tools that further expand the speed and ease of communication.
Last November saw the release of Facebook Messenger ads, and this is only the beginning.
These conversations can be inexpensive and can progress at rapid speeds thanks to the instantaneous nature of chat.
The marketers who invest their resources into increasing and expanding their chat services are the ones who are going to start seeing their client numbers rise.
Molly Pittman is the VP of marketing for DigitalMarketer.com, as well as the host of the Perpetual Traffic podcast. She is a leading expert on the subject of Facebook advertising, as well as customer acquisition.
