Q: What do you think has been the most significant trend in social media marketing over the last few years?
Short-form video, a la Stories across Instagram and Facebook (and Messenger), and now Instagram Reels (which will also be rolled out on Facebook).
In 2016, Facebook said that it was running out of ad inventory in News Feed, which forced the company to look for additional content streams in which to place ads. That same year, the timing was ideal for Instagram to copy Snapchat’s popular ephemeral Stories content format.
As a marketer, it’s never really made sense to me to put effort into creating content that vanishes within twenty-four hours, however, we’ve all had to embrace this format, and it can indeed work extremely well to fuel “top of feed top of mind” awareness.
In addition, Stories can also be an even more intimate content format, as getting your audience to subsequently engage via DMs from Stories content is relatively easy.