Engaging New and Existing Customers on Social Media

I'm relaunching this newsletter! It'll be the highlight reel of the new trends featured in my Social Media Marketing Trends course on LinkedIn Learning, which I'm excited to share now has 100+ episodes and has been taken by over 100,000+ students.

Here are three social media trends that brands should be paying attention to in the near future that can help them engage a more diverse demographic across platforms.

Bring your brand to Roblox

The best channels for marketing attract a large audience and engage them consistently for long periods of time. Roblox is an online gaming platform with more than 43 million daily active users who average two and a half hours per day on it. With the immersive experience of gaming, there are many opportunities to advertise creatively on Roblox.

While Roblox has been in the sights of brands for a while now, it is not yet as saturated as other platforms. Although the games are free to play on Roblox, monetization using in-game purchases is common. Representing your brand with skins and customizable items is the most straightforward way to advertise on Roblox, but you can create more impact with your brand by creating your own game that takes users into your brand's virtual world.

Brands can also sponsor Roblox creators to showcase their products through their avatars or through games they develop. You can also bring other marketing practices to the virtual world of Roblox, such as organizing events or influencer marketing. A two-week virtual experience by Gucci, for example, drew 20 million visitors.?

Create NFTs for your audience

Non-fungible tokens, or NFTs, are rare digital collectibles such as artwork, sneakers, videos, gifts, or music stored on the blockchain. Where Roblox offers a large audience, NFTs thrive on scarcity. This feeling of exclusive ownership can attract new users and create long-term connections with existing users.

To create your own NFTs, you need to identify what assets would be relevant for your brand to produce. NFTs are evolving quickly. There are no simple frameworks to them, but these suggestions will guide you as you create your own NFTs.

• Use social media as a way for your customer base to showcase what they've collected. McDonald's launched a set of NFTs featuring the brand's cult-favorite menu item, the McRib. Superfans retweeted the tweets featuring the NFT for a chance to win.
• Add a real-world component to the release of your NFTs. Pre-order tickets of Spider-Man: No Way Home offered NFTs to 86,000 customers, which featured a hundred original designs related to Spiderman.
• Make these NFTs a natural extension of your brand’s strategy and values. American Eagle released a collection of 120 NFTs in the form of colorful cartoons featuring whimsical characters and designs, showcasing individuality.

Make your communication accessible

One of the goals of marketing is to reach more people. While getting on a new platform and utilizing emerging trends is helpful, an often overlooked way to expand the horizons of your audience is to improve the accessibility of your communications.

I spoke with Danielle McCann from the National Federation of the Blind to get her recommendations for how brands can make social media more accessible for people with disabilities. Auto-captioning and alternative text is one step in the right direction that many organizations neglect to use. Most of the major social networks offer these accessibility features. As marketers, we must stay aware of these enhancements as they become available and then use them regularly to meet the needs of customers with a range of perspectives.

“People without disabilities don't understand how we consume and engage with content on a daily basis from a user perspective.” - Danielle McCann, Social Media Coordinator, National Federation of the Blind

Because the technology is only so smart, we have to continue to improve the accessibility of our efforts by committing to hire and engage a range of people with diverse lived experiences.

You can learn about more social trends in small bite-sized lessons in my Social Media Marketing Trends course on LinkedIn Learning. This course is updated regularly.

Interested in up-leveling your skills? LinkedIn is offering 100+ courses free until April 29th, including this learning path on the Essential News Skills in Marketing. My course on the Habits of Successful Marketers is included along with four others, check it out.