How tired of you seeing the phrase “social media trends for 2018”? We get it, we do…but it’s still so valuable, especially when it’s delivered by the social media experts at Buffer. Plus, maybe if you keep seeing these trends, you’ll be more likely adopt them in your 2018 marketing strategy. After all, we love to see you win, and understanding these trends will help.

Let’s get to it.

• (01:45) The 5 trends that almost made the cut
• (02:30) Why the 5 trends they picked are the most important and accessible trends to adopt in your social media strategy in 2018
• (02:45) #5: Brands begin to focus on Generation Z
• (03:08)  Why Gen Z is more valuable to most organizations than millennials
• (04:08) #4: Increasing brand participation in messaging and chatbot platforms
• (04:30) More people are using social media messaging platforms than they are using social media networks
• (05:55) #3: A continued investment in influencer marketing
• (06:00) Influencer marketing generates 11 times more ROI than traditional forms of digital marketing and 40% of people purchased product used by influencers
• (07:05) 90% of marketers who use influencer marketing strategy say it’s successful
• (07:55) Why influencer marketing will be so powerful in 2018 with the rise of Gen Z’s buying power
• (08:48) #2: Increasing popularity of Instagram Stories and ephemeral content
• (09:05) Over 300 million in the world use Instagram Stories (and it’s only 1 year old!)
• (09:15) Nearly half of Instagram users will be using Stories by the end of 2018  
• (09:50) Benefits of Instagram Stories
• (10:25) Why Snapchat ain’t dead yet—leading the charge in a lot of demographics, especially with Gen Z
• (11:12) #1: Video takes front and center stage, particularly live streams
• (11:35) 2018 going be the year its widely adopted by majority of brands in their marketing program
• (11:43) Technology becoming more widely available to create great videos
• (12:00) Why videos as more than just a fad. Did you know videos on social media generate 1200% more shares than text and images combined?? And 95% viewers retain a message when it’s in a video, but only 10% retain it when they see it in text

Two days into 2018 and we’re still not done with the 2017 wrap-ups. There are just too many good ones, and today’s Read is a really good one.

Klientboost stopped by our inbox the other day to drop off a blog post about landing pages. 

You already know the story: a great ad campaign underperforms because of a crappy landing page, but no one realized it in time so it was never fixed. Dang, what a waste of money.

Don’t worry, today’s Read isn’t the typical “7 ways to optimize your landing pages.” No, no, it’s much better than that. Klientboost took 6 of their top performing landing and explain what they did to get those pages to perform so well. They even include before/after pictures.

Along the way, they talk about the lessons they’ve learned about Conversion Rate Optimization over the past year. Some of those lessons:

• Upselling on your thank you pages can be a huge differentiator. You’ve already got a person hooked, why not try to dig that hook in a little deeper?
• Research, research, research. Boring? Yes. But taking the time to better understand your target demographic, their language, and even your product can make a huge difference.
• Be aware of what implications you’re making with your design choices. For example, a drop shadow might look cool, but some users might be slightly distracted by it. That little thing can lower your conversion rate.
• If you really want to make some impactful changes, you should test all the information above the fold. This is the first bit of information users will see: headline, subhead, hero image, form.
• Always optimize for mobile. That means you gotta go beyond just making your page responsive. Use things like “Tap-to-call” buttons, large CTA buttons & forms, sticky headers, click-to-scroll buttons, etc.

You’ve really gotta take a gander at this one for yourself. 

Black Mirror just released their season 4 trailer and, like the show itself, hits very close to home. Mashing up scenes from the Netflix original with all-too-real moments from 2017—including clips of controversial political figures, robots, and riots—the 90-second film by B-Reel is at once a grim retrospective and a chilling welcome into the New Year.

The film has been edited in a supremely unsettling way, emphasizing society’s paranoia and the state of the world—themes constantly addressed in Black Mirror. Not to mention that it’s all set to ABBA’s jovial, upbeat tune, “Happy New Year,” providing a discordance of emotions that adds an even more disturbing tone to the trailer.

This isn’t much of an “optimistic” look into the future, but it sure fits with the show’s creepy narratives.