Social media is an incredible space to market yourself, your company, or your service. When done right, these platforms can expand your reach (and viewership) to places all around the globe. If you’ve ever managed a social media page, or done social media marketing, you know how difficult and strategic it is to build engagement and a loyal audience.

Keeping these five trends in mind can help you overcome the barriers of building your profiles. Whether you’re using LinkedIn, Facebook, or Instagram as a marketing tool, all platforms require thoughtful strategy. To increase engagement you need to keep your current audience interested while finding ways to gain more traction for your profiles. This is a tough balancing act. If you want to successfully market yourself or company you are going to have to learn about the processes of building an engaging profile.

The truth is that if your profile isn’t engaging you aren’t going to see any positive feedback. To be frank: your profile will be pointless. This is why it is so worthwhile to take to the time to create a loyal following on social media. Here are five trends you should pay attention to if you want to increase your engagement on social media.

1- Videos are the new trending content

Posting videos on your profile can be one of the most effective tools I recommend that you use to create engagement on social media. If this isn’t a part of your social media marketing strategy, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity to speak to your an audience that your brand resonates with.

Written content and picture posts are still the cruces of social media. Still, video content builds trust and viral-ability, in ways that other content can’t. This is why it’s such a powerful way to engage with your target audience.

Videos are attention-grabbing. They make your viewers want to stop scrolling and see what’s going on in the video. If you are creating a marketing strategy for your social media pages you first need to figure out what topics your audience is interested in. What engages them?

For example, How-to videos are a brilliant way to use the video tool. So what is something you can quickly show your audience? It could be an eyeshadow tutorial, a gluten-free brownie recipe, or a simple solution to unclogging your drain. Whatever it is, it’s also an opportunity for you to show your audience your voice and your brand. It’s the first step to creating an interactive marketing avenue that your audience actually wants to engage with.

2- If you want brand awareness you need to invest in Ads

You can’t have an engaged audience if you don’t have an audience. Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen organic audience building decrease. This decline goes hand in hand with the rise of social media advertising.

Ads are an important social media marketing trend to pay attention to. Organic reach on social media networks is on a steady decline. This means that it is going to be increasingly hard to reach new viewers with solely organic content. It may even mean that even your followers could struggle to see your posts on these platforms. If you choose the perfect images and brilliant text, but even your own followers can see it you can no real way of building engagement.

This is why ads should be a paramount part of your social media strategy. Use them to gain traction and boost awareness about your page. This can significantly assist both broadening your audience and empowering your organic reach.

3- Utilize live streaming

Live streaming is a great (free) trend to jump on that can really propel your page’s engagement. This isn’t a new trend, but the way profiles are starting to use it is very innovative. There has been an effective shift–a trend if you will–on the way this can be used as a marketing tool.

It’s a wonderful way to build a stronger connection to the audience you already have. With new technology readily available, smartphone cameras are only getting better. This means recording is only getting cleaner. This makes it much easier to record something powerful with minimal effort.

So while the live stream function has been around for some time, the way we interact with it will continue to strengthen with the better quality videos we are able to create. This is a great way to boost the qualities this trend already provides us. Live streaming can connect your audience to your product, cause or voice. It helps to include them because the nature of live streaming feels much more personal. Whether it’s a live event, or just someone answering questions on the fly, live streaming as a tool can help build your rapport with your viewers.

4- Influencer marketing campaigns are the best marketing campaigns

This trend can make or break your marketing campaign. Using someone who has an influential and strong presence to market your product is a great way to gain traffic and engagement. It can help you get your content seen while building an audience.

This is especially true when you find a great candidate. If you decide to include this element in your marketing strategy, make sure to work with someone who has a similar voice as you. You want their audience to identify with your company. This is much easier to accomplish if they are already interested in the kind of work that you do.

Building engagement on social media is a rollercoaster, but if you find an influencer in the same niche as your brand it could be an effective way to help you drive tons of traffic.

We are also seeing a shift in the way influencer marketing works. Instagram and Facebook now label sponsored ads. Which hints that we are moving towards a more transparent way of marketing. No matter the pivot influencers are here to stay. This concept worked for Olympians being on the front of cereal boxes just as well as it’s working in the digital space today.

5- Instagram stories! Instagram stories! Instagram stories!

Instagram stories are where the magic happens. Of course, we all know this concept first initiated on Snapchat. But when Facebook released stories on Facebook and Instagram, Instagram became the place to share stories

Instagram has acquired over 250 million users a day since launching their Stories feature. Because of this, those who are riding the wave of this trend are getting seen. If you want to create shareable content on social media that builds engagement with your audience, Insta Stories are an ideal method to do this.

It’s a phenomenal way to promote products and services and to build brand awareness. Try posting something a day. The best part of this trend is that it’s inherently trendy. When posting a story you should play with the different filters, gifs, and text. There are so many ways to be interesting and creative with this tool.

Most importantly you can still hashtag keywords with the Stories feature. This leads your target audience to you. Whether it’s by taking polls or quirky videos, this is a great tool to increase engagement.

Social media marketing trends can be hard to keep up with, but there are essential to know if you want to get your profiles noticed, and followed. Building a loyal audience isn’t easy. These tips can help guide you, and help you and your brand flourish on social media. Implementing these trends into your social media marketing strategy will surely increase engagement.

There are so many tools for you to use. Try each of them and use analytics and data from your profile to see what resonates with your audience. Each audience gravitates toward different content. It’s okay if it takes you awhile to find out what your audience craves. Trial and error is a great way to figures this out. Following these trends can help you speak to your audience in an engaging and overarching way. Keep these in mind as you strategize to build engagement and while you create a meaningful and successful profile.