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Is your business down with the Top 5 social media trends of 2019?

SOCi CMO Monica Ho uncovers five ways restaurants can up their social games.

February 11, 2019

Editor's Note: an earlier version of this blog ran on Fast Casual, a sister publication of Food Truck Operator.

Monica Ho is chief marketing officer at SOCi, a social media marketing and management platform.

By Monica Ho

A few weeks into the year is generally the time most business owners and marketers are making final tweaks to their marketing plans. At the top of the priority list? Social media, and for good reason. According to Gartner, CMOs are planning to spend an additional 14 percent more of their budgets on personalization, which should come as no surprise given the influence social has gained over how people perceive a brand and make buying decisions.

Did you know 78 percent of purchase decisions are now influenced by social content? And for multi-location marketers, specifically, social has had a direct impact on local marketing efforts: as much as 75 percent of a brand's overall digital activity is happening on local pages.

So, what can you do to bolster your company's social media success? Here are the five trends that should impact your strategy this year.

1. Reviews reign supreme
Reviews are the number-one factor consumers use in determining which business to visit and are also a top three ranking factor in local search results overall. To capitalize on the power of reviews, businesses must obtain the ratings sweet spot — while consumers expect between a 3.5- to 4-star rating to even consider your business. They also expect at least 10 reviews for the information to be credible, such as placing direct links in emails or adding badges to your site.

2. Response time nears real time
No matter what, always respond to reviews. Nearly 80 percent of consumers expect a response to critical reviews; 40 percent expect a response within 24 hours, and 14 percent expect a response immediately.

Top-ranking networks for franchise brands, like Facebook, are taking notice and highlighting businesses that respond quickly. How can you decrease response time to the ever essential 24-hour window? Set up a clear notification system within your business, develop processes to ensure you deliver acceptable response times, and pre-plan responses to common questions.

3. Social care is customer care
Nine in 10 customers would be willing to change a negative review depending on how the business responds. However, today, responding alone is just one aspect of a solid reputation management strategy.

Reputation management now requires a strategic plan to garner positive reviews, without mass solicitation, and to reduce negative reviews through proactive monitoring. By monitoring feedback and analyzing trends, you can better determine the root cause of the negative reviews, actively address them, and likely mitigate further issues down the road.

4. Google is becoming the next big social network
Google is now doubling down on the success of Google My Business and has introduced Google Posts and Google Q&A. A Google Post is content that promotes a business's announcement, offer, event or product update. Just like Google My Business reviews, Q&As are crowdsourced by real people who ask questions with the expectation the business will answer their questions.

How do you leverage these new Google features? Claim and actively manage your Google My Business pages, for one. For Google Posts, the content only stays live for seven days, so creating a consistent posting schedule is key.

For Google Q&A, ensure prompt responses as the "Business Owner." To help reduce response time, you will have the ability to pre-populate some of the most commonly asked questions with answers from your business.

5. Organic reach continues to die
It is nearly impossible to obtain the same reach once achieved through your organic social efforts. A continued focus on optimizing content and posts to increase higher-valued engagements such as comments and shares will amplify reach over time. In the short term, leveraging some of the social ad features, such as boosting, can help increase reach and local community awareness and engagement.

Cover photo: iStock