It’s 2020, and social media is no longer seen as “just” a place to share photos and post random stuff but as a platform that can be leveraged to a marketer’s advantage because of its undeniable presence and influence on people’s routine.
Irrespective of the category your business falls under, being active on social media is huge, and absolutely necessary for your survival. For you to thrive here, it’s very critical that you should stay up to date with the latest marketing trends and apply them to your business.
Here are some trends for 2020 that will possibly help you to build a strong online presence.
Short living content
Considering people’s attention span, nowadays they consume content that is short and short-living, ie; ephemeral. This explains the popularity of content formats like Instagram and Snapchat stories. They are short, engaging, and addictive which convinces the people to spend hours scrolling them.
Image source: Statista
The above image shows the no: of daily active Instagram Stories users from October 2016 to January 2019 (in millions).
It’s high time that a marketer should take notice of this trend and leverage it to their advantage. According to this recent report by Hootsuite, 64% of marketers either already have incorporated Instagram Stories into their strategies or plan to.
Image source: Socialinsider
Another study suggests that brands post a Story once in four days, again, proving the point that these are getting more and more popular.
Niche Social Platforms
Facebook and Instagram have been the most dominant and popular platforms for a long time. However, in recent years, several other niche social media platforms like TikTok have significantly risen to fame and immediately gained popularity among youth.
B2B companies prefer LinkedIn for their social media initiatives, while Twitch is preferred by the gaming community. There are several such alternative social media platforms that are gaining popularity and will continue doing so in 2020.
Here are the most popular social networks worldwide as of October 2019, ranked by the no: of active users (in millions).
Image Source: Statista
Instagram likes
Instagram is undoubtedly a perfect platform for influencers and marketers. The likes and followers have helped to understand one’s reach but it also has its influence on one’s mental health.
Image Source: David Bloom
Instagram has recently tested removing likes on the featured posts in a beta test and may soon apply this change globally. The logic that it has given is that likes determine a person’s social value and waiting for such validation is detrimental to people’s mental health.
If Instagram removes likes then brands won’t be able to measure the direct impact of their campaigns as easily as they do now. This might encourage some brands to invest in Instagram Ads as they can easily track the ROI for those.
A scenario where Instagram successfully removes likes and gets more marketers to move to their ads feature could be transformative for social media marketing. This will not only affect influencers but may also encourage other social networks to make such moves.
Social Commerce
Social commerce is well on its way to becoming a mainstream retail channel. This trend will strengthen further with more and more social networks introducing pro-selling features like shoppable posts.
Image Source: IceCube Digital
Brands and marketers will leverage these and incorporate social commerce in their sales strategies. Instagram storefronts, Facebook sales are getting popular these days. Incorporating social commerce to your overall sales might help you hit big shots and get the necessary reach.
Video Content
Video is one of the most engaging forms of content and is a winner in the case of social media. People consume more video content than any other indiscriminate of its run time.
According to a Cisco study, by 2022, 82% of all online content will be video content. This screams the relevance of video content in future marketing. Including video content in your marketing strategy consistently is more than worth it, undoubtedly.
