Social media is evolving at a fast pace. For instance, content format such as “Stories” was introduced on social media channels a little over a year ago, and now, it has become one of the most popular content formats that people are using these days. Over 300 million people are using “Stories” on platforms like Facebook and Instagram each day. Besides, just after six months of Messenger Day launch, about 70 million people are uploading posts each day on it.
Looking at the popularity, now business organizations are also uploading stories regularly. To be successful in social media, it is important for you to stay ahead of the opponents and understand all the latest and ongoing social media trends. Below mentioned are some of the major social media trends and innovations that can help you succeed on social media platforms in the year 2020.
- There are several social media users now:
Nowadays, you will find several social media users. Therefore, social media is one of the best methods now to reach out to the target audience because of its vast size and the large data available. As per Statista, there were about 2.46 billion social media users in the year 2017, and the figure is continuously growing.
It is predicted that there will be over 3 billion social media users by the year 2021. With the help of social media, you have the chance to reach out to your potential customers for free via organic posts or for a fee via a social media advertisement.
With the help of social media advertisements, you can reach out to the target audience based on the interests, past behavior and others. There were not many opportunities available earlier to reach out to the audience before social media became famous. With such a reason, you can sure consider social media as a part of your business.
- Social media is now accessible via mobile phones:
You will find many people staying glued to their mobile phones these days. As per a study conducted by Facebook, 94 people out of 100 held their smartphones in their hands while watching television. More and more people now use social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. on their smartphones. This is the reason why you should create mobile-friendly content so that more people have access to your content.
- The rise of social messaging:
In the last decade, there has been a rise in social media. But the latest trend that is being followed by people now is the use of social messaging. In fact, social messaging has already surpassed the use of social media. As per a research, people now use popular social messaging applications such as WeChat, WhatsApp, Viber and Messenger more frequently than they use social media application such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter. This growth of social messaging usage does not seem to be slowing down. Moreover, the number of mobile phone users is also increasing day by day with the changing technology.
- Social media will help benefit business organizations:
Consumers earlier used phone, emails and social media to communicate with the concerned business organizations but now, the latest trend of social messaging is being followed. As per a study conducted by Facebook, it was discovered that business organizations could connect with their customers better via social messaging.
Consumers preferred way of communicating with the concerned business organizations is changing with the change in technology. Presently, they prefer using messaging to fix appointments, provide feedback and ask questions in case of doubts. So you should include social messaging in your business to stay in touch with your customers and develop long-term and trustworthy relationships with them.
- Chatbots are the latest norm:
The rise in the use of social messaging has also resulted in the emergence of chatbots. As the popularity of Facebook Messenger increased, the number of chatbots also increased. Besides, chatbots are also available in applications like Slack, WeChat, Viber and other platforms.
A survey revealed that about 80% of the sales executives and senior marketing executives as well across the globe use or are planning to use chatbots for their business. If you are wondering how chatbots play an important role, then you should know that they can be sued for a wide variety of work like payments, customer service, marketing, and others. Most of the consumers now seem to be enjoying the way they interact via chatbots.
- Business organizations can no more afford to avoid social customer service now:
Earlier, customer service meant private conversations between a customer service executive and a customer. But social media has changed this method entirely. The nature of social media platforms is giving such conversations more amount of exposure.
A survey showed that people preferred to post about a company’s product via social media. Moreover, the ability to re-share via a social media post, such posts could even ‘go viral.’ So if the company responds back to such social media posts, it can prove to have several positive effects for business organizations.
- Videos continue to be most popular content type:
Since past two years, many people have said that videos are the most popular type of content. And 2018 is no different. Research showed that millions of people in 2017 liked video posts on Facebook than any other type of content. There are several pieces of evidence of the increasing popularity and significance of videos. For instance, Instagram and Facebook have introduced several new video features in the past few years like the live video option and stories. Besides this, LinkedIn has also introduced LinkedIn videos option recently.
- Influencer marketing is still taking over:
Influencer marketing is no more a new thing. As many marketers want to get into the influencer market, there are a lot of challenges which are faced by brands and agencies now. The growing popularity of influencer marketing has thus made it difficult to know who can be trusted.
Consumers expect to get authenticity and genuineness from the influencers and brands and so seek to work along with real influencers who can get in higher engagement rate. Consumers may get bored if they continuously see the company’s use any influencer to promote their product.
With so many brands aspiring to work with renowned influencers, it becomes difficult to choose the influencer with who they want to work with and get associated with. Hence, building strong relationships with influencers can be a key in the year 2018.
But maintaining such relationships is difficult and requires a lot of effort to be put in based on who the influencer is actually. In the future, it is expected that brands would be roping in real experts as means of influencer marketing. This is because several brands wish to associate with social influencers and their suggestions and opinions cannot be trusted anymore.
- The demand for Face Filters (AI lenses):
If you have thought that the demand for Face Filters (AI lenses) was a thing of the yesteryears then may be wrong as the networks continue to push the concept through in 2020. Face Filters have increasing popularity since past couple of years, and with Instagram’s face filter used in its stories, you will expect to see a lot more.
The social media platform had recently stated that its most famous face filter was the dog ears face filter which is not a surprise as Snapchat also has a similar dog filter. However, the interesting fact about the two face filters of these two competitors is the advertising capability they have. Now, advertisers have the permission to build custom-made filters for the users on Snapchat over a period. But the price tag of such filters can cost a huge sum of money just for a small stint on Snapchat.
Instagram can be the next in cue to advertisers the chance to let the users interact by using custom build face filters. Instagram has released over 20 features in the year 2017, and most of them were a part of the Stories. And so, the brands can now expect to see such filters or stickers or augmented reality to stay in the social media content in the year 2019.
With the year 2018 here, it is now important for you to work with your social media handling team and ensure that follow all of the latest trends and innovations for your business. As the popular social media platforms continue to grow each passing day by introducing new features and trends, the social media landscape is thus going to be more and more exciting this year.
Therefore, try and figure out a way to improve any shortfalls that took place last year so that you can address the new social media landscape in a better way this year. We hope that by sharing the above mentioned social media trends, you will be able to stay ahead in the race and achieve success on social media.