Social media trend refers to a trend appearing on social media platforms. Social media trends may infer identifying trends based on content-sharing, user interaction, and conversation discourse.
To succeed in social media, it’s essential to stay ahead of everyone and understand the latest social media trends.
Many of the trends we saw coming down the line 12 months ago are well established — although that’s not to say everyone has adopted them as an everyday practice!
Others have been growing steadily, but haven’t reached peak hype just yet.
So which social media trends will matter most this year?
Here are the 5 major trends that should claim our focus in 2020.
The next generation in social networks
New social networks create a new communication landscape, and the emergence of unique and niche networks should not come as a surprise. Users are no longer looking for large communities, but relevant communities: less noise, more genuine commitment. In 2019, Instagram reached one billion monthly active users, consolidating itself as the fifth most significant social media channel in the world. Still, TikTok is emerging as the favorite by 2020 when approaching 750 million monthly users. In Social Media, no one in the industry is talking about new channels concerning social media marketing. Only 1% of the mentions are related to the latest social media platforms. When brands have been involved with social networks in their first phase of development and positioning with users, it means risk, but one that can give clear long-term benefits.
Mobile Responsive Websites Are A Must
Without a mobile responsive site, not only are you losing out significantly in the organic search rankings, but Google has made it very clear that it will penalize sites that are not mobile responsive.
Google says 61 percent of users are unlikely to return to a mobile site they had trouble accessing with 40 percent visiting a competitor’s site instead.
Social media as customer service
Customer service is always going to be a vital aspect of providing a good customer experience, but in the digital age, the customer service you offer is a lot more visible to everyone online. As well as online customer reviews, customer complaints and issues are easier to find than ever before due to the fact that a lot of them are shared on social media.
Over a quarter (28%) of consumers have used social media to communicate with a company in the last year, a trend that is likely to increase due to the fact that more than 30% said it is a convenient contact method and around 23% believe it is a good way to get 24-hour service.
Telling Stories on social
Since the launch of Snapchat, other social media platforms have rushed to add the Stories format to their offering. The result has been a huge growth in the usage of this format for Instagram in particular, which as of January 2019, boasts 500 million daily active Stories users across the globe.
Stories offer a different experience to feed-based sharing due to the fact that they are visual and designed to be both created and consumed in-the-moment, rather than shared to a feed that will remain visible. There’s a lot of room for experimentation, tongue-in-cheek posts and fun, which makes Stories highly engaging, and it is one of the likely reasons as to why Stories had a growth rate that was 15x the rate of Feeds in 2017.
However, the growth in Stories isn’t just among consumers, businesses are also utilizing this social media tool for marketing purposes. According to Hootsuite’s 2019 Social Trends Survey, 64% of marketers have either already implanted Instagram Stories into their social media strategy or are aiming to do so in the next 12 months.
On average, brands are posting Stories on around seven days a month, averaging out to one Story every four days. Brands with a following of 100,000 or more share Stories more regularly (every two days), likely due to the fact that they can benefit from a greater range of Stories features – such as adding a link to their posts on Instagram.
Virtual reality will find its way into more and more marketing experiences.
Virtual reality is still somewhat new to the marketing scene, and in 2018, we predict the market will get even more popular.
According to the Consumer Technology Association’s 2018 Tech Trends to Watch, virtual reality is expected to see an 18% increase in revenue and a 25% increase in units sold.
What’s unique about virtual reality is that it encourages engagement by offering an immersive, memorable experience unlike any other medium — and brands are quickly recognizing that value.
For example, TOMS uses virtual reality to shed light on the mission and impact customers are having. Its mission, “One for One,” refers to its pledge to match with each pair of shoes purchased a new pair for a child in need around the world.
At the beginning of 2019, 66% of companies had not been started a digital transformation program, yet. The most surprising is that more than half of that number does not have a plan to start one before 2020. The digital transformation will allow making data-based decisions through its comprehensive collection, which will ensure that the information is behind all the actions.