As the end of another year draws to a close, we always like to take a look at social media or digital marketing predictions for 2020 – trends to watch out for. For us, it’s all about being slightly ahead of the curve at all time! Here are my favourite trends for 2020 when it comes to social media:-
- The use of stories will continue to rise
- Video, video, video
- Smaller platforms will perform well
- It’s all about personlisation
- Customer Service and Social Media
- Shorter content will remain popular
- Digital marketing for E-Commerce will Increase
- The Rise of Social Media Communities
- Podcasts
The Use of Stories Will Continue to Rise
We dove into the world of Instagram stories this year, as the function continues to be popular on both Instagram and Facebook. Well, it’s only going to grow in 2020! New features are being added to the story function all of the time, and it’s such a great way to show off the human side of your business too. Stories are short and sweet, a great way to show people the “inside life” of your business, but also a great way to promote new products or services too. They last for 24 hours, so my advice would be to just go for it! Play around with all of the features and options there, and find a format that works well for you and your business.
Keep an eye on the stories, and if you’re not using them already, why?
Video, Video, Video
We’ve also stepped into this area of digital by launching our YouTube channel last month, and although we said it at the end of 2018 as well, video is just on the rise across social as a whole. A recent study by Cisco said that 82% of all online content will be video by 2022 (that’s 2 years away!). Try thinking a bit out of the box though, and playing around with video as a format for posting across the different platforms.
Smaller Platforms will Perform Well
We’ve all heard of the big guns – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram; but it’s the smaller social media platforms that some are predicting will do well in 2020. We’re thinking platforms like TikTok and Reddit, but also those emergent platforms (alternative platforms). Take a look at this graph from 2019, how many do you recognise?
It’s all about Personalisation
We’ve got a story about this coming up in the next week or so, 2020 is all about personalisation. Again, much like video, it’s something we mentioned last year too, but the driving force is still here for this. There will be a big shift in how adverts are targetted in 2020, rather than brands concentrating on being a bit more personal, the adverts will become personlised too. That way, a brand can target a whole range of different customer types!
Customer Service and Social Media
I always come across people who only use their Twitter account to complain to the big brands – but it works. One of the trends for 2020 will be accepting that social media is a new avenue for your customers to get in touch, and as such, we should all be providing that customer service already. Some brands are excellent at replying to Tweets or Facebook posts already, like Transport for Wales as an example. Others on the other hand leave customers fuming in the dark (I’m looking at your Natwest). Smart Insights have some fascinating statistics for how we are customers expect brands to deal with customer service. The question was “how long do you expect to wait for a response from the brand to your social media question or complaint?”. 37% expected a reply within 30 minutes, 31% under 2 hours, 26% within 4 hours and only 6% stated that they don’t expect a response.
Short Content will Remain Popular
By short content I mean your Instagram stories or Snapchat content, available for 24 hours only. The way we consume content has changed dramatically over a short space of time – it’s all about being short, grabbing attention, being engaging. Stories are a great way of doing this, but that’s not to say you can’t create similar content elsewhere to use on other platforms.
Just to show how important the shift is in how we consume our content, back in October 2016 Instagram stories had 100 million daily active users. In January 2019 the figure was 500 million.
Digital marketing for E-Commerce will Increase
I’m always a tad surprised that people don’t actively use social media for their shopping or gift ideas. I’ve been a keen advocate of finding niche, small businesses on Twitter or Facebook and purchasing off them. It seems that this trend has finally reached the world of ecommerce properly, and certainly for Christmas 2019, a big shift in how and where we shop online. We expect this trend to continue and to expect the use of social media for ecommerce to increase – especially when platforms are introducing “shoppable” posts and the ability to link products to your pages.
The Rise of Social Media Communities
When Facebook introduced groups, and then a load of changes to groups, they were keen on promoting this idea of “communities” online, and certainly from my poing of view over 2019 this has been the case. During a recent conference in London, the keynote speaker was founder of a large community group in Amsterdam (a fascinating talk!). Building and growing communities is going to become very big business, and key for brands and businesses. They’re a great way to create communities around your brand, and use them to launch new products, gain valuable customer feedback and insights, as well as promoting brand loyalty.
Podcasts!
Who doesn’t love a good podcast? I’ve only recently discovered the joy of podcasts if I’m honest, but at the range of conferences I’ve been to in the social media world this year, they have been very popular. Again, it comes down to how we’re consuming content, and podcasts are great if they’re short and easily digestible.