The growth in social media has been staggering over the last few years with it becoming an integral part of many people’s daily routine. With technology advances and a change in user habits, new trends in social media are always popping up.
To stay ahead of the latest updates, we’re rounding up five key social media trends we expect to see in the year ahead.
Influencers
We all know that social media influencers have been around for a while, but this is a trend we expect to see continue to grow in 2020.
Social media pages are now dominated by influencers promoting brands and sharing views and experiences of products or services.
One shift we expect to see however is brands looking to partner with a network of smaller influencers in comparison to a celebrity in order to help increase brand engagement and create trusted recommendations.
The future of ephemeral content
Also known as short lived content, many of the major social media platforms have jumped on this bandwagon. Stories has become a huge part of many channels including Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat and it appears that Twitter is also looking to add its own temporary content.
The way in which people consume content has changed, with many enjoying the addictive nature of scrolling through short and engaging user stories.
In 2020 we expect to see even more brands incorporating Instagram Stories into their social strategies.
Instagram may remove post likes
Instagram has been rumouring many major platform changes, one of which is removing the likes feature on posts.
Recently tested in a beta test, this change may roll out globally next year. The reason behind this change is to improve the lives of consumers and the impact of society pressure on mental health. The like button won’t disappear completely, with users still being able to see the number of likes on their own posts, but not others.
If Instagram do remove page likes in 2020 it will mean that both brands and influencers will not be able to measure the direct impact of organic campaigns as easily as they do now.
Social commerce
Whilst this may not seem like a new trend, with platforms such as Facebook and Instagram already being used by brands to sell their products, 2020 will see the lines between social media and e-commerce blurred. With it quickly becoming a mainstream retail medium.
It’s already been reported that both Generation X and Z prefer to shop on social channels when compared to the average customer.
With the introduction of features such as shopping on Instagram, we see social media channels continuing to evolve in 2020 to incorporate more retail features.
The growth of Facebook Groups
This year Facebook announced plans to put Groups at the centre of its social platform. Seeing the potential in private engagement, new privacy settings and features have all been implemented to Groups.
In 2020 we see more brands being encouraged to create groups. Facebook is making it easier for users to participate in Groups with content appearing in the news feed, and the ability to share group content. Its rumoured that Facebook will also be introducing new private messaging opportunities within its Groups.
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