Social media trends are rapidly evolving due to continuous addition of new features and changing algorithms. These latest advances pose a whole new set of challenges for brands and social media marketers, who must continually assess their current strategies and pivot to include new forms of content in their repertoire. Marketers must constantly monitor the current developments shaping the future of social media and adjust their strategies accordingly.
Take, for example, Instagram Stories. Snapchat was popular for its vanishing, FOMO-inducing content a few years ago but there didn’t seem to be much of a need for similar features on other networks. On Instagram, over 500 million users use the feature on a regular basis. Following this trend, many other platforms are also introducing similar features.
Top social media trends for 2021
The following latest social media trends can help managers plan their social media marketing strategies for the coming year:
1. Social commerce
As we move towards the ‘new normal’, businesses must modulate their strategies to ensure that sales continue to rise, and figures surpass the previous years’ numbers. Though ecommerce has become a common monetization tool for many brands in recent years, most brick-and-mortar stores do not leverage it fully. However, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, brick-and-mortar stores are slowly starting to embrace the shift to social commerce on Facebook and Instagram.
Any traditional process that can be converted to an online process is expected to witness transformation, as well as there will be reduction in the in-person communication. This move would certainly be appreciated by some and criticised by others, as it fundamentally changes the way we conduct business. This emphasises the importance of delivering the highest quality and standard of the online version of a product or service.
The minimum touch points for converting a user into a customer are getting considerably reduced and the line between ‘scrolling news feed’ and ‘shopping’ is becoming blurred, as social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook start to incorporate in-app purchasing. According to Tech.co, 87% of the users claim that social media has helped them make a decision, while 55% of the users bought products through social media.
2. Popularity of live streams will increase
A majority of the companies went digital to maintain social distancing and avoid the spread of COVID-19. Live concerts and shows became live streams of musicians performing from their homes, and face-to-face meetings became Zoom, Teams and WebEx conferences. As a result, the use of live streaming on social media skyrocketed. Messaging and live streaming on Facebook witnessed a sharp rise, particularly in COVID-19 hotspots such as Italy. According to Facebook, the total views on Instagram and Facebook Live doubled in merely one week.
While the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic continues to improve, people across the world have become accustomed to communicate with brands through live streams without leaving their homes. As a result, live streaming will keep making significant headway in gaining traction.
3. Domination of video content
The king of high engagement – video content will continue to be in command of the social media space. Outperforming all other types of content, videos are the future of social media content, whether they are long-form content for YouTube, short-form videos on TikTok or Stories. According to a report by Cisco, video content will encompass 82% of all online content by 2022. This highlights how important it is to begin using video content in order to remain relevant in the social media world.
Businesses can start using features such as ‘Stories’ for advertisements as well as social media posts. As a part of their regular social media updates, brands can even include videos on platforms which are dominated by text or image content.
4. Rapid adoption of Augmented Reality
Though VR adoption in social media is still in its infancy, the same cannot be said for augmented reality. Augmented reality filters are now available on a number of popular social media sites, including Snapchat and Instagram. These were developed to improve the video content shared on these platforms and are now extremely popular.
Augmented reality improves our reality by incorporating digital elements and altering the way objects appear. Despite the fact that Instagram and Snapchat have driven this trend, other social media sites will follow suit in the coming years. AR filters were first introduced by Facebook, long before Instagram, but they gained popularity at a later stage.
The global market size of AR and VR is expected to reach $125.19 billion during 2020-24, with a CAGR of over 35% during the forecast period (Technavio). According to Tech.co, 65% of the population in the United States learn through visuals.
Sephora, for example, has long used augmented reality to encourage consumers to try on makeup before purchasing it. Although this feature has been available on their mobile app since quite some time, it was only recently introduced to Facebook.
5. Businesses will incorporate social listening
Businesses should leverage social media to optimise their social campaigns as it is a goldmine of data and insights. Businesses can partner with leading data analytics companies that can help them extract valuable information with the help of social listening.
Social listening has found its way into many marketer’s strategy as it helps tap social conversations to draw meaningful insights. It is being used by brands and advertisers for a number of use cases such as determining the effectiveness of a social media advertisement campaign or determining how people view their brand. With social listening, businesses can analyse social media interactions to assess trends that are customer behaviour-driven and respond to them before they gain traction.
6. Personalization will take the centre stage
The trend of personalization is relatively new to the social media landscape. Marketers and businesses are leveraging personalization to enhance the effectiveness of their social media ads. Social media platforms now have the options for advanced targeting and customization, helping marketers target the right people with right ads at the right time.
With the help of AI, social media giants are taking personalization to a higher level. The platforms have in-dept knowledge and data about one’s likes, dislikes, preferences and online behaviour. They even know what type of products one would consider purchasing. With such targeted information, the platforms show ads of similar products from various brands.
7. Enhancing customer service with social media
Social media apps have been used by people to communicate with their social groups and interact by posting images and videos for years. Those days, though, are long gone, and the horizon of social media has now widened to a great extent. It has progressed into becoming an ecommerce platform, a product discovery platform, and, most recently, a customer service platform. Many businesses have begun viewing social media platforms as prime channels for providing customer support and service.
This change has occurred gradually when companies started to recognize that many consumers attempt to contact them through social media. This may be due to a lack of response on other platforms or simply because it was a more direct method of contacting the brands. Brands can also face severe repercussions if they do not handle customers’ request in an appropriate way.
8. Increase in regulations
Data protection and privacy concerns have dominated the news headlines since a few years. Through social media, data can be easily collected and misused. Certain social media companies have also been accused of misusing their users’ data by selling it to third parties. As a result, social networks and regulatory bodies are making efforts to tighten their security standards and implement new privacy policies.
Since TikTok, Facebook and YouTube’s popularity has grown tremendously, they have come under increased scrutiny. For instance, TikTok has been banned in some markets due to data security issues, and there is a high chance that many other countries follow suit. Facebook and Instagram are both pushing for more stringent regulation in key markets.
Conclusion
Businesses can take advantage of these top social media trends to remain ahead of their competition. These trends will help organizations ace their social media game in this competitive and dynamic marketplace. Assessing current social media trends will enable businesses to establish a stronger presence in the future. With these data-driven insights, companies can exactly know what to look out for and how to tailor their social strategy according to the new trends in social media.
