Customer engagement on social media happens at an unprecedented rate today. However, to generate publicity on social media, you have to stay abreast of all the latest trends. So, what are some of the key social media trends of 20202? Read on and find out.
Voice-Search
While search engines still remain popular, the growing trend now is to search using the voice—be that on the smartphones or by using voice assistants such as Amazon Echo. 2020 is thus the year when you should optimize your content for voice search
Mobile-first Platforms
Most searches nowadays happen on the mobile phone. In fact, Google has said that 61% of users will not return to a website that is not mobile-friendly. So, if your website is not a mobile-friendly one you stand to lose on your organic search rankings.
Social Messaging
The millennials are using messaging apps much more than they are using social media. The top messenger apps are WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, and Viber. Thus, you need to devise your marketing strategy in such a way that you can use the messenger apps to your advantage. If you can combine this with chatbots you will surely be able to reach out to your customers better and give them a better CX.
Video Content
Video content is not a new trend—it has been popular for the past few years—and will remain to be so in 2020 as well. Studies have shown that over 90% of users who watch a video on their mobiles, share it with others So, video—with its sound, pictures, animation, and more—will help you to tell your brand’s story in a more entertaining way and also add an emotional quotient to it.
For example:
- TikTok, with its more 800 million monthly active users in the age group of 16-24, is an important medium to target the youth
- You can generate small stories like 20-second content Instagram Stories or Facebook Stories. These are ephemeral content as it can be viewed only for a short duration and then it disappears but creates a lot of customer engagement
Micro-influencers
Influencer marketing is a trend that has been around for the past few years. Influencer marketing works because there are many customers who don’t trust advertisements and rather place their trust on people whose face they know of. Those with millions of followers—the macro influencers—are expensive and were popular earlier. 2020 is seeing a rising trend of brands associating themselves with micro influencers.
- They have lesser followers but build connections with their network that are more meaningful.
- It also gives them the chance to have more personal interactions with their followers.
Thus, using such people to promote your brand will not only be within your budget but will also help you to reach out to niche audiences and connect with them more closely.
Niche Social Networks
There is an excess of content on social media. Hence, customers are now focusing on platforms whether they can find content that is relevant to them. 2020 is thus seeing a growth in niche social networks. Such networks will help you to target a niche community and engage with them more closely.
Virtual Shopping
Gen Z spends a lot of time shopping on social media.
- Most of this happens on Instagram and on Snapchat since influencers have a huge impact on these sites. Hence, this generation can be targeted by writing a lot of shoppable posts on these social media sites.
- Augmented reality’s usage in social media is slowly gaining pace in 2020. With this shopping on virtual stores is also being turned into a more engaging experience. This will help marketers because it will create shorter sales funnels and consumers will benefit as they can buy the product quickly.
- Customers have begun to prefer more private communications in smaller groups. Hence, sharing shopping details on specially created Facebook and Whatsapp groups or using a ‘close friends’ list on instagram is gaining in popularity. Some marketers are also looking beyond the usual and reaching out to consumers through smaller groups on Reddit and Quora.
Social Media Analytics
Proper data analysis is needed while devising a new marketing plan. 2020 will see strategists incorporating data from various social media platforms into their analysis. For this you can use data provided by platforms like Facebook and Instagram Insights, Twitter Analytics, and others. There are also monitoring tools like Awario or Brandwatch that will help you to analyse customer sentiments and behavioral trends, the reach of your product, and others. Analysis of this data will help you to find out which of your content is doing the best with your audience and where you can improve to raise more brand awareness.
To Sum Up
Marketing strategies are nowadays so devised where digital marketing plays a very important role. Within this, social media is a very popular method to reach out to customers. However, this medium is constantly evolving and the competition in this space is also huge. So, if you want to be successful, optimizing your social media strategies to leverage these social media trends of 2020 will surely help you to stay ahead of the curve.
