In this day and age, social media has become one of the ultimate equalizers amongst many businesses. Serving as an online platform, social media allows businesses to market their services/products and reach out to customers. This is where social media marketing and digitalization marketing come in handy.

However, it can be tricky to find the right social media strategy today. Just because something worked this year doesn’t necessarily mean it will yield good results next year or in the future. That’s because everything changes so fast. Habits are changing, old platforms are evolving, while new social media platforms are emerging. Not only do these changes affect the way people use social media, but they also play a big role in reaching the target audience, which is very important for marketers.

If you want to get the most out of social platforms, you need to stay up to date with social media marketing trends. Also, you need to know how to take advantage of social media trends. This will help you choose the right social media marketing strategy and grow your business.

Here are some of the top social media marketing trends for 2020.

This engaging type of content is going to dominate over other forms of content on most social media platforms. Both short-form and long-form videos will be popular next year. Studies report that video content will make up more than 80% of all content by 2022. It is also estimated that about 75 percent of mobile internet traffic, i.e. web traffic on mobile phones, will be made up of video by 2020.

Video is preferred by many consumers because it is engaging, entertaining, and easy to share. Marketers also love video content, as it potentially results in a good return on investment. With this in mind, you should aim to create videos on social media more frequently. Make sure your social media strategy includes video.

If you don’t know how to utilize video content, use features such as Stories for your ads and content marketing for starters. Besides, you may also consider adding videos to your posts on different social media platforms.

Social Commerce Will Continue to Expand and Social Selling Will Be On the Rise

Social media is very popular with businesses because it enables them to generate more sales leads. Many businesses use Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, and other social networks to market their products. For them, social commerce is an important retail avenue.

Just like offline stores and websites, it will become a mainstream retail channel. With an increasing number of social networks with shoppable posts and other pro selling features, this trend will be strengthening further. Moreover, many believe that will be one of social media trends that will dominate 2020.

Social media platforms will act as retail platforms for marketers and sales representatives. They will continue to leverage social commerce so that it will be incorporated into different sales strategies. For instance, social selling can be leveraged for call preparation, account research, lead development, and so on.

Besides TikTok (a video-sharing social networking service), Pinterest is also considered to be a great social platform for ecommerce sales despite being a new player in the field. Pinterest has come a long way in recent years. Today, it can be utilized for much more beyond just getting home decorating ideas or food recipes. The Pinterest audience is mostly made up of people who are tempted to buy products after seeing them on this social media network. That makes this platform perfect for e-commerce.

If you still do not use social commerce, it is high time to think about it. However, to start, you should have the right social media marketing tools. You also need to know how to use these tools effectively.

Influencer Marketing Is Expected to Grow Further

While not a new social trend, influencer marketing will continue growing in 2020 and beyond. As a result, the number of influencers will grow accordingly. They utilize social media to promote a variety of brands. According to some sources, 80 percent of marketers who promote brands and products through social media find this type of marketing very effective.

Apart from the increase in social media influencers, businesses will spend more money on this popular form of marketing to boost their social media presence. Both medium and small businesses are struggling and putting a lot of effort to reach those top spots. Influencers, on the other hand, help marketers promote their online presence in effective and innovative ways.

Many brands would rather invest in influencers than run paid advertising campaigns because it’s a much cheaper but still effective choice. In addition to generating more leads, influencers assist marketers in achieving their marketing goals. So it’s clear why influencer marketing is gaining in popularity. It will get bolder and stronger next year.

Rather than working with only one big influencer, most marketers collaborate with a group of smaller, niche relevant influencers who are getting high engagement. We can expect to see more marketers opting for this budget-friendly strategy that involves working with multiple small influencers.

Stories Will Be a Well-Liked Format by Both Social Media Users and Marketers

Since the Snapchat has been launched, Stories format has been offered by other social networking websites. This format is now present on Facebook and Instagram as well. The numbers speak for themselves. In January 2019, there were about 500 million Instagram users who use Stories actively every day. YouTube Stories are also popular today.

Viewers can get authentic insights through this format, especially if the video footage is made on the spot. Stories give you the chance to add polls and quickly get answers to your questions at the click of a button. This format is considered highly engaging because it allows for experimentation. Posts are often short, humorous, and very addictive, which is why some users spend hours watching Stories.

As you may already know, this app feature allows users to post videos and photos. After being posted, they are available for one day (24 hours) only. They disappear afterward and cannot be viewed. Stories will surpass feed sharing soon by offering a different experience. Unlike feed-based sharing that remains visible on social media, Stories are meant to be consumed momentarily in a short period of time.

By capitalizing on FOMO (fear of missing out), marketers use this to their advantage. The deals and flash sales are primarily aimed at loyal consumers. Insider deals can also grab the attention of new users. This format not only saves brands cash, but also grows engagement and boosts sales. So it’s a little wonder that many marketers have already incorporated it into their marketing strategies.

Augmented Reality Will Enter the Mainstream

People often confuse virtual reality with Augmented Reality (AR), although these technologies are different. Even though they share some similar features, virtual reality involves building a completely new world – whether it is an imagined world or a real-world simulation – without using anything that exists. On the other hand, Augmented reality implies projecting computer-generated, virtual augmentations of the real world with the goal of enhancing user experience.

As Augmented technology evolves, it is applied increasingly for special offers, electronic commerce, product discovery, and so on. While some social media platforms have already implemented augmented reality, it will be adopted by other social networks in 2020. This is, without a doubt, one of those digital trends that will shape the future of many businesses.

The future of Snapchat depends largely on the future of this technology. They invest a lot in building their own AR platform and features that let users project different things into the physical world with the use of their phone cameras. Facebook is also integrating augmented reality into their marketing strategies. They work hard toward introducing Horizon, an ever-growing virtual world that allows people to play, explore a new world, and connect. Likewise, Instagram is putting a lot of effort into creating lifelike augmented reality experiences.

The potential of AR is endless, as it can be utilized in many different ways. When it comes to social media, some of its potential features include:

Social Media Will Be Increasingly Used for Customer Service

Customer service will always be of crucial importance for great customer experience. It has become more visible to just about everyone in the information age. People share customer complaints and customer reviews on social media, so they are easy to find today.

Many customers contact companies on social media, as it is a more direct way of reaching out to brands. This trend will increase in the coming years because consumers find it a convenient method of communication. They often expect companies to answer their questions or respond to their complaints through all available online channels, including social media.

At the same time, many brands find social media networks great for customer service. A lot of them regard social media as a convenient way to deliver customer service. Those that don’t currently provide social media customer service will probably start to use social platforms for this purpose next year.

While most brands try to respond to customer messages – from complaints and comments to questions – on social media as soon as possible, not every company offers 24/7 customer support. Some companies combine live staff with chatbots to provide round-the-clock coverage.

With so many businesses creating online communities, social media will be one of the main forms of customer service. More and more companies will include social media in their customer service tools. Social accounts of many brands will be more active than ever before. That will help them interact with users through different social media channels and offer better customer service.

Social Listening Will Be Incorporated into Digital Marketing Strategies More Often

Businesses often use insights and data on social media when refining their marketing strategies. This is where social media listening tools come in useful. They can make it easier for you to access data or insights. There is an array of these tools, including:

The list could go on and on. How to know which social media listening tool is right for you. Well, your best bet is to experiment with a few tools and choose one that works best for you and your strategy.

Social conversations can help in drawing meaningful insights. That makes social listening suitable for almost every social media marketing strategy. Some SMM (Social Media Monitoring) platforms only provide basic insights, such as topics of interest and comments about a brand, through the social conversation analysis. Other more complex platforms combine multiple tools while offering analytics, engagement, intelligence, monitoring, and listening capabilities.

Marketers and brands will certainly use social listening more often in 2020. It can help them get a better understanding of how customers perceive their brands and create successful social media campaigns. This is one of the social media marketing trends that all businesses should pay attention to.

Increase in the Use of Local Targeting

When talking about social media marketing trends, it is important to mention geo-targeting. Similar to local SEO, local targeting matters to brands. It can help them reach their target audience and customers from specific geographic locations. They find location targeting an effective way to build local brand awareness, increase response, boost advertising engagement, and drive more traffic.

That is why many brands incorporate local targeting into their content. Stories and posts that include specific locations are more likely to appear in local search results. This can make it easier for local people to find content and brand. So if you want to reach a relevant audience, consider using local targeting for your content marketing campaigns.

When it comes to Instagram stories and posts, it is possible to search for content from specific locations or nearby places. Geo-targeting is also available on other social platforms. Like Instagram, Facebook offers the boost post button, which allows users to choose the locations they would like to target. Once published, boosted posts will be shown to Facebook users in these particular locations. This option is great for tweets and promoted posts. It will be one of the top Facebook trends for 2020.

Social media location targeting is also helpful for local events and conferences. By targeting local people, brands can increase event attendance. Also, they can use demographic filtering for social media advertising to reach a local, relevant audience. It is always a good idea to use local targeting on popular social networks to benefit from ads.

The Number of Social Media Communities Will Continue to Grow

As more people are getting connected, the community is growing and becoming greater. We can also expect to see more new group features on Facebook and other platforms.

This will make it easier for businesses to build a community in any particular niche. While targeting the audience by sharing posts is no doubt important for social media presence, having a strong community is a must. Just because a brand has a lot of followings doesn’t mean the levels of engagement are high.

Engaging with the audience and encouraging interactions is of utmost importance for brands looking to build an engaged community. As the number of these communities grow, filtering and finding topics or information will be much easier in the future.

Building a community isn’t a new marketing concept. However, brands will do it in new ways and more efficiently in the coming years. After all, it will be necessary for the success of digital marketing campaigns.

Optimizing Content for Mobile

People no longer use their phones for messaging and calling only. From playing games to browsing the web and accessing documents, smartphones allow us to do many things that can be done on computers. There is an increase in the use of smartphones for social media.

The number of mobile social media users is constantly on the rise. In 2019, there were nearly 3.5 billion social media users in the world. It should be noted that a growing number of these people get into the habit of checking their social media accounts through their phones.

Posts published for desktop computers do not necessarily fit on phones. As a company, you should strive to create social media content that is mobile optimized. That will prevent your social media content from going to waste.

Ideally, your content should be user-generated, too. Most readers prefer user-generated content to branded content, as it is more authentic. That’s why you should consider leveraging user-generated mobile-optimized social media content for your next content marketing strategy.

 

Here are a few tips on how to optimize content for mobile:

By following these tips, you will make it more convenient for people to browse through your pages on their mobile devices. Combine this with other trends mentioned above for the best results. Eventually, you will build an engaged community, attract more consumers, and grow your business.