Social Media Strategies and Trends for 2020

Business to Business OR Person To Person- Social Media (Strategies) connects all!!

What is the first thing people do when they wake up in the morning? 8 out of 10 will respond that they check their mobile phones for social media notifications. And why not? It just takes a tweet to share any piece of information, and it takes only 3 seconds to connect with someone across the globe. 

As Jeff Bezos, puts it – “If you make customers unhappy in the physical world, they might each tell 6 friends. If you make customers unhappy on the Internet, they can each tell 6,000 friends.”

• 3.5 billion people in the world, i.e. about 42% of the total population are using social media
• In 2018, as per a survey by GlobalWebIndex, it was reported that an average person spends almost 2 hours and 22 minutes every day on social media.
• Around 68% of the U.S. adults are active Facebook users, making Facebook the most used social media platform in the world.

Some of the trends to consider while building your 2020 Social Media Strategy

1) Ephemeral Content Will Continue To Make Waves

Ephemeral Content is the type of content that remains online for a brief period of time, for example, Instagram, Facebook, and Snapchat stories. The story update feature exists for both individuals and businesses on every social media platform. With this fast-moving world, our attention spans have also shrunk, and that has made ephemeral content popular. The fondness of the audience towards updating stories made most of the platforms incorporating this feature, including Facebook, snap chat, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc. 

• 400 million people view Instagram Stories every day
• Snapchat influencers are posting 2X more stories
• 1 of every 3 Instagram users admitted that they are influenced stories when making purchase decisions.

Source: Instagram Influencer Story

2) Influencer Marketing Is A Trend Here To Stay

Social media has given birth to a new breed of influencers that are not your traditional celebrities. They are a mix of everyday users, specialists, and proponents of certain special interests. They are driving demand for products and services they promote to their followers on social media channels. The audience views them as trusted advisors and their role in Influencer Marketing will continue to grow in 2020 and beyond.

• Roughly 65% of Influencer Marketing budgets were said to have been increased in 2019. 
• 17% of the brands have spent over half their marketing budgets on influencer marketing in 2019.
• Businesses save 24% on content creation by leveraging influencer’s content

Although influencer marketing has been around for long, Social Media has made it a cornerstone of modern marketing. As a marketer, you will need to make sure your social media strategies have influencer marketing built-in if you want to future-ready.

3) Social Media Ads

Social Media ads are becoming increasingly useful than any other type of ads. Social Media advertising is even more important when it comes to targeting the millennials audience. In fact, 95% of the online adult audience (ages between 18 to 34) loves to follow and engage with a brand on social media. 

• 70% of social media advertisers choose to invest in Facebook ads as they feel this a most promising platform.  
• Twitter earned $575 million of revenue from the ads in the first quarter of 2018–a 21% increase year over year.

When planning your 2020 marketing budgets make sure paid social advertising is part of your social media strategies. Do not ignore it and if needed trade budgets from other traditional marketing channels.

4) Use of Artificial Intelligence In Social Media

“AI for social media” market is projected to grow from $633 million in 2018 to more than $2.1 billion by 2023, according to estimates from Markets and Markets.

Whether it is a website or social media, AI-powered applications are owning the game everywhere. Not only do they allow businesses to engage, but they also help in targeting the right audience. Machine learning and Natural language processing (NLP) tools are empowering incredibly powerful social experiences. Here are a few examples of how AI is empowering various social media platforms

• Messenger applications for real-time conversational marketing
• Social media monitoring and predictive behavior analytics
• Behavior-based targeting with the advertisement

5) Video Content Is Here To Stay

With more than 95% of the world’s cell phone being smart devices video consumption is at an all-time high and growing.  96%of millennials watch one video per day and several throughout the week Hubspot. 

Social Media channels like Facebook, YouTube, and others are responsible for the majority of the marketing videos being consumed by end-users. Live videos are another popular option to drive engagement with your audience and grow your brand following on social media.

There You Go!!

So, marketers, are you ready? Aptly consider these trends while planning your social media strategies for 2020. Social Media is something that will not be slowing down any time soon. For any further discussion or knowledge share from our experts, you can write to us at info@growthnatives.com.