Will we ever be able to predict the next social media trend? What will be the next app that commands our attention? What elements will this app hold that will set it apart from existing social media networks? For social media users, data security and privacy concerns continue to be at the forefront of their minds, while tech companies are attempting to address those concerns, they are also pushing out new video technology such as augmented reality. For marketers, social media engagements are becoming more and more important in revealing the types of content audiences prefer. These are just a few of the emerging trends in digital media and these developments give social media platforms a great chance to capitalize on desired improvements and updates within the social media space. Check out some of the changes we predict will happen to social media networks in 2020!

Video content continues to be extremely popular for websites, social media networks and applications. A new study from Cisco explains that by 2020, video content will account for about 75% of the online traffic, up from 55% in 2015. Video is also becoming increasingly easy to create and share across multiple platforms. According to techjackie.com , platforms like Instagram and Facebook are excessively promoting videos as recent algorithms are giving more preferences to videos when they are ranking content. With the progression of augmented reality, videos are becoming more interactive and engaging for viewers. Snapchat was a pioneer with these basic augmented reality videos when they added dog filters, bitmojis dancing and other icons that could be placed onto our digital screens. Facebook is now taking advantage of people’s obsession with filters and animations as they introduced the Facebook Spark AR Studio where anyone can build and share their own effects. Expect to see more animations, more augmented reality filters and more ads using video content as we move into 2020.

Securing our data and individual privacy have always been top concerns since the dawn of the internet and social media. Facebook’s recent data breach in 2018 and data mismanagement caused serious privacy problems and has made us rethink our privacy and who has access to our data. From the moment that we sign-up for a social media account, we are immediately prompted to share personal information and our interests. As we continue to engage with that platform, we are providing personal information about where we live, where we go, what we are interested in and who our friends are. This information is collected somewhat naturally as we mindlessly use social media functions such as liking, commenting and sharing. It seems that we are quite permissive about providing social media apps with our information but releasing this information to powerful companies seems to scare us. But how will social media companies go about securing our data? We could see more options that protect the personal information that we really want kept private.

As consumers, when we want to know something, we look for a quick or better yet, an immediate response. If we cannot find this information we need with a simple Google search, we may go directly to the brand and ask them our specific questions about their products or services. SmartInsights notes that over 30% of consumers pegged social media as a “convenient contact method” with that number likely to increase with the emergence of younger online consumers. Only 6% of consumers expect no response from a company whereas 37% of consumers expect a relevant response within 30 minutes. This data speaks to the importance of brands and marketers to have message notifications synced up to their phones or personal accounts so that they can quickly respond back to customers with information. ConvinceandConvert explains that “answering a customer complaint can increase customer advocacy by up to 25% - meaning that responding to complaints can help create loyal customers.” Brands should respond to every complaint on every channel, everytime. This may require a deeper understanding of the web and how to listen to consumer insights.

Now more than ever, we are capable of creating, viewing, engaging, sharing, buying and more content and materials on an extremely large scale. We can buy things right from an ad on Instagram without ever leaving the platform, we can create things using simple, free video-making platforms, we can share anything on the internet by pasting a link. Online media is giving us opportunities to strategically utilize the convenience of these technological advancements. Facebook has even added additional reactions to compliment the “like” feature with online behaviors like “love, haha, wow, angry and sad” to engage with a post. Online applications are also providing more private group features. So when you are scrolling your timeline and see a post that relates to your friend group, your coworkers or your family, you can share this post privately in a group message for everyone to discuss and engage with the post. The privacy features are also allowing users to add specific people into private stories where only invited users can see posts shared. On Instagram, this feature can be named “Close Friends” or anything you’d like to label the group. Snapchat provides a similar function with their “Private Story” where only certain users can view someone’s private snaps. These grouping features have been established to get groups of people to view content within an application. The private stories could be utilized to display content that users only want to share with people they are comfortable with.

The word engagement is constantly being thrown around but what does it actually mean? Liking, commenting and sharing are the main forms of engagement, but with the possibility of fake followers and fake likes, “liking” is being overshadowed by real engagements that show how interested an audience is. Instagram is testing hiding the number of likes on posts in an attempt to create a less pressurized experience for users. This could be another popular trend that emerges as social media continues to focus on people’s self-esteem as they post content on these platforms. These fake likes could be somewhat related to the reasoning for Instagram testing the hidden like counts on users’ Instagram feeds. Tools like Google Analytics are allowing us to see even more detailed engagements like how long someone was viewing a post for or what page they went to after seeing a specific post. Another form of engagement that is being noticed is the screen time that people dedicate to each social media application. This came to mind with the emergence of Instagram’s “daily activity” page where it shows you the average amount of minutes/hours you spend on the app. Marketers and researchers can expect to see more detailed and sophisticated social media analytics and data in 2020 and beyond. 

Content is now the main catalyst that determines our consumption and decisions and as marketers we need to understand these future trends. What do you think we will see in 2020? Comment on some of your thoughts on what social media trends we might see as our technology and online social networks continue to improve and influence the way we use social media.

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