Trends in Social Media
In the past decade, social media networks have become the most widely used platforms by marketers and advertisers. The ability to access large communities and potential audiences continues to attract companies that want to increase brand awareness and engage with customers. To optimize your social strategy, it’s important to keep up-to-date with the ever-changing trends in social media.
TRANSPARENCY OF DATA
Social Media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram have increased their level of transparency with users. Facebook is furthering their transparency regarding the storage and sharing of user information by expanding their “Why am I seeing this?” feature.
Additionally, Facebook has implemented new tools to improve transparency including:
- Ad Library – Allows users to see how much money political parties and social organizations invest in advertising, as well as the active ads of any brand or company.
- Page Transparency – A new section that shows the page’s creation date, the main countries where it is managed, the number of people who manage the page in each country, the previous name changes of the page and all page mergers.
Instagram has also focused on improving transparency by:
- Removing the “followed” section – Eliminates the ability of users to view the activity of other users that they follow.
- Conducting tests on the number of likes – Several countries were tested by removing the publicly displayed number of likes on a post.
- Removing the basic functions from fraudulent accounts – Action against fraudulent use such as buying followers, bots that follow/unfollow, excessive use of hashtags, and other automated activity.
BRANDED CONTENT
Content posted by an influencer will be labeled by a mark, allowing users to better understand the relationship between the influencer and the brand. Branded content can also be promoted, but since now there is an established relationship, the brand can carry out the promotion even if the content was published on the influencer’s network.
MESSAGING SERVICES
As the parent company of Messenger, WhatsApp, and Instagram, Facebook is focusing on improving messaging services. The goal is for brands to participate in improved communication and customer service through these three applications, since it’s estimated that poor customer service is responsible for losing $75 million a year.
AUGMENTED REALITY IN ADS
Advertising with augmented reality on social media is predicted to open up a whole new world of possibilities. An example of an AR ad is “trying” out a product using the camera feature. AR ads are immersive and can invoke a more emotional connection with users.
ADVERTISING ON TIK TOK
In terms of social media marketing, Tik Tok is the talk of the town. It has managed to reach no less than 500 million users in a short amount of time and is now seen as one of the best options for reaching the Gen Z target.
NEW SOCIAL MEDIA AD LOCATIONS
Facebook and Instagram are continuing to find new options for ad placement. Recent additions include the appearance of ads in the Facebook Search function and on Instagram’s Explore tab (which is limited to organic content). Both locations must be used with other feed spaces and not exclusively for ads.
LINKEDIN TRENDS
LinkedIn is introducing various new tools on their platform to improve engagement and functionality with new integrations such as Talent Insight, Talent Hub, and LinkedIn Elevate.
LinkedIn’s numerous improved engagement features include:
- Tagging other users in uploaded photos
- Reacting to posts in various ways
- Sending videos through private messages
- Improving visibility on group and hashtag posts
- Sharing professional documents
- Real-time video functionality
