Where is social media headed in 2020?
Social media trends to watch out for
A social media marketing strategy is on the minds of many small business owners. And if it’s not on yours, it should be!
Major platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram are fighting for market shares by adjusting their business models to balance delivering better shareholder returns with improving user experience.
As these platforms develop, the way you use them for your small business must also change.
Let’s hope for some ways to promote your business on social media in 2020.
More than 18 months later, the Federal Trade Commission officially ruled that Cambridge Analytica misled Facebook users. The company had collected personal data from millions of Facebook profiles without people’s consent and then used it for political advertising.
Although Cambridge Analytica went bankrupt shortly after the scandal, Facebook is still working hard to strengthen its data access processes and convince people to trust its new platform dedicated to news.
Facebook launched Facebook News to a subset of people in the US. That means that while you’ll still see posts from family and friends in your main feed, Facebook News will publish content from a team of journalists (employed by Facebook).
This year, the company is also focusing on cryptocurrencies and establishing its Facebook Pay feature. This could mean your small business could add platform selling to your account soon.
Although the launch of Facebook Watch did not go as expected (only 140 million people watch the videos and shows daily, which sounds huge, but it does not compare to the 1.6 billion daily assets of the platform in general). Still, it looks like Facebook is going to make another go in 2020, so let’s see what that means for video marketing.
What do these changes mean for your social media marketing strategy?
We’ll have to wait and see. The more proprietary content the company creates, the more vendors can compete to stay visible.
The company recently announced that it would stop running political ads and is updating its global privacy policy to provide users with more information about what data advertisers might receive.
We also wonder what the company’s vice president of design and research, Dantley Davis, meant by his recent announcement about a number of changes that could be coming to the platform as early as next year.
How will this affect the way you promote your business on social media?
You could have the ability to limit who retweets your tweet (which I don’t see as a feature that entrepreneurs would use much, we love our retweets!) and the ability to tweet something to a specific group based on their interests.
Learn more about how to use Twitter hashtags.
Since its launch in 2003, LinkedIn has become the world’s largest professional networking platform.
Microsoft acquired the platform for $26.2 billion in 2016, and with access to Microsoft resources, we’ve seen updated career insights and more specific announcements.
We’ve also seen the return of LinkedIn groups.
A LinkedIn group allows your company to create a discussion forum related to your industry. This gives you the opportunity to start a special interest group of like-minded individuals specific to your product, service, and/or expertise.
Groups also provide excellent visibility for your business as each member that is part of your group will have your logo on their profile. Group owners now also have the ability to post different types of media, such as images and videos, and push notifications enable real-time conversations.
Executive Suite has more than 300,000 members and brings executives together with a web series, how-to tips and discussion forums.
What do LinkedIn groups mean for your small business?
Hopefully a better way to foster a sense of community, find candidates for open positions, and gain brand visibility, to name a few.
You may remember that Instagram tested the removal of likes in several countries, including Australia, Japan, Italy, and Ireland. Likes aren’t gone: In the US and Canada, you can still see the like count on your own photos and videos, but not on others’ posts.
So where did this come from? Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, has long dealt with people using hacks and workarounds. These mostly come from bots and unscrupulous companies that manipulate the app to make themselves or other users appear more popular than they really are. So this is an attempt to make Instagram more authentic.
Instagram says, “We hope this test will take the pressure off of how many likes a post will get, so you can focus on sharing the things you love.”
While many entrepreneurs and small businesses are good at this, influencers and video marketing agencies are not.
How can they show companies how popular they are? How will they show commitment?
But for the average small business owner who isn’t buying likes or gaming the system with bots, this could be a good thing.
If your social media marketing strategy includes engaging content and you’re happy to focus on comments and increasing followers, you’ll be fine.
While IGTV got off to a slow start, it is now considered one of the biggest social media trends out there. After Instagram announced earlier this year that it would allow one-minute previews of IGTV videos in the main Instagram feed, users (and businesses) began to take notice.
Unlike his other Instagram videos, IGTV videos can be between 10 and 60 minutes long. This offers a great video marketing opportunity for doing interviews, behind-the-scenes features, and much more.
Since we can now add landscape oriented videos as well, I have been adding my Business Edge Show videos which have gotten a lot of traction.
These are just some of the changes you can expect to see across the major platforms this year. I’m sure there will be many more as the year goes on as things are always changing!
To effectively promote your business on social media in 2020, it’s essential to not only understand social media trends, but also embrace them.
If you find it difficult to stay on top of social media, consider hiring an agency that can create strategies that are specific to your social media needs and goals so you can focus on building your business.
