Key social media marketing trends for 2020 that marketers need to be aware of.
Social media has now become synonymous with digital marketing, going hand-in-hand with most – if not all – digital campaigns. However, social media is far from static and what worked a few months ago may not get you the same good results now.
Habits change, platforms evolve, and new platforms come into existence. All of this influences how people use and react to social media marketing, as well as how marketers are able to reach their audience.
It is more important than ever before for marketers to understand and stay ahead of the curve when it comes to social media. Doing so ensures you have the right tools at your disposal, an up-to-date strategy, and the required skills to make the most of social media.
With this in mind, we’ve taken a look at some of the trends that we believe are going to be important when it comes to social media marketing in 2020. Here are the trends that we, and other experts, think you need to be aware of ahead of the new year:
The digital detox
There are now 3.484 billion social media users across the globe, which is a 9% increase compared to last year. This equates to 45% of the world’s population being on social media. It also means that social media adoption has actually beaten previous estimates, which suggested that an estimated 2.82 billion would be using social media in 2019. While this suggests that brands have the opportunity to reach larger audiences than ever before, a new trend is affecting that audience base.
More people are now choosing to “detox” from social media, deleting apps and profiles in order to step away from it. This is more than just the usual changes we see in terms of people choosing to use one platform less in favor of another – such as Facebook seeing users decline but Instagram attracting more – this trend is seeing people take a temporary or permanent break from all social media.
One in three adults in the UK are now reducing their social media use. Some 6% of users have removed an app from their phone, 6% have permanently deleted their accounts and 8% have both deleted their accounts and removed social media mobile apps.
A big reason for this is that people now feel overloaded by social media, with the permeation of social media affecting their mental health and wellbeing. Others choose to detox because they don’t trust social media platforms, either due to issues like Fake News or because of privacy and data concerns.
“I think that this year, we’ll be seeing more of a change in the way social media users act online; I think that digital detox will become more prevalent this year, with many people trying to limit the amount of time they spend on social media.
“I also think that there will continue to be a big push towards making social media more private and secure for its users – this has been a big problem recently and many people are just realizing how truly dangerous a lack of online privacy can be. And these things, of course, will have a big impact on marketing too – brands and marketers need to be on top of these trends and act accordingly.”
Lilach Bullock – Content marketing and social media specialist.
This isn’t to say that social media will become void in terms of digital marketing, but marketers do need to understand the impacts it could have. When added to the issues that pay-to-play social media brings, more people taking on a digital detox (whether temporary or permanent) will impact reach and engagement of your posts. This can affect the results of any customer acquisition or brand awareness campaigns you launch across social media platforms.
Ultimately, it’s vital that you don’t start putting all your marketing eggs in the social media bucket. You need to ensure that enough budget and resource is still being given to other channels, including email marketing and search engine marketing. However, it’s also vital that you ensure that any social media presence you do have is as meaningful as possible. Your brand needs to offer more than memes – you need to deliver content that has a positive and memorable impact on your audience and that provides as much value as possible.
Building social media communities
A big part of meaningful and valuable experiences on social media is the way that brands engage with their audience. While sharing posts that you believe your target audience will enjoy is part of maintaining your social media presence, you also need to encourage and cultivate interactions that are more than a simple like or share.
There are a lot of brands out there who seemingly have large social media followings and yet, when you look more closely at individual posts, their engagement levels are almost non-existent. Those brands that are seeing more engagement from their followers are doing so by building communities around their content.
This isn’t to say that communities are a new concept, but they are being built by brands in different ways, which is paying off and will likely continue to do so as we head into 2020.
Source: Smart Insights
Author: Joanna Carter
Carter, Joanna. “Social media marketing trends 2020.” Smart Insights, 08 Jan. 2020, https://www.smartinsights.com/social-media-marketing/social-media-strategy/social-media-marketing-trends-2020/.
