While it’s easy to get caught up in the current social media landscape rife with political tensions, disinformation campaigns, privacy concerns, and a negative impact on self esteem, it’s worth noting the ways they’ve innovated and progressed over the years as well. Social networks have become more engaging and dynamic, following user trends closely to provide a better experience overall, especially for brands and businesses that want to capitalize on where people are spending their time online.
Driving Social Conversation
As social networks continue to deal with the complicated issues referenced above, social messaging apps continue to surge in popularity. And social networks have worked seamlessly with those social messaging apps to capitalize on that popularity. Facebook in particular is looking to merge its social networks Facebook and Instagram with their social messaging platforms WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger, signaling a trend towards combining social networks and messaging apps to further transform how we communicate online. Not to say that they won’t still find ways to profit on people’s shifting attention spans; Facebook’s ad platform allows advertisers to buy ads on WhatsApp and Messenger.
2. Video and Storytelling
Social networks have gotten increasingly popular over the past five years, and attention has become increasingly competitive for content providers. There’s now an expectation and desire for more storytelling in the content users see on their social feeds, and there’s no more effective digital format to tell a story than video. Consumers are now watching more videos online than ever before, with an estimate showing that the average person will spend 100 minutes every day watching online videos in 2021. There has also been a trend towards live video streaming on Facebook and Instagram that creates in-the-moment videos that allow viewers to react in real-time.
3. User Generated Content
For businesses, user generated content is a way to establish immediate credibility and trust. User generated content acts as a peer review, the online version of word of mouth, which is known to be one of the most effective ways to influence purchase behaviour. 92% of consumers trust the recommendations of others over any other form of advertising, proving the value of user generated content for anyone looking to inspire brand influence online.
4. Mobile-First Focus
There is no question that we’ve continued to shift into an increasingly mobile-centric world over the past five years. There are now 5.15 billion unique mobile users in the world, so it’s no wonder that there’s an increasing expectation for social networks and web experiences to have a mobile-first focus. Top brands and businesses on social media have added mobile customer service, live streaming, and social e-commerce to their social strategy and it’s working for them. There’s no doubt that creating mobile-friendly content will continue to be a priority moving forward.
5. E-Commerce Integration
With 90% of people saying they buy from brands they follow on social media, and 93% of online shoppers saying their buying decision was influenced by social media reviews and content, it’s only logical that brands and businesses have been eager to find new ways to monetize their efforts on social media. And social networks have catered to businesses and users that are looking for their products at the same time. Over the past 5 years, social networks have integrated click-to-buy features and shopping carts directly on their platforms to make the online purchasing process even simpler for brands and users alike.
Sources: linked above.