With every day passing by, there is something or the other that keeps on happening in the social media world, whether it is the introduction of new features or publishing tools or brand new forms of advertising. Social media has always been a game-changer, and here’s the reason why.

Given below is a list of the significant social media marketing trends you should be paying attention to in the year 2020 so that your brand is not left behind:

1. VIDEO: THE NEW KING OF CONTENT

We all know how excellent video content is because of all the intriguing content going online, whether it is on Netflix, Amazon Prime, YouTube, IGTV, Facebook Watch, Voot, etc. It is no secret that video has become an essential part of our everyday lives. A stat by HubSpot suggests that 55% of people view videos online every day. Cisco even predicts that by 2022, 82% of all internet traffic will come via videos. So if your brand is not taking advantage of videos, you need to include them right now in your marketing plan and create some real and relatable content with which the audience can connect with. According to video creators, longer videos usually grab the attention of the users more and tend to keep them engaged in comparison to shorter videos. Ask yourself when was the last time you binge-watched your favorite series? According to Statista, Netflix has reported that it has over 158 million subscribers as of 2019 who watch 165 million hours of content on average per day, i.e. approximately 63 minutes of video content consumed per user. There is so much content available that you just cannot create anything just for the sake that everybody is creating and promoting it. Keep in mind that whatever video content you make it should generate some value for your audience be it in any form, education or entertainment-wise.  

2. AUGMENTED REALITY (AR) & VIRTUAL REALITY (VR)

We have heard a lot about Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR), but what is the difference between the two? AR is all about adding different elements to a live view like AR stickers on Facebook or Snapchat lenses. On the other hand, VR is all about live experiences (in one place) with the help of a headset, cutting you out from the physical world. 

With technological advancements and aid of Augmented Reality (AR), a user can now buy products online by just visiting their virtual stores on social media. 

Coming to VR, marketers are more eagerly waiting for social media platforms to introduce VR advertisements so that live experiences can be provided to social media users leading to more number of purchases. Now the problem with VR is that to watch any VR content, you need to have a VR headset and that is why the concept of AR is a sell-out among the two.

3. EPHEMERAL CONTENT

Ephemeral content is a form of content that is available right now but gone the day after. The reason why ephemeral content is so popular these days is that people’s attention span is very less and they want to consume as much content as they can in a limited amount of time. The most prominent example of ephemeral content as we all know is “STORIES” (started by Snapchat and later acquired by all other social media platforms like Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, Facebook, Skype, and YouTube). Brands need to begin storytelling more via “stories” as these 15-second short clips allow your brand to trigger immediate reactions from your audience and the only way people can communicate with your brand is through private messaging. Hootsuite says that 64% of the brands have already included Instagram Stories as a part of their marketing plan. 

4. SOCIAL MEDIA WELLNESS

Image Source: Medium

Social media wellness is a thing now and has become an essential part of consumer engagement. With Google’s Digital Wellbeing heading to a lot more number of phones, showing the user the amount of screen time spent on different apps in a day has made people more conscious of how much time they spend online. With so much content being inundated all the time, it is now a social media marketer’s job to focus on why and how to produce valuable content for their audience in 2020.

Lastly, we would like to say that we are living in a digital world that has never been faster, so whatever you do in 2020 is need to be planned strategically way before it is being executed.