Hello and welcome back to my weekly-ish blog. It’s the holidays and my concept of time has been severely skewed. Not skewed enough to forget that we are about to enter a new year and a new decade though! As you may have gathered from the title, I am here to give you some predictions for the upcoming year, the mighty 2020.
No, I have not obtained magical powers from binge-watching The Witcher, so you will still have to rely on Buzzfeed for your 2020 horoscope (Spoiler alert: it’s all a bunch of lies).
I have also decided to put aside my polemic nerve and avoid talking about the disasters that might occur in my life and in the world in the near future.
This blog is all about the Social Media Trends that you should look out for in 2020 (Basically I am for once doing what I am paid to do).
So here is my top 5:
1. TikTok is the next big thing
In case anyone hadn't noticed, TikTok has become massive in the past 2 years. The site/app only launched in 2016 and already counts more than 500 Million active users. In 2019 brands slowly took notice of this new social media, and my guess it that they will increasingly move towards the platforms and populate it with branded content. If your brand’s target audience includes anyone between the ages of 13 and 30 (Gen Z & Millennials), you should think about having a TikTok strategy.
As Dan preaches (Thank you, Social Media Guru), if you want to see good Social Media content by brands, follow Fast Food and Fashion. In fact, those are the brands killing it on TikTok. In addition to that, I will say, follow animal-centred channels (such as zoos and reserves) and sports. From the few brave marketers populating TikTok in 2019, I predict TikTok to oversaturate with branded content in 2020. Will that be the end of the platform or will it grow its influence even more?
2. The influencer market will grow
With the imminent removal of like counts on Instagram and Facebook, many of us were worried about the repercussions on the influencer market. With or without likes, I anticipate that influencers will adapt to find new ways to offer value and earn brand partnership.
Social Media Today predicts that micro influencers will actually become more effective in 2020 to promote brands. This is because many types of large influencers are no longer trusted by consumers and generally people trust recommendation by friends and family more. Micro-influencers are more in touch with their audiences and obtain their trust more easily. They are also better to target specific audiences instead of the large masses. Social Media has been great for smaller businesses to promote their products and compete with larger brands. As small brands do not have the budget to go after the “named” influencers, they usually get in touch with niche artists, specialist experts and people with little to mid-range followings to promote their products. I expect 2020 to bring new energy to the influencer market, that is predicted to continue growing.
3. Shopping on social media
This is a trend that began this year and I predict will continue to grow. Increasingly, you no longer need to leave a certain site or platform in order to make a purchase or a product you've found. I literally cannot find one thing that could go wrong with this new feature. It seems to be perfect for brands promoting their products and perfect for social medias earning revenues from it. It is also quite comfortable for consumers, as big platforms such as Instagram and Facebook tend to be considered “safer” than unknown websites or shopping platforms. Will social media shopping spike online shopping in general? Will it bring even more revenue to the influencer market we just discussed? I believe it has the chance to do so.
4. Podcasts
If you haven't realised how widespread podcasts have become, you must have lived under a rock. Subscribe, rate, and download of podcasts will keep growing over 2020. It was only a matter of time that radio, just as TV and video, became on-demand. Over a decade of strong, uninterrupted growth allowed for podcasts to develop into the widely popular and influential medium. Audiences trust podcasters a lot and brands are slowly starting to invest large sums in podcast advertising. Podcasts hosts are therefore becoming influencers themselves, and high-trust ones. As I previously said, respected micro-influencer viewed as an expert in their industry can be much more successful in convincing potential clients about making a purchasing decision.
5. AR will become mainstream
Before you roll your eyes, I am not talking about a futuristic, Black Mirror-ish type of Augmented Reality. I mean AR technology with applications for eCommerce, product discovery, special offers, and more. AR has not gained much traction yet because of its costs and the size of the programs that run it. I see 2020 as a starting point for portable AR, with smartphones becoming more and more powerful and AR and VR becoming more and more affordable and portable. AR will be used by social media platforms for marketing purposes, feeding into the new shopping on social media trends. The capabilities of AR are really infinite, and I am beyond excited to see how they will feed into our daily life.
And those are my predictions for the future! As you might have noticed, more than of couple of those overlap, making my points even stronger. I look forward to reading these again next year and see if my magic third eye was correct.
Happy New Year everyone, see you in 2020!
Laura
