Not only will this update help decrease the negative psychological consequences of being on social media (and Facebook’s bad PR), but it will also change the way social media influencers and brands post and evaluate their engagements. Team Vision Marketing sees that the update will inspire users to post more authentic and relaxed content.
2020 Social Media Recommendation: We recommend posting content that your audience can connect with and that will evoke deeper interactions, like customer testimonies. Get inspired with our blog post on the different types of social media content that can help boost your engagements. This is how your brand will generate stronger leads and cultivate a community on social media.
2. Video Marketing will be shorter and more entertaining
As we head towards video oversaturation on social media feeds, brands have to become savvier with what kind of video content to produce in order to engage their audiences. For 2020, we predict that more brands will engage in posting quick, entertaining clips to promote their products and services. This might come in the form of a Story video ad, a quick step-by-step tutorial, short live streams, short “shows” and “skits”, and more.
We feel that social media video marketing is heading in this direction because we know that younger markets, like Gen Z, prefer using short audio and video snippets to communicate on the web and mobile. In fact, WhatsApp reported that 100 million of their users use the in-app video chat. Not to mention, TikTok, a 15 to 60 second short video based social media platform, is a mega hit with younger age groups with 500 million monthly active users globally.
2020 Social Media Recommendation: We recommend that your brand run tests on what type of video content will perform best on your feeds and Stories. Maybe post a word-of -the-day video, where you share helpful industry terms, team introduction videos, or clips from a recent company event. Read more about the growth of video marketing and vertical video tips on our recent marketing tips blog posts.
3. ADA Compliance will become a must on social media
ADA compliance standards are making progressive legal steps on the web. According to the LA Times, the Supreme Court will allow visually impaired consumers to sue retailers if their websites are not accessible. Although ADA compliance regulations are not strongly managed by the government, companies are now ensuring that their web sites are optimized to provide “full and equal enjoyment of the goods and services… of any place of public accommodations” to visually impaired customers.
Although this important mandate is currently being enforced with online retailers, it will eventually be enforced on social media platforms, as well. We already see evidence of social media platforms taking the ADA compliance trend seriously on Facebook and Instagram, where users are now able to add Alt text to their visual content.
Not sure what an Alt text is? An alternative text or Alt text is an HTML attribute in the form of a word or phrase that describes the visual content it’s assigned to. Screen readers will read this text, making the content accessible for the visually impaired. For the non-visually impaired, the alt text will become visible if the content cannot be rendered.
2020 Social Media Recommendation: Start adding Alt Text to all of your visual content, keep your eyes out for developing ADA features for social media, and stay informed on the ADA compliance standards.
4. 2020 will be the year of e-social media commerce.
With Instagram’s newly launched shopping product tags, shopping posts, and the addition of the “buy now” button on sponsored ads, we predict that e-social media commerce will become more mainstream in 2020. Despite being in its infancy, the adaptation of direct transactions through the app feature has already proven to be promising. According to Instagram, the product tag attracted 130 million people to tap on it every month, which is an increase of 90 million over last year.
2020 Social Media Recommendation: Combine engaging content with the Instagram product tags. For example, instead of posting just a photo of a product, post a shot from a recent photoshoot, an aesthetic flat lay, or repost a photo of a customer using your product.
5. Product searches will become more visual on social media
Pinterest’s CEO Ben Silbermann claimed that “the future of search will be about pictures rather than keywords.” We also see the awareness and use of visual search becoming more mainstream on social media in 2020 as the e-social media commerce trend kicks off. This will make conversions through social media even more convenient and favorable.
If you find yourself asking what a visual search is, Team Vision Marketing is here to break it down for you. Instead of typing “drone camera and accessories” into the search bar, you can snap a photo of the desired product or highlight a part of an image to conduct a search. You will then be directed to an image based search results page showing similar products.
2020 Social Media Recommendation: With this developing social media feature, we recommend that, if possible, you make the image file name, Alt text, and image title as descriptive as possible and include popular image search keywords. You will also want to look into running ads on Pinterest, where there are reportedly 600 million Pinterest Lens searches every month.
6. Niche social media advertising is on the rise
In 2020, we predict that brands will invest in more of their advertising budget into niche social media advertising networks, like Pinterest, Snapchat, Amazon, and Twitter. These smaller advertising platforms have already seen big movements in their advertising revenue.
- Pinterest reported a 62% year over year revenue growth in its second quarter earnings release.
- SnapChat reported a 48% increase in total revenue from the prior year, coming in at $388 million.
- Amazon reported a 37% year over year growth in its “other” (AKA advertising) revenue category, which earned $3 billion in revenue in Q2 of 2019.
- Twitter reported a 21% year over year growth, with earnings of $727 million for Q2.
This means that advertising network titans, Facebook and Google, will face a decline in growth in 2020.
- Facebook’s ad revenue grew 28% compared to the previous year’s quarter.
- Google grew 16% in the second quarter of 2019.
However, Google and Facebook’s market share still dwarf their growing competition with Facebook coming in at $16.62 billion and Google at $32.6 billion in the second quarter of 2019.
2020 Social Media Recommendation: Look into advertising on Pinterest, Twitter, Amazon, and SnapChat. Advertising on multiple platforms is a great way to extend your brand awareness to different audiences. Learn more about advertising on Amazon here.
