Like anything, social media flows through trends and styles nearly every season. The next best piece of content is one that offers variety in our over stimulated feeds and is delivered in the most engaging way. As we see ourselves into Summer 2020, we’ve compiled a list of the top 5 social media trends that remain well suited for the coming months.
Ephemeral content
Ephemeral content is something that is available to an audience for a limited time.
Instagram stories and Snapchat stories are great examples. As we become more accustomed to seeing repetitive narratives throughout our social media feeds, our attention spans are becoming rapidly limited thus the growth of user friendly IG, FB and SC story scrolling.
User Generated Content *UGC
While UGC isn’t a new social media trend, it continues to grow with brands encouraging users, customers and clients to create content and submit it to the brand. This way users are exposed via the brands' channels, and the brand gets ready-made content. With Tik Tok challenges on the rise and shared across various platforms, Instagram has recently supported the trend with a #Challenge widget for IG Stories. This creates a lot of opportunities for brands to create campaigns based on challenges to generate UGC.
Video Content
Video content is taking over the way we interact on social media. User-friendly video editing apps and high quality smart phone cameras make creating video content more accessible. When compared to writing long captions and creating engaging photography, content creators are finding it easier to grab the attention of their audience, portray their personality, message, and story via video.
According to a Global Cisco Study by 2020 82% of content will be video.
Social Commerce
Social commerce stores have been a strong sales portal alongside mediums like online and non-digital stores for a number of years. Social media has become a preferred way of learning about a brand and browsing through the offerings. With Instagram taking notice, their systems have been updated to accommodate online stores via tagging product info/pricing and offering a clickable purchase tag which creates a fast and easy experience for their clients.
Social Media for Customer Service
Tying in with the Social Commerce trend, customer service will play a major role in sustaining a proactive social retail store. Small businesses have adapted to using social media for customer service, and large brands are following suit by utilizing messenger, separate customer service accounts and including FAQ’s in their Instagram highlights. They're innovating the customer service experience, and streamlining communication with their customers.