Top 5 Social Media Trends For 2020

The new year is beginning, and social media platforms have seen a number of changes of the previous year. Marketers have to continuously update themselves to improve their digital marketing strategies in order to be successful.

Look ahead to the coming 12 months and discover the top five social media trends for 2020, according to Hootsuite.

1. Balance Between Public and Private Social Platforms

The key to progress is to choose the best journey for your company. In 2019, successful brands tended to utilise both private and public social strategies to achieve an appropriate balance between awareness and personalised service:

Public channels, such as Facebook, LinkedIn or Instagram, are very useful to generate buzz and increase awareness and engagement. All organisations should be immersed in these channels as it’s essential to build external trust.

From private social media channels, such as WhatsApp, companies can build deeper relationships with their clients and offer a personalised service. Users prefer a personalised service and it’s important to use one-on-one communication to provide value to your customers.

However, you have to know how to combine both social media strategies. Here are 3 steps to obtain the best social media results in 2020:

1. Create a seamless journey between public and private

Depending on your industry, one of both options will be a better option. E-commerce and B2C companies are more suitable to integrate public and private channels to deliver the best customer service.

2. Automate easy messages

Considering that time is money, automation tools are great for companies that want to save both valuable sources. However, customers want to communicate with people, so they can handle more difficult conversations.Saving time through automation can sometimes lead to negative customer experiences, so it’s important to not automate all the social actions.

3. Respect the function and nuances of private channels

Normally, private channels are used as a friendly tool to speak with your loved ones. In this case, the context is extremely important. Marketers have to make sure they don’t use an inappropriate advertising language and chase their audiences in private tools. These social channels are commonly used in a friendly context and it’s important to keep this atmosphere.

2. Build External Trust Through Your Employees

Another trend for 2020 is using social media as a platform to show the role that employees have in their company. This will become a part of corporate strategies for organisations.

75% of people surveyed in Hootsuite analysis, affirmed that they trust employees. In this way, Hootsuite predicts that organisations are going to amplify their company purpose with employee advocacy and building strong employee culture.

For 2020, the social media management dashboard, Hootsuite, estimates that the internal culture of trust, the employer benefits and growth should be shared in companies’ social platforms to build an external trust and reputation.

3. TikTok 

TikTok was the most downloaded app in the world for the first quarter of 2019, and is a platform with over 800 million monthly active users.

The audience of TikTok are people from the ages of 16 to 23 and the majority reside in China. For this reason, unless your target audience is part of that sector, organisations shouldn’t invest in this platform, as the demographics are very niche. However, all marketers should consider keeping an eye on TikTok, as it can be a great tool to monitor trends and content which could be applicable to your channels.

4. Give Campaigns Time

There isn’t a successful formula for social media. Everything depends on the industry, your audience and the types of content you’re creating.

The best way to measure the success of your a social media marketing performance is to create multi-funnel social ad campaigns and give them time to perform.

5. Attribution

One of the most important things about marketing is analysing and measuring the performance of your strategy. This will be the only way for marketers to see the ROI that they are getting back from their actions.

According to Hootsuite, 70% of social marketers aren’t using an attribution model. To accurately measure the performance of social, it is essential to have a holistic view by using multiple analytics sources, omni-channel integrations, and not reinventing the wheel.