Another spin of the roaring twenties has started, and it brought many changes with it. In brief twenty years, the virtual world has evolved with the speed of light. Social networks have changed the pace of the whole world in every sphere of daily life, and business as well. Artificial intelligence is no longer a word from the futuristic movie. Technologies also move fast forward, and this article is here to catch you up with the hottest trends of technologies used in social media.
RISE OF SOCIAL COMMERCE
At the beginning of a century, businesses started widening their horizons with the use of digital sales. That’s how the term of ECommerce was born. Every self-respecting brand launched a site to trade its product and communicate with its customers. But by 2020, the development of business with the use of popular networks reached the mark where it deserves a new name – Social Commerce.
The strategy for successful growth was so simple, that it attracted more and more small and big brands. All they had to do was to gain followers and likes on popular platforms like Instagram or Facebook. Using social platforms for business made the process of communication with potential customers more effective, allowed to gather and analyze more data from customers, and provided a cheaper and faster way to promote a brand, comparing to the traditional forms of advertising.
Popular platforms, like Facebook, Instagram, or Pinterest also made changes in their apps and systems to make themselves useful for business. Instagram, for instance, provides professional tools like:
- ability to create a business profile, which helps to control your statistics;
- system of paid promotion;
- special display for shops, where they can make a catalog of their products with links for buying, prices, etc.
ENGAGING USERS WITH THE HELP OF AUGMENTED AND VIRTUAL REALITY (AR AND VR)
The first thing that users want to do on social media, is having fun and receiving some new experience. Demands for entertainment become higher and social platforms are searching for new ways for attracting users. The AR/VR technologies is a completely new method to engage people.
Virtual reality has only started its path to users’ hearts. In 2019, Facebook revealed its new treat that is called Horizon. It is a whole new digital world, where you can play, explore, and communicate with other users through a virtual body. It will be revealed later in 2020 for Oculus Quest and the Rift Platform.
Augmented reality, on the other hand, is now something that we all can use right now. Instagram and Snapchat are using augmented reality filters for more than a year now.
One of the new tricks in social media marketing – creating a branded AR filter.
THE INTERNET OF THINGS
This innovative technology (further in the text – IoT) brings the personalization to the new level. For now, it has already embraced a lot of physical objects – baby monitors, cars, kitchen devices, etc, and connected them to your smartphone. Now, your smart fridge knows when you are running out of cheese and notifies you about it.
For social networks the development of this technology means more effective personalization of content. Lately, the personalization of content has become a trend amid consumers. In the future, the data achieved from IoT can help marketers to provide more intuitive targeting and specifications for every query. Also, the integration of IoT to social media will work for shopping. It will make the process of customers’ identification easier and accurate. No need to dive into a deep conversation with the customer, you can see all his preferences the second he enters the shop. Exciting, isn’t it?
CYBERSPORTS AND SOCIAL MEDIA
By this decade, gaming is not just a hobby for teenagers. The interest in ESports tournaments demonstrates exponential growth, thus providing new possibilities for user engagement and branding opportunities. Mainly, they are broadcasted through YouTube and Twitch platforms, but after all, the followers of popular gamers become engaged in other social profiles, like Instagram or Twitter. The segment of occasional viewers, who later become followers of a certain gaming team seems to increase rapidly too. That opens new horizons for advertising and influencer marketing strategies.
WELCOME 5G
We finally meet the fifth generation of the cellular network. It promises to have a 1000 time better capacity than 4G, so we expect from it wider internet access and stable connection. It will also allow us to develop IoT technology faster.
With a more stable internet connection, people can spend even more time on their favorite social platforms, especially ones like YouTube, TikTok, or Twitch.
By 2022, video content is expected to become the dominating form of all produced, according to recent studies. With the help of 5G technology, people would be able to watch longer videos. So it is a good time to start including more video content on social accounts. Even if you are using Instagram primarily, you should start producing more content for Stories and IGTV.
INTERNET TELEVISION
Netflix and Apple TV started the trend of online streaming television on the basis of subscription. But social networks are not going to lose this game as well. YouTube Premium and Facebook Watch are first to break into this segment of the market. But unlike Netflix and others, the social media giants still rely on user-generated content and shorter forms of video, although with the introduction of tools like IGTV longer videos have a good chance to spread wider.
OUTRO
These are the main trends that 2020 provides to us. But social media are fast-evolving and very dynamic, thus the flow of technology is always chasing along. Social platforms expand their power further every year. So the good method to beat all your competitors is to keep up with trends described above and use them wisely. Good luck and have fun!