Social Media Trends to Look for in 2019
Wondering what social media is going to look like next? The world of social media is constantly changing, but staying on top of trends and thinking about the year ahead can help to guide your social media strategy in 2019. Below are a few of the top trends we foresee gaining traction and making an impact in the year to come.
Social Listening
Listening has already proven to be a large trend in social media throughout 2018, but it will continue to gain traction in the coming year. Social listening can help larger brands make important business decisions, but it can be useful for small businesses as well. Setting up keywords for your business on Twitter and even on Google Alerts can help you stay in the know with what’s being said about your business online or how your competition is being discussed on social media.
Instagram Stories
Instagram Stories have been a huge trend in 2018, but they will continue to grow and be leveraged more in 2019. Most importantly, Stories will become more interactive and actionable, with new features like “questions” and even product tags being slowly rolled out to select users.
The Shift to Instagram
Instagram will continue to grow in the advertising space and demonstrate its ability to influence behavior and build conversions. While it’s doubtful that Instagram will overtake Facebook (Facebook has roughly 1.5 billion daily active users to Instagram’s 500 million), ad spend will continue to be allocated to the fast-growing platform in growing numbers.
Ad Spend Increases
To bypass ever dwindling organic reach on Facebook, advertisers will need to invest more in their social media advertising to get results. With new advertisers flocking to the platform each day, everyone will need to increase their ad budgets to compete with oversaturation in the Newsfeed as well as big algorithm changes. In 2019, it will be even more crucial for advertisers to prove trackable ROI to clients and stakeholders.
Transparency
When we attended the Agency Partner Summit at Sprout Social in October 2018, the main takeaway we had was one word: transparency. With fake news, data breaches, and growing privacy concerns in the world of social media, being open and honest in how we conduct ourselves online is more important than ever. In fact, 86% of Americans say transparency from businesses is more important than ever before. Bringing openness, clarity, and honesty into your social media communication in 2019 will be key in building trust among your customer base and building a following that is not only engaged, but loyal to your business.
