Hashtags (#), mentions (@) and Tagging were familiar to the world since its introduction a decade ago. Similarly, in the last five years, several introductions like stories and status updates also became an instant hit. Social media is still the biggest and most popular platform to promote your brand. Statistics suggest that the revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate of 16.7 percent during the 2019- 2023 period. Revolutionizing the social media with frequent changes and new trends, the market evolves at a rapid pace needing marketers to be updated all the time to maintain their success.

Last year was a swing for social media as it witnessed several positives and negatives, putting high emphasis on owning responsibility while using social media, whether by individuals or companies. Authenticity is the need of the hour along with quality followed by quantity. Experts recommend that it’s the depth of followers that matter than the numbers. Considering all these and entering this year, let’s see the major trends that are predicted to influence the business:

1. Video Content

According to experts, 80 percent of what we consume online will soon be video content. And as expected, video content is all set to rule the market once again. Live videos are now changing the face of marketing with the likes of Tik Tok, and other live apps as they send out a notification when someone is going live. Marketers set certain goals with the live videos by increasing the trust and relevance of a brand as it is authentic and attractive.

Sanjay Vasudev, Founder & CEO, BuzzOne, says, “Video content is always more interactive than static images or articles or text content and generally tend to get higher engagement. Views of branded video content have increased 99 percent on YouTube and 258 percent on Facebook between 2016 and 2017 (Source: www.wyzowl.com). On Twitter, video content has a much higher chance of being retweeted or shared than static content. More and more advertisers are moving on from just sharing their TVCs on social media to creating engaging video content where the brand message is subtly integrated into the content.”

2. Social Listening

It is a phenomenon totally different from social monitoring as it is the process of crawling the web and social media platforms to find all mentions of a brand (or keywords).  For the last couple of years, hashtags (#) created a huge buzz in recognizing the brands, and now with the so called social listening untagged brand mentions, industry keywords that are used to buy a product, forums are identified easily. Even though it is not that popular in the market, but the number of marketers using this technique are rising as they can find people looking for the exact services they offer. In addition to that, social listening gives you a valuable insight than the results social monitoring shows us.

Commenting on this, Pranay Swarup, Co-Founder & CEO, Chtrbox, says, “In today's social day and age, where brands are always looking to be the first to catch on to a trend, listening to influencers is giving brand managers an edge. Monitoring which influencers and what and how they're talking about their category, about competition, can create that competitive advantage businesses need.”

3. Real-time Communication

One way to boost sales and revenue is to implement the live chat feature as it offers great customer service to build long-term relationship, saves time and is convenient for customers. With this, people can multitask with less wait time, save conversations and most of the consumers said that having the ability to talk to an agent in the middle of an online purchase is the best thing ever. Studies show that it is the best method to save money as it increases the revenue in a great deal.

4. Customization

Although cookies may have made life really simple for ad agencies to help them get better targets through their ads but cookies may feel like a big invasion of your privacy. Social media has become more interactive and personalized, thanks to technologies like Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Machine Learning and others. This has given the consumers more power to have things of their choice.

5. Social Influencers

The social media industry is witnessing a huge rise of social media influencers and with millions of followers in their back, these Instagram & YouTube stars and Twitter influencers’ every post, vlog and tweets are instantly seen by more people than others (TV advertisers) can even hope for. According to a survey conducted by Buzzoka among 500 brands, almost 69 percent of brands are now spending over $50,000 on influencer campaigns every year. Instagram and Facebook are the platform chosen and brands find better reach and engagement, better storytelling and third-party content creation.

“Video content creators who have huge social media following are minting money as more and more brands reach out to them for creation of branded video content. Social Influencers also get better engagement on their Video Posts than on their static image posts,” Sanjay adds.

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