The Biggest Social Media Trends for 2020

Are you planning your 2020 marketing? These are the biggest social media trends you need to know about for 2020, according to Convince & Convert’s social media consulting team.

Social Media Will Return to its Roots

Social media is returning to its roots — away from a mass-marketing vehicle, and back toward a personal, communication-driven approach. This was predicted four years ago by Snapchat founder Evan Spiegel. At the time, everyone thought he was bonkers and was only making the prediction because “phonebook-style” interaction is what Snapchat is all about. To a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right? But he was on the money. Increasingly, social media is about these components: paid ads, customer service and expiring, intimate “stories”

“Dark Social” Interactions Will Continue to Grow

There will be fewer public interactions and more private interactions on Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram DMs, and more. What is dark social? This post explains.

-Jay Baer

Influencer Marketing Must Be Authentic and Real

While influencers can still be wildly effective for brands to reach new audiences and create new content for brands, it’s the authenticity of that partnership that will be key. Audiences see through forced partnerships, and they know when they’re being sold to—and they’re tired of both. Just because a brand attaches a social celebrity or someone with a large following does not mean it will be an instant win.

In fact, Bazaarvoice reported that 47% of customers are tired of inauthentic influencer content, and 62% of customers believe that influencer endorsements take advantage of impressionable audiences.

47% of customers are tired of inauthentic influencer content. Click To Tweet

Brands Will Need a Human Voice

With so many competing messages and decisions to make each day for your brand it’s easy to lose track of your voice and what makes your audience love you in the first place. Going back to basics and being human in your posts can not only make your audience happy but your decisions on publishing that much easier as well.

Recently, Social Media Examiner shared the best ways to humanize your Instagram business account, including this example from Netflix:

Remember, you “don’t need to be formal to be professional.”

Social Media Will Become Part of Everyone’s Job

Social media has been a core part of business for more than a decade. Long gone are the days where “playing on that Facebook thing” is only supposed to happen on lunch breaks. In today’s world, business is consistently done because of and with social media. Like other disruptive technologies, social media has moved out of the novelty era and into a time where social media proficiency is required as part of everyone’s job. Your employees are your greatest social media assets. In fact, 45% of consumers are more likely to research a product or service when a brand’s employees post about that product or service.

Social media skill sets go beyond marketing and communications roles. They are less frequently required, but especially needed, in customer service, HR, sales and research. Even in roles without direct ties to content, messaging, design, lead gen, sales, or service, we’re still asking employees to be good at social media to power our internal advocacy efforts. Employee advocacy programs continue to be a top trend, because their success to humanize a brand and amplify storytelling is undeniable at scale. Businesses must provide guidelines and resources for their employees to master social media skills, as this technology is more akin to email than VR in today’s business world.

User Backlash Will Grow

“The trend I’m anticipating and watching closely for in 2020 is user backlash that stems from the 2020 political environment. Political warfare continues to play out in our social media newsfeeds, amongst cat memes, sports highlights and family photos. Americans are in the throws of a presidential impeachment inquiry and a presidential election. Brexit’s rocky conclusion will certainly carry over into the coming year. Disinformation tactics and election interference are being tested world-wide in preparation. The US government has opened a national security review on TikTok, owned by Chinese company.

Tech executives will be forced to act in response, and likely will not agree upon a common solution. We’ve already seen Jack Dorsey signal a move towards eliminating most political advertising on Twitter (even though political spending makes up a small percentage of Twitter’s advertising income).

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We’ve made the decision to stop all political advertising on Twitter globally. We believe political message reach should be earned, not bought. Why? A few reasons…🧵

— jack 🌍🌏🌎 (@jack) October 30, 2019

But more than what the executives do, I’m interested to watch how Americans of all ages respond to the political climate as it plays out in social media. No matter where they spend their social networking time today, audiences’ consumption habits and platforms of choice will almost certainly change within the next year. That will affect the decisions of marketers chasing an intended audience from one social media platform to another. It will force marketers and community managers to dive further into the spaces of dark social (Messenger, WhatsApp, Groups) where audiences surely will take refuge. ”

-Lauren Teague

To Advance Your Social Media Marketing, You Will Need to Define Your Social Media Maturity

B2C marketers can’t get more from their social marketing investments without first understanding where they are now in their overall social media maturity.

Check out this report from Forrester to learn about the competencies that affect a brand’s social media maturity, how to assess your own maturity stage, and what next steps to take to advance your approach.

Social Will Continue to Dominate B2B Content Marketing

In 2019, social media was the top organic distribution channel for B2B content marketing and the top paid distribution channel for B2B content marketing. This trend shows no signs of subsiding, and marketers will need to continue to invest in social media for content marketing. Moreover, it’s vital for marketers to treat their strategies on each social media channel as distinct and specific to the needs of their unique audiences, since social content is absolutely not one-size-fits-all.