Most of the people spend a lot of time a day on various social media platforms. Social media platforms have become the main part of people’s lives and their daily routines. Some people are so addicted that they log in using their app on the mobile device to check with the various social media feeds. Hence, social media is indeed important in the lives of customers, businesses, marketers, etc. It helps them to connect with their target customers to meet their objectives. But the competition is on the rise and there is a content overload on various social media platforms. Your business can stand out only if you possess a solid social media marketing strategy. Hence, for any business, they need to be efficient on the current social media trends that can help them to improve their strategy and ensure that you are ahead with the competitors. 

Social media trends never remain the same and change every year. That is, in fact, social nature. Currently, businesses are geared up with finding the right balance between analyzing social data and to find the right and new techniques for customer engagement. 

Latest Social Media Trends

Hence, you need to be updated on the latest social media trends, here are few that would help you to be updated on the social media platform.

1. Brief Content

One of the best social media trends is to maintain brief content and vanish later. Snapchat stories and Instagram are an ideal example of this content type. These days, people have a shorter attention span and the way they look at content. Hence, many new content formats like stories, videos have become quite popular these days. These content formats are short, addictive, and engaging in a way that people can spend many hours to scroll from one story to another. This social media trend is obvious by the extensive increase in the daily users of the Instagram stories as shown in the following graph.

Social media marketers have seen an increase in this social media trend and would continue to focus on it to its advantage. Most of the social media marketers have already incorporated this social media trend into their marketing strategy.

2. Niche Social Platform Performs Well

The top and dominated social media trends have seen an increase in the Facebook and Instagram platforms. These two social media platforms are on the rise and are the largest and popular platform. But, in recent years, there has seen a significant rise in the other niche social media platforms as well. It came into existence and has seen a significant increase in its growth and has become famous as well. One such example is the TikTok. This platform has started during the year 2016 and has instantly gained a lot of popularity among the youngsters. Most of the B2B companies favor LinkedIn for their initiatives with social media. There are many social media platforms that keep popping up very often and it gains popularity as well. The various social media trends would continue during the current year 2021 and beyond. 

3. Remove The Like Feature

One of the largest social media platforms is Instagram. This platform has many changes implemented and can shape the social media trends. One major change that this platform introduced is the possibility to remove the like features for its posts. Instagram has tested this social media new trend in a beta test and is likely to apply this change at the global level. The logic that Instagram makes use is that likes would regulate a person’s social value and while they wait for validation, it would impact their mental health as well. But many people think that this is done for revenue, while a brand pays a good amount of money to influencers for their product promotion. This revenue does not go to Instagram. However, influencer marketing has become so popular that many brands are moving out from traditional marketing techniques like advertising. When Instagram eliminates likes, then the brands would not be able to measure the campaign’s direct impact. This would motivate some brands to make their investment in Instagram ads as it would easily track the ROI for that. A situation when Instagram eliminates the like option and gets more marketers to move their ad features could be the latest social media trends. This would not impact the influencers but would only inspire other social networks to make such initiatives. 

4. Expand Social Media Commerce

Various social media platforms like Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook have been used by many brands to sell their products. Social commerce has become a new platform for brands and this trend would get stronger. Social commerce is on its way to becoming the main channel for retail on other mediums like online stores and websites. This trend would increase further and many social networks would introduce pro-selling features like shopping posts. Retail platforms see a rise from shoppable posts to Instagram storefronts.

5. Video Content

The most important engaging content forms are the video content and would soon control social media. This is the latest social media trend and would be the main content type. It could be in the form of YouTube content, TikTok, or stories, videos would be the main social media content. As per a recent study by Cisco, it was predicted that by the year 2022, 82% of all online content would have been video content. This indicates how important it is to start to utilize the video content to stay on par with social media new trends. In case you are not creating videos for your social media platform, it is required that you do include it as part of your content strategy. Soon, videos would dominate the show of content on social media, and who does have would face a tough time. You can start off using features like Stories for advertisements and social media content as well. You can also include videos to your social media posts, on the platform that earlier had text and image content. 

6. Advanced And Dynamic Social Ads

Brands invest in social ads for various reasons.  This is yet another social media trend. Consumers are comfortable with online shopping and with the fact that advertisements are becoming more advanced, it becomes easier than ever for all the brands to inspire direct business from the customers on the social media platform. For example, the recent introduction of personalized ads by Facebook provides products directly to the customers, format change, and calls-to-action that is the basis on whom it is being served. Also, the recent Instagram’s introduction of shopping has also increased the direct social selling growth. The Instagram platform basically represents another e-commerce form and many of the retail brands look forward to selling on the Instagram platform without funneling followers to a link. The main takeaway here is that the brands need to hesitate to sell through ads. There are many options to get more targeted audiences across all social media platforms.

7. Integrate Audience To Your Content Strategy

Yet another social media trend is to integrate your audience to the content that is posted. Most of the marketers feel that the user-generated content would be at the top of the social media trends. This is true as this would require each brand to create original content and connect with their respective audience through customer-centric content. This would increase brand relationship and would get a content stream from your followers. Many of the current customers prefer to hear from the brands as to what needs to be posted. Encourage user-generated content and include many customers’ photos. This is a good way to engage the customers and would also provide you with social proof. While there are so many competitors around for each brand, anything that your brand does to generate customer-centric content would have a huge impact on your business.

8. Analyze The Social Platform That Is Ideal For You

The most common talk amongst the social media trends is the need to reflect and reevaluate. As all the top social media platforms are active and see many active users daily, your brand should think about it and find out the suitable platform to spend their time on post and advertisement. So, find out the platforms that have most of your target audience and focus more on that platform. For example, the LinkedIn platform sees more growth for B2B marketers. Snapchat basically saw an overall increase in its daily active users during the year 2019 and the formation of TikTok. In the meantime, Pinterest is seeing more revenue for customer brands against other social media platforms. So, it is important that you understand the way you spend your time on the social media platform and whether you are paying off for it. For example, is it possible to point to the ROI of your presence on Facebook or Instagram? Here, you need to check with the social media metrics. Make use of the metrics for your analysis.  Analyze as where your brand can shine at the best, whether through the long content form on the LinkedIn platform or as a video content on a heavy platform.

9. Story Content

One of the main social media trends is the stories for the past couple of years and for 2021 as well. The great use of Instagram stories shows the importance of having a story content. Also, Facebook stories are also on par with the engagement and see almost 500 million users per day. As it is highlighted on the Instagram trends, interactive stories and including polls are an ideal way of interaction with the audience and where your content would feel more in a viewable format.

10. Influencers

Ever seeing a constant rise in influencer marketing is indeed one of the latest social media trends. It is an original method to advertise products and is properly documented. And with the growing influencers during the year 2021, brands keep an eye on the influencers and increase their relationship with them using a sense of scrutiny. Sometimes there is an increase in the fake influencers and the potential focus on likes as part of the engagement metric signals. The need for influencers is on the rise and can back up with their price tags along with the required data. The influencer space focuses on the close-knit communities and there are many brands that keep connecting with nano influencers who represent accounts with only a few followers. The basic concept is that when there are small audiences they are more meaningful and engaged against an influencer who is just behind the likes of the host and the brand would deal for the sake of it. Marketers who look to increase relationships with various influencers should continue to do so. You just need to be aware of what your influencer would bring to you and whether those audiences are relevant to your brand and make sense for your business.

11. Private Communities

Brands would prefer to reach as many customers as possible and due to this, the marketing group feels it ideal to speak to the individuals instead of speaking to widespread people. Also, we are seeing many brands lookout to reach young customers. Moreover, brands are more interested to give an immediate response to their customers and speak to them with their language using a different brand voice. Also, the privacy and community concept are impacting the modern consumer’s approach towards social media. Even though people are satisfied to engage with their brand’s consumers are becoming choosier about their interaction with the brand. For example, new features like Instagram Threads permit people to share their stories only with a few groups of people. This would provide the platform a more close and friendly approach. In the meantime, Facebook Group Marketing is an ideal and valuable method to market to small and private groups as the Facebook organic reach is flat for most of the brands.

Conclusion

Social media keeps changing and these social media trends would help you to build a strong social media presence for your business. These social media new trends would help you to find out what is working and what is not. What are the various things that you could explore?