Four of the Hottest 2021 Social Media Trends!
Let’s start the year by covering all of the marketing trends that researchers say will most likely flourish in 2021. As the number of social media users grows every day, it’s more important than ever for brands to stay ahead of trends to keep up with the increasing competition. Based on experts’ analysis of the ever-evolving social media advertising tactics last year, here are some trending marketing opportunities you and your business should take advantage of this year.
1.) Short-Form Videos
New research shows that when it comes to your video marketing, less is more. According to a recent study by the video creation platform, Animoto, over 76% of small businesses have measured a marked result from the video content they’ve created. Fast and easily consumable content is becoming increasingly popular because these types of advertisements provide high engagement. Due to continuing safety concerns from the global pandemic, stay-at-home orders have influenced more and more people to create and post short-form video content.
Content platform apps such as TikTok have seen such great success in short content that other popular apps like Instagram and Facebook have made updates to provide the means to create specifically short video content on their platforms as well. The average social media user does not have the attention span to watch an advertisement for over 5 minutes, in fact, studies have shown that audiences respond most to videos that are 90 seconds or less. When it comes to social media advertising, snackable content is the sweet spot for getting the message across to your audience. However, when the message cannot be summed up in such a short time span, businesses have found it helpful to upload a teaser video (typically around 30 seconds to one minute) on their social platforms and then include a link to their Youtube channel for the actual long-form video.
2.) LIVE Videos for Business-to-Business Marketing
LIVE video streaming is the act of broadcasting a video in real-time, usually via webcam or mobile device, allowing businesses to directly interact with their audience. Although the LIVE feature is not a new trend, companies have recently started utilizing it for business matters instead of just advertising to clients. By hosting an interactive interview with your company’s experts and opinion leaders, live video streaming helps businesses converse and strategize instantaneously. Even the PR world is utilizing live video feed for virtual press conferences because they can answer questions in real time and it’s an easy capture for news sources to snag the live video content for reference.
In response to the demand, a variety of social media platforms have added this aspect, including LinkedIn which recently launched their live video feature that allows companies to answer frequently asked client questions, share company updates, and provide advice for their industry. They allow B2B companies the potential to reach over 600 million professionals with instant engagement. Live video streaming is an inexpensive means of educating and inspiring an existing audience and allows the opportunity to reach out to new people who may not know much about the brand.
This approach works so well that according to Livestream for Marketing, 80% of audiences would rather watch live video from a brand than read their blog posts and 73% of B2B companies using live video have reported positive results to their ROI. Social media managers can also monitor audience reactions in real time with the live comments that correspond with the live video feed. Businesses have been using the B2B live stream marketing tactic to share project updates, grow their audience, and present product features. Researchers have found that the best practices for B2B livestreaming have been to stream regularly, promote video streams in advance to increase audience numbers, and encourage users to save the live videos to their business profile in order to catch up on what they missed.
3.) Socially Conscious Related Content
Businesses have begun to include awareness about controversial social issues into their marketing strategy. Rather than staying silent (like in the past), brands are speaking up. Users like to form relationships with brands, and recent studies have shown they are more likely to stick with brands that take a stance on divisive issues. In this time of social unrest consumers want to see authenticity and companies are putting this into practice by investing in perspectives from outside experts to maintain the thoughtfulness and sincerity of their messaging. Regardless of the approach, companies should proceed with care when commenting on current events, especially when they involve polarizing topics. In this digital age, consumers can easily comb through a company’s messaging to check which brands are being hypocritical and which ones genuinely care. The past year has proven that inauthenticity drives away audience members. For example, Amazon released a seemingly heartfelt commercial thanking its “heroic” employees and described the company’s dedication to health and safety but received immediate backlash when consumers found out about the employee strikes over workplace safety concerns. Authenticity can easily dissolve into just lip service that businesses hope will make them look like a positive influence without actually having to do anything. To prevent this, marketing teams should use outside sources and collect target audience data to learn what they want to hear when discussing topics like global health and social injustice. When a mistake is made, do not underestimate the power of a sincere apology no matter how long ago the wrongdoing occurred.
4.) E-Commerce will Thrive
People are rethinking the way they shop, and due to broader market impacts, consumers are more likely than ever to make cost-effective purchases. As a result, they will rely more on peer reviews for products. Increasingly powerful social media apps such as Facebook and Instagram have turned to more explicit styles of a “Shop Now” user-interface which will take the consumer social media experience to a whole new level this year. It will become easier for brands to form relationships with social users and allow consumers to share products on the same channel(s) they converse. It’s very important for businesses to enable their ratings and review settings on their Facebook Business Page(s) to allow customers to express their thoughts on a business’ product or service. A study by Absolunet has shown that 87% of e-commerce shoppers believe social media helps them make a shopping decision. As word-of-mouth is the most effective tool for advertisement, potential new audience reach is more likely to increase when they’re able to examine peer insights. Brands need to focus on optimizing their digital experiences across these various e-commerce channel options in order to keep up with strong competition that have already developed a strong foothold in social media e-commerce advertising.
These are just a few of the 2021 social media trends to look out for— there’s plenty more but, we believe these take the cake! In summary, be sure to embrace and produce short form videos for you customers, go LIVE on your social feeds on a regular basis, take a genuine stance on a socially conscious related issue, and be sure your social platforms are setup for e-commerce success!