Here are three more social media trends that you should follow to succeed in your business in 2020.
3. TikTok shakes up the status quo
TikTok was the app that is installed the most in Q1 of 2019 and became one of the most important social media trends in 2020. There are more than 800 million monthly active users who use this app for an average of 46 mins every day. In case that the length of TikTok videos is typically only 15 seconds, the amount of time above is astonishing.
The short and addictive videos on TikTok influence pop culture and digital content. People repost TikTok content on Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube and make it spread like wildfire. Artists are making their songs shorter and more memeable. And brands are rethinking about the way to connect with consumers.
Have a look at an example from Nike. This brand realized that just a few young women in Italy play sports. However, thousands of them were taking part in physical dance challenges on TikTok. It seemed like a great opportunity for them to get more young women joining in a sporting world.
So, Nike recruited three influencers on TikTok. They let them work in pairs with three athletes who introduced young women to three different types of sport; boxing, basketball, and soccer. The athletes and TikTok influencers worked together and created a dance based on each of these sports, then the influencers performed it on TikTok.
The influencers then make challenges for their followers to join in. More than 46,000 user-generated routines are responding to them.
TikTok is new but it plays an important role in the social media landscape. younger users are always attracted to new social networks. They seek online places where they can express their creativity without being bombarded by advertisements or controlled by their parents.
Will the hype last? – a million-dollar question that we should consider now. This quarterly basis saw a decrease in the growth of TikTok. As over 60% of people using its live in China, TikTok still needs to gain some serious global steam.
Instagram has released Reels – a feature has set its sights on TikTok. Reels let people make video clips to music in 15 seconds and share them as Stories on Instagram. The Reels feature helps users create the type of content that TikTok has made so popular without leaving Instagram.
Even though we are not sure about the future of TikTok, it will be a great mistake if we ignore it. Because 69% of TikTok users are in the age of 16-24, it can be a great way to reach a very specific demographic.
TikTok’s popularity is built on short video clips that feature real people doing fun, creative things. One of Seventeen magazine’s most popular TikTok influencers showcased the art of bullet journaling.
TikTok’s authenticity reflects the new social media trends in 2020 to follow instead of glossy, staged content. It’s clear Gen Z sticks is done with the “Instagram aesthetic.”
What you should do in 2020
- Keep an eye on TikTok—for now. If Gen Z is your target audience and a funny and playful tone works for your brand, you’re better to adopt some of the enjoyable and innovative energy of TikTok into your posts on established social platforms. If not, you should invest your time and resources elsewhere in 2020.
- Use new video formats to build community. Experiment with fun, authentic video on Instagram Stories, a place that you can engage a larger and more diverse audience. Or try the new feature on LinkedIn – online video. It helps brands deliver authentic video content to a more relevant audience.
- Experiment on other growing niche platforms. Think about diversifying your audience beyond the most improtant social platforms. There are now 322 million monthly active users on Pinterest all over the world. And advertisers can reach more than 650 million users on LinkedIn. As a result, brands can get outsized web traffic and engagement from smaller niche platforms.
4. Social marketing and performance marketing collide
For a long time, the most important reason for businesses to use social media is to improve their brand awareness. However, organic reach is shrinking. And businesses are finding a way to use social media trends in 2020 to deliver a measurable return on investment.
Enter social performance marketing means to achieve a specific conversion goal by using social ads. This goal could be a sale, a lead, or a click, rather than focusing on likes, comments or followers.
44% of senior marketers told that “driving conversions” was their first goal for social media in 2020. The second one is the development of brand awareness. However, to reach a successful business, they should take more than these two quick wins.
A long-term social media strategy is necessary to drive real growth. That strategy should define your brand and increase customer satisfaction.
Researchers Les Binet and Peter Field have found a formula for sustainably growing. It’s all about creating a balance between brand-building activities and “sales activations.”
- Brand-building activities: These efforts cast a wide net. They help your potential customers know who you are and what makes you the best choice for their needs.
- Sales activations: These are specific offers targeting top prospects. They’re designed to create a conversion right away.
The right balance between the two activities depends on who you are marketing to consumers or other businesses. Here’s the winning formula:
- B2C: 60% brand-building and 40% sales activations
- B2B: 54% brand-building and 46% sales activations
In the past, the specialists are in charge of handling social performance marketing. Now, some third-party tools like AdEspresso make it easy for anyone to create and optimize social ads.
Performance marketing is becoming a standard skill that every social marketer needs to know. There’s now less need for specialization in many businesses. By the end of 2020, around 40% of specialized mobile and social marketing jobs will be absorbed into generalist roles, or replaced by automation.
Michael Graham is a group of specialist estate agents in England which has 14 offices across this country. They managed their social media profiles from an outside agency. However, they wanted to make better coordination between their brand and performance marketing goals. So, they make a great decision to bring their social marketing strategy in-house.
They create an internal team to solve everything from content creation to campaign management.
Then they can track, refine, and manage both brand-building and sales activation posts. Moreover, they can ensure all content aligns with the same unified brand message.
In 2020, the most successful social marketers will keep in mind their long-term creative strategies while optimizing advertisements on the fly. They’ll work with data analyst teams to understand the influence of social on all of their channels.
What you should do in 2020
- Use a full-funnel approach to social advertising. Many social marketers make the same mistake with paid-social which is running only performance-driven advertisements. Paid social is also effective for developing brand awareness and moving customers along the path to purchasing.
- Unite search and social ad campaigns. Brand awareness efforts on social are wasted if you’re leading your audience right into the competition on Google. A strategic approach across both channels makes your digital ad campaigns work more effectively.
- Give your brand campaign time to perform. Paying too much attention on short-term metrics reduces the effectiveness of longer-running campaigns. Remember: Brand takes you a long time to build.
5. The social attribution gap closes
Social marketers have more data to access than ever before. Measuring the return on investment remains the biggest challenge.
There is no perfect method. But most successful marketers measure the influence of their work and elevate social media within their companies. Here are three traits of organizations that are succeeding in measuring ROI.
They unite social data with other data for a holistic view. The most confident marketers collect data at every stage of the social customer journey. Then, they analyze that information together with web data, digital analytics, and CRM systems.
They focus on omnichannel integration. Integrating customer engagement between social media and other digital and traditional channels increase confidence in social ROI. This goes for paid social as well. Social is not executed—or measured—in isolation.
They don’t reinvent the wheel when it comes to attribution. Effective organizations use several attribution models that have been checked in channels like search engine marketing, television, and outdoor advertising, then apply them to social. Respondents in our survey specifically singled out multi-touch and market mix modeling attribution.
It’s important to choose an attribution model that measures all activity coming from social.
For example, A women’s underwear brand, named ThirdLove, originally only tracked sales that came from clicks on their Facebook ads. That meant they missed sales that happened after people viewed their Facebook ad, but didn’t click through immediately.
Once they started tracking these sales, they realized they were seeing a 2x lower CPA with Facebook and a 4x lower CPA with Messenger.
What you should do in 2020
- Standardize UTM codes. Each social post should contain a special UTM tracking parameter. This help you analyze what content is achieving business objectives. Consistency is extremely essential if you’re syncing social data with web analytics and CRM data.
- Don’t get lost in attribution. No attribution model is perfect. Other metrics might work better for your organization. For example, Customer Lifetime Value can be an effective way to measure the value of social media and its trends based on the Cost of Acquiring a Customer.
- Invest in both skills and tools. Access to data and tools doesn’t solve the challenge of knowing what to measure and how to analyze it. To stay on top of the latest social media trends in 2020, this will be a year in which marketers focus on learning as much as execution.