Where are social media headed in 2020?

Social media trends to watch out for

A social media marketing strategy is on the minds of many small business owners. And if it’s not in yours, it should be!

Major platforms like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram are fighting for market shares by adjusting their business models to balance delivering better shareholder returns with improving user experience.

As these platforms develop, the way you use them for your small business must also change.

Let’s look forward to some ways to promote your business on social media in 2020.

Facebook

More than 18 months later, the Federal Trade Commission officially ruled that Cambridge Analytica misled Facebook users. The company had collected the personal data of millions of Facebook profiles without people’s consent and then used it for political advertising purposes.

Although Cambridge Analytica went bankrupt shortly after the scandal, Facebook is still working hard to strengthen its data access processes and convince people to trust its new platform dedicated to news.

Facebook released Facebook News to a subset of people in the US. That means that while you’ll still see posts from family and friends in your main feed, Facebook News will publish content from a team of journalists (employed by Facebook).

This year, the company is also focusing on cryptocurrencies and setting up its Facebook Pay feature. This could mean that your small business could add platform selling to your account soon.

While the launch of Facebook Watch didn’t go quite as expected (only 140 million people watch the videos and shows daily, which sounds huge, but doesn’t compare to the 1.6 billion daily actives for the platform as a whole). Still, it looks like Facebook will make another go in 2020, so let’s see what that means for video marketing.

What do these changes mean for your social media marketing strategy?

We’ll have to wait and see. The more proprietary content the company creates, the more sellers can compete to stay visible.

Twitter

The company recently announced that it would stop running political ads and is updating its global privacy policy to give users more information about the data that advertisers may receive.

We’re also wondering what the company’s VP of design and research, Dantley Davis, meant by his recent announcement about a series of changes that could be coming to the platform as early as next year.

How will this affect the way you promote your business on social media?

You could have the ability to limit who retweets your tweet (which I don’t see as a feature entrepreneurs would use much, we love our retweets!) and the ability to tweet something to a specific group based on their interests.

Learn more about how to use Twitter hashtags.

LinkedIn

Since its launch in 2003, LinkedIn has become the world’s largest professional networking platform.

Microsoft acquired the platform for $26.2 billion in 2016, and with access to Microsoft resources, we’ve seen updated career insights and more targeted announcements.

We have also seen the return of LinkedIn groups.

A LinkedIn group allows your company to create a discussion forum related to your industry. This gives you the opportunity to start a special interest group of like-minded individuals specific to your product, service, and/or expertise.

Groups also provide great visibility for your business, as every member that is part of your group will have your logo on their profile. Group owners now also have the ability to post different types of media, such as images and videos, and push notifications allow for real-time conversations.

Executive Suite has more than 300,000 members and brings together executives with a web series, how-to tips and discussion forums.

What do LinkedIn Groups mean for your small business?

Hopefully a better way to foster a sense of community, find candidates for open positions, and gain brand visibility, to name a few.

instagram

You may remember that Instagram tested removing likes in several countries, including Australia, Japan, Italy, and Ireland. Likes haven’t gone away: In the US and Canada, you can still see like counts on your own photos and videos, but not on others’ posts.

So where did this come from? Instagram, which is owned by Facebook, has long dealt with people using hacks and workarounds. These mainly come from bots and unscrupulous companies that manipulate the app to make themselves or other users appear more popular than they actually are. So this is an attempt to make Instagram more authentic.

Instagram says, “We hope this test takes the pressure off how many likes a post will get, so you can focus on sharing the things you love.”

While many entrepreneurs and small businesses are good at this, influencers and video marketing agencies are not.

How can they show companies how popular they are? How will they show commitment?

But for the average small business owner who isn’t buying likes or messing with the system with bots, this could be a good thing.

If your social media marketing strategy includes engaging content and you’re happy to focus on comments and follower growth, you’ll be fine.

While IGTV got off to a slow start, it is now considered one of the biggest social media trends out there. After Instagram announced earlier this year that it would allow one-minute previews of IGTV videos in the main Instagram feed, users (and businesses) started to take notice.

Unlike your other Instagram videos, IGTV videos can be anywhere from 10 to 60 minutes long. This offers a great video marketing opportunity to do interviews, behind the scenes features and much more.

Since we can now add landscape oriented videos as well, I have been adding my Business Edge Show videos which have gotten a lot of traction.

These are just some of the changes you can expect to see on major platforms this year. I’m sure there will be many more as the year goes on as things are always changing!

To effectively promote your business on social media in 2020, it’s essential to not only understand social media trends, but also embrace them.

If you find it difficult to stay on top of social media, consider hiring an agency that can create strategies that are specific to your social media needs and goals so you can focus on building your business.

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