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#1 - Social's Growth Continues
#1 - Social's Growth Continues
Not wanting to be left out (as well as to capitalize on the SEO term “social media in
2020”), I’ve made a list of how social media will evolve in the coming years.
From the rise of social commerce to Gen Z stumbling into an office chair near you,
this post will tell you what social trends to expect and prepare for.
In this post, I’ll offer broad strokes. If you’d like a more comprehensive analysis of
social media trends, see my 2018 social trends report. In the report, I cover social
video, the state of peer-to-peer trust, ROI measurement, and key opportunities for
each major social platform.
In our analysis, we found that social media usage will continue to grow. 1 million
new people joined social networks every single day in 2017. And nearly a quarter
of a billion new users came online for the first time in 2017. This growth will
continue—and we’ll see interesting uses of social media come from Africa which
currently has the fastest growth rates, with the number of internet users across the
continent increasing by more than 20 percent year-over-year.
By 2020, we’ll see the increased dominance of Instagram, especially among older
demographics. “Instagram users are a lot older than people often imagine,” says
Simon Kemp. “There are more 45 to 54 year-olds using Instagram than there are
13 to 17 year olds.” As Hootsuite CEO Ryan Holmes predicts, Instagram will quickly
evolve over the next few years and become the new home for brands.
You can take a closer look at this data in Hootsuite's global report (in partnership
with We Are Social and Simon Kemp).
For online product research, search still leads the way. But social is catching up.
In fast-growth markets such as Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa, social
media dramatically beats search engines for product research.
By 2020, we’ll see search’s grip slip further on product research and social’s
influence grow, especially among mobile-first consumers and emerging markets.
Visual searches
Andrew Ng, the Chief Scientist at Baidu, predicts that at least 50% of searches by
2020 are going to be through images or speech.
Products like Pinterest Lens use machine learning to aid in brand and product
discovery. As Pinterest’s founder and CEO Ben Silbermann puts it, “a lot of the
future of search is going to be about pictures instead of keywords.”
Voice control
But as Simon Kemp also points out, the transformation that voice technology will
bring goes far beyond brands fighting for digital shelf-space on Amazon Echo.
Messaging apps
Chatbots will help consumers transition to social commerce, making it easy and
seamless to discover products, ask questions, process digital payments, and see
automatic updates on your order’s delivery date.
By 2020, the novelty of chatbots will be gone. But for purchases such as choosing a
smartphone package or planning a vacation, they’ll be delightfully helpful
shopping social companions.
It’s easy to see the growth potential of video. According to GlobalWebIndex’s latest
data on social video adoption, audience demand continues to grow.
As more mobile-first consumers in emerging markets come online, we’ll see even
more growth in this area. For countries with low literacy rates, video is a much
easier medium than text to learn about products and communicate online.
And with the rise of messaging—a medium where people type less and increasingly
use audio snippets, live video messages, and augmented reality filters—the
opportunity of social video has only begun.
But by 2020, marketers will face video saturation. As we found in our 2018 Social
Trends survey, 46 percent of respondents said they’re already implementing social
videos, with another 26 percent planning to implement in 2018. This means that
social video is quickly moving from being an algorithmic advantage to a table-
stakes tactic.
While most brands use social videos to boost traffic and reclaim a bit of organic
reach, the impact of social video will be broad. Here are a few areas to expect to
see radical transformation with social video content.
Social ecommerce
Nearly every consumer is primarily using a mobile device. And video is a much
easier medium for learning about products. Companies like MikMak are working to
figure out what native commerce experiences look like for “the social video
generation.”
With fun, short-form product videos, they help brands directly convert viewers on
social channels. Expect to see more companies shorten the path between
awareness videos and direct purchases on social platforms.
One-to-one communication
Whether chatting with an investment advisor or getting a sales agent to walk you
through cell phone plans, there’s a lot of opportunity for one-to-one videos
between businesses and consumers.
For example, teens are typing less in messaging apps and using videos and audio
snippets more. Over 100 million people use WhatsApp’s in-app video calling to
connect with friends and family. Over 200 million people use the video messaging
and augmented reality app Snow.
Marketers will need to adapt to these new highly personal uses of video. In other
words, social video will need to become social—an experience that builds a
customer community rather than broadcast-style content and product teasers.
Passive networking
Globally, online consumers spend one-third of their time on social media. But as
people spend more time on social, we’re seeing new behaviors emerge.
People are sharing less personal information on major networks. Instead, they’re
watching videos, killing time, and sharing things to connect with friends.
As GlobalWebIndex puts it in their latest social video report, “video positions social
media as the go-to destination for anything from music consumption to online
shopping and live sports broadcast and commentary.”
What to do to prepare:
Social videos can boost traffic. But chasing traffic and adapting to the whims of
social algorithms isn’t a winning strategy.
“Only two firms can monetize traffic at scale—Facebook and Google,” says Stern
School of Business professor Scott Galloway. “Everyone else needs to build a group
of loyal followers.”
If you’d like practical tips for using video in 2018, I analyzed the state of social
video in Hootsuite’s 2018 Social Trends report.
From micro businesses to major retailers, social’s role in ecommerce will grow. For
example, Instagram already allows businesses to build digital storefronts with
visual and video content.
As the analyst firm GlobalWebIndex predicts, “shopping via social channels may be
an APAC-based phenomenon for now, but a culmination of trends are laying the
groundwork for social commerce to gain traction in the West.”
Make sure your social video and social commerce strategy are working in lock-
step. Mobile-first shoppers look for fun, short-form product videos.
I also found this report by the consulting firm PWC to be valuable. It shows how
mobile-first consumers are using social across the complete customer journey in
China, a glimpse of the trends that will soon sweep Europe and North America.
By 2020, we’ll see the greatest impact on two areas: employer branding and the
rise of executives who understand—and know how to use—social to listen to
customers, communicate their vision, and rally employees.
It’s clear that the floodgates have opened. Employees are vocal. They have
immediate social reach. And employees can easily build—or pull down—an
employer’s brand. By 2020, large organizations will realize that employee
comments and perceptions on social will need to be managed similar to how
companies monitor customer complaints and feedback.
Key to this transformation will be the ability of CEOs and other leaders to use social
to communicate directly with employees. And by 2020, CEOs with tepid
professional adoption of social media will become more rare.
In this new world, leaders will also need to adapt their communication styles. Be
personal, unscripted, and direct. For example, Edelman’s study of consumer
trust found that 57 percent of global consumers were more likely to believe a
spontaneous speaker, versus 43 percent that would trust a speaker that sounded
scripted and rehearsed.
Hootsuite's CEO Ryan Holmes wrote a short primer for executives, teaching you
how to build an effective social leadership strategy.
In Edelman’s 2018 report, you can track the role that employees have in corporate
communications. You’ll also see global data on how CEOs can build more trust with
today’s social employees and vocal consumers.
Amazon has built the world’s largest digital storefront. They’ve also studied
billions of digital shopping behaviors. And now, they’re working to earn advertiser
dollars. Amazon’s key advantage is attribution.
“Amazon’s pitch,” explains the marketing magazine Digiday, “is that it can offer
advertisers a ‘total wallet’ perspective—connecting what people are searching for
with what they’re buying online—and with its increasing brick-and-mortar retail
presences, also what people buy in person.”
Organic social content will play a critical role, helping shoppers to evaluate
products, be inspired by curated product collections, and seek advice from like-
minded customers.
As the analyst Mary Meeker predicts, “Ads are becoming targeted storefronts. Ads,
content, products, transactions … the lines are blurring. The content is becoming
the store. The ad is becoming the transaction.”
Companies like Google, of course, will make sure this dream becomes real.
“In the long run, we’re evolving in computing from a ‘mobile-first’ to an ‘AI-first’
world,” says Sundar Pichai, CEO of Google.
Gartner has been bullish on their AI predictions. They estimate that by 2020, 30
percent of all B2B companies will employ artificial intelligence (AI) to augment at
least one of their primary sales processes.
So what does AI mean for the future of marketing? One of the best decks on AI I’ve
found comes from the analyst and general-smart human Simon Kemp. In
this fantastic deck workshop, you’ll learn how to adapt your marketing to a
machine-first world.
In broad strokes, algorithms already influence almost every aspect of our digital
lives including what content we read, what products we discover, and even who we
marry. The good news is that from chatbots to predictive analytics, many AI
innovations will help marketers increase their impact while eliminating tedious
tasks.
And while understanding how algorithms push our content or products higher in
social feeds, Simon Kemp reminds us to keep things simple. As he explains, “many
marketers think of algorithms as incomprehensible ‘black boxes’, but they’re
actually more predictable than the irrational behavior of human consumers. Treat
algorithms as just another ‘audience’ and many of your fears will dissipate.”
Take a look at Simon Kemp’s AI workshop. Also start exploring tools that use AI—
for example, MarketMuse uses AI to help build smarter SEO and content strategies.
Companies like Conversable make it easier for brands who use AI to create
automated experiences on messaging and voice channels.
I’ve also found a lot of value in Narrative Science’s Quill, an AI-based app that
turns data into written reports. You can sign up for their free version here. The free
app analyzes your Google Analytics data including custom segments. It’s a great
way to automate monthly KPI reports for leadership.
By 2020, Facebook predicts that more people are predicted to have mobile phones
than running water or electricity at home. An estimated 3 billion people will gain
access to mobile phones by 2020. For these consumers, mobile will be their only
way to get online. According to Facebook, more than one in four internet users
measured are already mobile only, with India (70 percent) and Indonesia (67
percent) leading the way.
Messaging apps will play a key role in this mobile-centric world, giving micro
businesses new ways to communicate with customers.
“Many emerging markets have leapfrogged past landlines and computers, building
their own mobile-centric universes,” says Facebook. “Among people surveyed who
are connected in Kenya, Nigeria and South Africa, fully 40 percent say they’ve been
able to generate additional income from being online.”
For example, Facebook found that consumers in India, Mexico and Thailand are
1.25 times more likely to say that the ability to message a business makes them
more likely to shop with that business. Kenyans surveyed are 1.57 times more
likely than the global average to use mobile payments.”
Social networks will also play critical roles in the financial lives of mobile-first
consumers.
For example, TransferWise allows users to send money internationally via Facebook
Messenger chatbots—the latest in a long line of social integrations. Almost two in
three messaging app users are currently using mobile banking services according
to GlobalWebIndex. And 63 percent of messaging app users are also using mobile
banking services.
I also analyzed the key social trends in the financial sector in our yearly report. You
can download that report here.
Brands know that mobile is the default experience. But according to research from
the analyst firm L2, few brands have moved beyond basic optimization. L2 found
that the average mobile checkout process is three pages long, giving users
(especially in lower literacy markets) lots of reasons to click away in frustration.
Only 14 percent of consumer brands offer single-page checkouts.
As eMarketer notes, marketers will also face stricter regulation and the market will
be filled with tech vendors in order to protect and store first-party data. We’re
already seeing the impact of regulation. Facebook, for example, will soon require
marketers to confirm they have user consent for Custom Audiences.
It’s the end of the wild west. Social platforms will be regulated. Governments and
consumers will look to better guard personal data. And rather than being
impressed by data journalism or clever personalization, tech companies will be
seen in a darker light by the public.
If you’ve never even thought of the implications of the General Data Protection
Regulation (GDPR), the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) in the UK has
released a 12-point guide.
If you love Trump, you’ll be happy in 2020 as I think he will win a second term. If
you aren’t a fan, consider moving to Canada. I’m already here. And there are a few
empty desks by me.
#11 – Gen Z are the future—unless we stop them
It’s too late to stop millennials. By 2020, they’ll by far be the largest cohort in the
workforce. “Millennials have officially overtaken Gen Xers as the most populous
generation in the US workforce,” reports Facebook and Deloitte. “By 2020, they will
make up half of the global workforce.”
I’m technically a millennial. So I’m not worried about millennials. And by 2020, the
avocado toast and snowflake jokes will be forgotten in some internet archives.
Instead, we’ll be in the middle of the new generational wave—the socially-wired
Gen Z.
But don’t worry—my nephew is a member of Gen Z. Can’t say enough nice things
about him.
What you can do to prepare: There is nothing you can do. They’re already among
us.
In the meantime, if you want to understand your future boss, here’s a report with a
few things to understand about the media’s new generational scapegoat. Hootsuite
has also compiled some helpful statistics about Gen Z.