5 Social Media Trends to Watch in 2019

The days of treating social media like an afterthought are long gone. With increased development and release of new business tools, it’s essential for business owners and marketers to find efficient ways to leverage their social channels. Today, we’re diving into some of the biggest social media trends for the new year; some are already making waves, others are growing steadily, and some will continue to flourish. Here are some of the top social media trends to keep an eye on in 2019:

1. Rebuilding trust with personal branding
Social media giants saw their fair share of challenges last year. The Cambridge Analytica scandal and hearings that followed rocked Facebook. Twitter dealt with their own bot controversy, which led to the deletion of millions of fake accounts. And these instances left social users with a lot of questions when it came to security and transparency. Trust has shifted from brands and influencers, back to inner circles of friends and family.

To recover from the controversy, businesses need to invest time in creating genuine connections with their consumers. These connections feel more personal, more relatable, and they go a long way to strengthening trust. In fact, 63% of consumers will buy from a company they consider to be authentic, over competitors. Throughout the year businesses would be wise to focus on their leaders, employee advocates, personal expertise, and even connecting through online discussions and social chats to highlight their personality and in turn, earn loyalty.

2. Instagram Stories become more valuable for businesses
Instagram Stories can no longer be ignored. Not only is the feature growing at a rate 15 times faster than feed-based sharing, it’s actually expected to become the primary way users share with their friends over the course of the next year. Much like personal accounts, Stories are a unique way for businesses to provide their followers with regular, engaging updates.

For those uncertain about how to best use Instagram Stories – experiment! Creating specialty content for the feature, utilizing the Highlights function, consulting with creatives, creating custom GIFs – the options are endless. Stories are a great way to show off a business’ culture to others, so brands shouldn’t be afraid to go behind-the-scenes and show who they really are.

3. Dark social continues to rise
For those unfamiliar with dark social, it’s time to take note. Dark social refers to private social interactions made through messenger apps, email, and secure browsing and 84% of social sharing is taking place via these channels. Messenger apps are particularly noteworthy as they continue to grow in popularity, with the top apps accounting for nearly 5 billion monthly active users.

Since the information exchanged through these channels is private, it’s much more difficult for business and marketers to track. However, instead of invalidating social sharing metrics, dark social challenges brands to evolve and measure their success in new ways.

4. Pay-to-play for more exposure
In recent years organic reach has been on the decline, social ad budgets have been increasing, and marketers have been adapting to the inevitable: social media has made the shift to pay-to-play. Currently, 1 in 4 Facebook Pages use paid media and Facebook accounts for 23% of U.S. digital ad spending. In 2019, Facebook alone is projected to account for 11.3% of all U.S. ad spending. And again – that’s just Facebook.

For social media advertising to be effective in the year ahead brands must understand their goals, as well as their audience. Investing in high quality content is obvious, but organic content shouldn’t be left out in the cold. If organic content unexpectedly resonates with an audience, it should be analyzed and repurposed. In fact, as the year goes on brands should constantly be analyzing social media campaigns to make informed decisions about future strategy and improve performance going forward.

5. Social listening offers competitive edge
Social listening is more than responding to comments and messages on social media, it involves tracking conversations around your brand. In order to listen effectively, businesses must step outside their social media bubble and tune in to untagged brand posts, industry keywords and discussions, and even their competitors’ digital presence.

In doing so, businesses can identify patterns and data that can be used to develop a more cohesive competitive social strategy. This allows businesses to optimize their social media content for lead generation, as well as social selling.

At Business House we specialize in data-driven digital marketing solutions. If you’re interested in learning more about social media or our other digital services, contact us for a free consultation today.