By Aaron Lee
It’s the time of the year that everyone talks about their social media trends.
I can hardly believe we are here and 2015 is coming to an end.
This time last year, I got my New Year’s resolutions written and planned how to focus on the latest trends.
Instagram was one of my main focus for 2015. Luckily for me, it exploded this year and I was able to ride the wave.
I am excited I was given the opportunity to share what I think will be the hottest social media trends for next year.
Let’s dive right in!
Grab your cup of coffee and let’s discuss what brands should focus on in 2016.
Go Instagram
2016 will be another great year for Instagram.
Here are a couple of fun facts you should know:
- Fact 1: The platform has grown to more than 400 million users and they upload over 80 million photos daily.
- Fact 2: According to Simply Measured, 90 percent of the top 100 brands in the world already have a presence on Instagram, and 82 percent have posted in the last 30 days.
- Fact 3: According to Content Marketing Institute, only 29 percent of B2B businesses use Instagram as a content distribution platform.
Let’s just say businesses aren’t taking advantage of this platform enough.
My tip for them in 2016?
Don’t be late to the party!
It’s only matter of time before the noise increases and it will be harder to get people’s attention there.
I believe there’s a huge market for brands and businesses to take advantage of this platform. I’ll discuss how to do this in the third trend below.
Influencer Marketing / Influencer Outreach
Social media marketing continues to evolve this year and influencer marketing plays a significant role.
Companies who work with influencers have the advantage increasing their brand’s awareness across multiple like-minded communities.
Whether you love it or hate it, influencer marketing WORKS.
Daniel Wellington, arguably the timepiece industry’s hottest player, made big bets on influencer marketing in 2014 and 2015.
The company sold more than a million timepieces and took home a cool $70 million in 2014.
What about 2015? More than $200 million.
Clearly the bet paid off well.
They aren’t the only one. Frank Body will likely exceed more than $20 million in revenue this year thanks to their influencers.
It’s proven to work and this will continue to be a trend next year as well.
Show Marketing
I’ve always been a huge fan of what I call, show marketing.
What this means is, instead of posting a product to sell, you show people that product in real life.
You see, people don’t want to buy a product, they want to buy RESULTS. They want to buy how it can help them with their struggle.
The problem with companies is they are focusing so much on selling the product, they aren’t looking at how that product can solve a struggle.
For example, if you’re a fashion retailer, you shouldn’t just post clothes taken in the studios.
Instead, you should be taking it out and show people how they will look like in your clothes when they are out at the park, sitting in a coffee shop, having drinks at a party, etc.
Show marketing was huge this year thanks to platforms such as Instagram and it will only continue to grow next year.
We’ll see more brands and businesses adapt to this.
Long-form content
If blogging plays a huge role in your content marketing, then listen up.
Long form content is going to be very important. Mark Schaefer coined the term “content shock” where he mentioned the rise of content levels and our limited attention will create a content shock.
We are at a point where we no longer can process the amount of content available to use.
It’s just too much, and we’re too distracted.
We want to save time and the best way is through long-form content. This type of content can help consumers to save more time and not do so much research.
You know they say the second page of your Google search results means nothing right?
The more that brands or businesses can share in a single piece of content, the more loyal its readers will become.
Social Videos
Let’s discuss the elephant in the room here: According to Emarketer, adults in the U.S. are spending more than 5.5 hours daily on video content.
This has grown thanks to easy access to videos through mobile devices.
Social videos are exploding.
This year Facebook more than doubled its video views to more than eight billion daily. If I scroll through my newsfeed, I can see three out of 10 content are videos!
People are addicted to them. They are too entertaining not to share.
Even Snapchat is catching on with six billion daily video views on its platform.
The Social Media Trends, They Are
Those are my predictions for social media trends in 2016.
It’s time to get planning.
If I were you, I would focus on all five of these social media trends.
Better get into it while you can. I would hate to watch any of these social media trends go by and missing it completely.
What do you think are the social media trends for 2016?
image credits: Shutterstock, Daniel Wellington, Lululemon
