2016: What to Expect in Social Media

2015 was an interesting year in Social Media and I believe that this year will be even more exciting, looking at trends and talk at the Web Summit in Dublin. Gone are the days of:

“Should my business be on Social Media?” and even…

“How do I go viral (or get more followers, likes, views, traffic)?”

The questions that you really need to ask is:

“How do I make sure that Social Media helps my business objectives?”

This is what to expect in Social Media in 2016 and how to use it for your small business:

1. At least one Social Media site you haven’t heard of yet will make waves in 2016

Okay, this should not come as a big surprise to anyone. If you have spent two minutes on Social Media you’ll know that change is normal and predictable. But did you know that not only are we spending longer on Social Media, but we also use more accounts.

According to Global Web Index’s Social Report (Quarter 3 2015), globally typical internet users are now spending 1.77 hours/day on Social Networks. Digital consumers also have accounts on more than six networks and they’re actively using four. Younger consumers (16-24 years olds) tend to enter on the newest Social Media channels, but they will be active on more channels than older age groups. Mature markets where Social Media is established like the UK, USA and Sweden are further ahead of the average internet user for multi-networking. It’s hardly surprising that more Social Media sites will be launched.

New kids on the block become big players within a few years:

• Instagram reached 100 million users within two years and currently has over 400 million monthly active users. At the current rate of growth, Instagram should have 500 million monthly active users by mid-2016.
• Snapchat launched in September 2011 has 200 million active users (100 million use Snapchat on a daily basis!) 2016 looks like the year when SnapChat will really take off! Teenagers will have to find something new as their parents come aboard.
• Periscope is only a few months old and already has 10 million users.

What this means for your business:

Your customers are using multi-networks on a regular basis, you need to be where your customers are already. Your Social Media Strategy should cover multiple platforms. Do you know which channels your customers are using on a regular basis? Do you know how these differ from each other? Do you know what content/format works best on each site? If you have limited resources, where are the best places for you to spend your time this year? I am not suggesting that you have a knee-jerk reaction every time you hear of a new Social Media site (unless your target market is teenagers and then you need to be agile), but that you seriously consider adding to the number of platforms that you are active on this year. This will mean developing a Social Media Content Plan if you haven’t already.

2. Think Mobile First

In a world with more mobile phones than toothbrushes, and faster mobile broadband, smartphones have come of age. In 2014, the number of WhatsApp messages overtook the number of Text messages sent and the number of WhatsApp messages doubled in 2015. In the UK for the first time ever, more people accessed the internet via their smartphone than via a desktop in 2015. According to Ofcom’s The Communications Market Report August 2015, two-thirds of people in the UK now own a smartphone, using it for nearly two hours every day to browse the internet, access social media, bank and shop online. In fact, 34% of adults check their phone within 5 minutes of waking up.

According to Twitter, 80% of Twitter monthly active users access Twitter through a mobile device. According to Facebook, 47% of all it’s 1.51 billion monthly active users ONLY access Facebook through a mobile device.

Big trends have been:

• Growth in Messaging Apps – WhatsApp announced in 2015 that they now have 900 million accounts
• Facebook (in 2014), Twitter, LinkedIn and Instagram have upgraded their messaging offering. Tumblr has just added direct messaging as  feature
• Shopping Apps continue to rise around the world
• “Buy button” being introduced which make it easier for customers to buy within the App (Facebook, Twitter and Pinterest)

What it means for your business

Assume that people are going to access your website via a mobile site rather than a desktop. Is easy for them to navigate your website, make purchases, sign up or contact you, using a smartphone? Are you spending any of your advertising revenue on mobile ads yet?  The BIG question you need to be thinking is:

If someone is on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or Instagram, how easy is it for them to take the action that will help your business without  leaving the Social Media App?

3. Getting your customer’s attention will be even more competitive

A few years ago, simply having a Facebook Book business Page or a Twitter account was enough to get your business to stand out, but we have moved into a pay-to-play model. Brands have shown their willingness to pay for advertising which means that you either need to pay or you need to get very savvy about using Social Media effectively. Social Media advertising, when done properly is proving to be very effective for generating leads.

• More Businesses than ever are using Social Media. There are now 40 million active small business accounts on Facebook
• More content is being produced and shared than can ever be consumed. Facebook says that average person would be shown 1500 post each time they log in if they didn’t apply an algorithm.
• Organic Reach is down. The average reach of a Facebook Business Page post to people who have “Liked” the Page is now only about 6%. The vast majority of people who have Liked your Page will NOT see the content you post unless it is incredibly engaging or you pay to boost it. Twitter has started applying an algorithm too.
• Brands are planning to increase their marketing spend on Social Media Advertising. Social Media Ad spending is likely to grow from approximately $23 billion in 2015 (33.5% increase over 2014) to over $35 billion in 2017 according to Emarketer.

What this means for your business

You need to set aside a budget for Social Media ads, but there is no point in just spending money for the sake of it. Only 2 million of the 40 million small business accounts on Facebook are active advertisers. The good news is that Facebook will be rolling out live support for small businesses this year. Brands are going to have bigger budgets to spend, but most of them are still learning how to use Social Media ads. Small business can use their limited budget in a more effective way to get very good ROI for their investment.

• Start with focusing on your business objectives for using ads. (Clue: Likes, followers, reach and impressions are rarely business objectives whereas leads, clicks and conversions are better indicators for sales)
• Learn to advertise so that your ads look like native posts and you will only learn to do that by being an active user. Think like a consumer rather than a marketer first.
• Learn how to do very targeted advertising and how to remarket – or use a specialist who knows how to do it.
• Test, test and test. Luckily you can run test ad campaigns for as little as ￡3/day. Remember to make every penny count and you will only know what works by continuing to test and measure.

Be clever and creative about the content you share on a consistent basis. The more engagement and interaction on a piece of content the more likely your ideal customer will see it.

Remember: it is not about being popular it is about appealing to the right person who will buy from you.

Use tools that will make Social Media less labour intensive, so that you have the time to show up in person and interact on a human to human level.

4. Video is a priority

We have moved from predominantly text to image to video online. Millenials now watch more online video than television (11 hours vs. 8 hours/week). Video is increasingly watched on mobile devices.

In 2015

• Facebook had more video views than YouTube (Facebook’s autoplay may played a big part in these numbers) 8 billion videos are viewed daily on Facebook
• 6 billion videos are viewed daily on Snapchat
• 40 years (21 million minutes) of videos are viewed daily on Periscope
• 90% of Twitter videos are mobile

Main trends in video:

1. Increasing large amount of content produced and watched.
2. Growth in views on mobile devices
3. Live-streaming became big news in 2015

According to YouTube

• The number of hours people spend watching videos on YouTube has increased by 60%
• The number of people watching YouTube each day has increased by 40%
• Once users are on YouTube, they are spending more time per session watching videos. On mobile, the average viewing session is now more than 40 minutes.
• The number of hours people spent watching videos on mobile has doubled
• More than half of YouTube views come from mobile devices.

Live-streaming was big news in 2015 with the ability to broadcast to a large audience with just your smartphone. We saw the launch of Meerkat, followed shortly by Periscope (40 years or 21 million minutes of videos are viewed daily) Facebook Live and the relaunch of Blab. At the end of 2015, Facebook announced that Facebook Live was going to be rolled out to all its users! This is a game changer. It means that everyone with a smartphone will have, in effect, a television studio in their pocket and can reach a potentially large audience.

What it means for your business

You need to make producing videos for your business a priority. It’s not enough just to produce video for the sake of it. Video views are useless unless attached to a business objective. What do you want the viewer to do, know or feel once they have watched your videos?

The cost and ease of producing video has come down, but that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t be professional and think strategically about how to use video to market your business. You are competing against years worth of video being uploaded each day. It is worth getting professionally produced videos and blended them with any live-streaming you do.

If you are still scratching your head by the term “live-streaming” make sure you read these previous posts:

What is Live-Streaming

7 Ways to use Periscope for small business

5. The best place to publish content won’t be your website

Okay, there are very strong reasons to add fresh, relevant content to your blog/website, but if that is the only place that  you publish content there is a strong danger that the hours you spent creating the content (or money) will be wasted with only a handful of people reading your content. People are already spending hours on Social Media a day, each Social Media platform is trying to keep your attention.

Trends for publishing content directly onto Social Media

• LinkedIn Publisher was opened up to all English speaking LinkedIn member in 2014 and announced that over 1 million users were using LinkedIn Publisher to publish content in 2015. The one big advantage that LinkedIn offers bloggers is that the content is not Google indexed which means that you can crosspost content. (I have posted this on my blog as well as here)
• Facebook Notes have significantly been upgraded to look aesthetically pleasing. This improvement has just rolled out from Profiles to Business Pages in the last few weeks. Add in over a billion active monthly users, Facebook’s improved search within its site and the low reach it gives for external links (i.e. links back to your own website) into the mix and you will see the benefit of publishing directly onto Facebook.
• Twitter has announced its intention to expand 10,000 characters to Tweets which will be searchable. I believe that this is a move to keep Twitter users on Twitter for longer rather than clicking on links to websites. Add to this that they announced they are using an algorithm to help people find relevant content. I suspect that the extended Tweets will be largely text-based.
• Medium, which is a platform that is a hybrid of blogging/publishing/social, is likely to be even more popular in 2016

What this means for your Business

Your content marketing strategy needs to include publishing on other places than your blog. I recommend you use:

• LinkedIn for articles that show thought leadership and your expertise in your field. Longer posts tend to be shared more than shorter posts.
• Facebook when you have a story that lends itself to be shown visually.
• Twitter when you want to respond quickly to a topic that’s in the news.

My Prediction for 2016

There are so many predictions I could make for 2016, but if I am going to make one big prediction:

I believe that in 2016 we will see Virtual Reality being launched on Social Media.

Listening to Facebook’s talk at the Web Summit in Dublin in November about how they are exploring Virtual Reality, I think Facebook’s announcement in December that they are rolling out live-streaming to all its users is a strong indicator that Virtual Reality will be coming very soon!

Here are my thoughts about Social Media in 2016 on Business Connections Live:

Let me know what you think we can expect this year by leaving a comment.

********************************************************************About Nicky Kriel:

Nicky Kriel is a Social Media Strategist, Trainer and Author. She helps business owners, solopreneurs and start-ups to increase their online visibility, find leads and increase sales through Social Media. She is a co-founder of Social Media Accelerator Club.