Forget the influencer and make the shift to more authentic engagement.
For social media’s biggest players, 2018 represented a trying year. Simmering issues with privacy and data integrity came to a boil at Facebook, with effects felt at the highest levels of government. Networks in the crosshairs of Congressional investigations have had to reckon with their own power and potential for abuse, while users have been left to question the larger impact of social media on politics, culture and civic discourse.
What does this mean for 2019? How will users and networks respond to these seismic shifts? How will the way companies use social media evolve in light of changing attitudes on privacy and meaningful connection? In our annual Social Trends Report, Hootsuite surveyed more than 3,000 businesses, from small agencies to huge enterprises, to see how they plan to adapt in 2019. Here are some of the most salient findings and a look into the crystal ball on what the year ahead holds.
Real is back
Waves of scandal have had a tangible impact on faith in social networks. According to Edelman’s 2018 Trust Barometer Report, 60 per cent of people no longer trust social media companies. Against a backdrop of “fake news” and data manipulation, users have grown distrustful of influencers — both celebrities and media personalities. In a major reversal, trust has reverted back to immediate friends, family and close acquaintances on social media, individuals whose personal credibility speaks far more than the size of their followings.
For businesses on social media, this presents a delicate challenge in 2019. Using social media as just another ad channel — filled with flashy clickbait and promo codes — feels increasingly out of step with societal norms and user preferences. Instead, progressive companies will focus less on maximizing reach in 2019 and more on generating transparent and meaningful engagement. Fifty per cent of respondents to our survey agreed that personalizing social content will be a key challenge. Brands such as Adidas and The New York Times exemplify this emerging ethos. They’re creating focused communities and sharing insightful, relevant content, then allowing passionate users to connect with one another.
Stories that disappear
This shift to more personal ways of engaging on social media is echoed in the type of content being shared. Instead of posting on their news feeds, users are increasingly sharing Stories with their network. In contrast to standard updates, these ephemeral slideshows generally disappear after a day, and they’re growing 15 times faster than feed-based sharing, with more than a billion users of Stories across Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp and Snapchat. Facebook’s own chief product officer, Chris Cox, has noted that Stories stand to surpass feeds as the primary way people share things with their friends within the next year.
In 2019, companies seeking to stay relevant on social media will need to up their Stories game. Two-thirds of respondents to our survey have either implemented Instagram Stories or plan to this year. This means rethinking social updates as less of a static block of text and more of an intimate, often raw, multimedia glimpse behind the scenes. Integrating video, simple graphics and a narrative arc is key, but it’s important not to lose sight of authenticity. Pioneers such as the Guardian in the U.K. have figured out that less polished and more realistic Stories generate the highest engagement. What’s clear is that, especially for Millennial and Gen Z users, Stories are second nature, and the news feed may be ceding its throne.
LinkedIn comes into its own
While scandal and controversy have rocked other networks, one channel — LinkedIn — has quietly trucked along in the background. The buttoned-down business network passed the 500 million member threshold in 2018. A content powerhouse, LinkedIn now publishes more than 100,000 articles a week on its blogging platform. Beefed up groups for functionality, native video and a new API for integrations with third-party apps all show that, these days, the network is far from just a place to warehouse your resume. At a time when other feeds are increasingly filled with toxic rants and viral memes, LinkedIn’s no-nonsense professionalism has a stronger appeal than ever.
Companies who succeed in social media in 2019 will find creative ways to leverage LinkedIn’s unique place in the social universe — at the intersection of the personal and the professional. A natural choice for B2B marketing, LinkedIn is also, increasingly, a channel to reach affluent consumers. Of its half-billion members, 44 per cent earn more than US$75,000 and more than half boast a college degree. Meanwhile, in a record tight labour market, in which recruitment is an existential challenge for many businesses, the network also offers an ideal platform to showcase employer brand, i.e. a company’s culture and reputation as a place to work. Case in point: Our LinkedIn blog post on how much we value our sales team and how hard it is to find great tech salespeople led to more than 1,000 visits to our career page and 100-plus applications.
At a time when other feeds are increasingly filled with toxic rants and viral memes, LinkedIn’s no-nonsense professionalism has a stronger appeal than ever.
Group think
The Facebook Group isn’t a new innovation. Spaces for people to gather and discuss specific subjects — from pets and hobbies to celebrities — date to the platform’s earliest days. But, the renewed interest in privacy and intimacy among users means Groups are suddenly having their moment. In the past year, Facebook Group membership is up 40 per cent, with 1.4 billion people now using Groups every month. Indeed, well before the Cambridge Analytica privacy issue reached its crescendo, the platform had recalibrated its algorithms to prioritize engagement with friends, family and Groups, while downranking public content shared by businesses, brands and media.
In 2019, succeeding on social means finding ways to tap into resurgent interest in Groups and users’ desire to have a safe enclave for discussion on otherwise unruly social platforms. And, here, exclusivity can help. Brands such as Condé Nast have had extraordinary success with carefully focused “Closed Groups,” where users have to seek permission from an admin before viewing or posting content. For instance, the publisher’s Women Who Travel Closed Facebook Group counts more than 50,000 members, three-quarters of whom are active on a daily basis. Scaling Groups without losing intimacy is not without its challenges: active moderation and restraint when it comes to overt sales pitches are keys. But companies that tap into shifting user tastes and shifting network algorithms stand to see big gains this year.
Personal messaging eats the world
Another manifestation of the inward turn among social users: the ascent of messaging platforms. Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp (both owned by Facebook) now count more than 2.8 billion users between them. Add in popular Chinese platforms such as WeChat and QQ, and most of the planet is now on messaging apps. Rather than sharing openly on social networks, these users are opting to engage in private or small group conversations. For companies, this raises new challenges in 2019. As eyeballs shift to private feeds, are messaging channels the next hot platform for reaching customers? Or will users resent the intrusion into “their space”?
While the verdict remains out, one area in which there’s clear demand for more messaging is customer service. Nine of 10 consumers want to use messaging to communicate with businesses, though fewer than half of businesses responding to our survey have implemented messaging apps. AI-powered messaging bots represent a tempting option for bridging that gap, but they’re hardly a panacea — an estimated 70 per cent of Facebook bot interactions fail and require human intervention. Scaling without losing the human touch, always easier said than done, will be key. Makeup company Sephora offers a model for how to do this right in 2019, deploying an army of chatbots to help with tutorials and product suggestions but having real humans on call when a customer requires more help.