What to expect from social networks in 2020?

This 2020 begins by continuing and reinforcing many of the trends that we were already seeing in 2019. Given the dynamism of the digital industry, we will surely have continuous news throughout the year, but knowing what to expect from social networks in 2020 allows a better planning to start this year.

If in the past year and the previous one you carried out actions on social networks that did not necessarily give the expected result, then the first thing to understand is that you cannot continue doing the same thing and expect different results. It is probably useful to know some of the trends that we can expect from social networks in 2020 and adjust your strategy to them, so before jumping to do more and more on networks, it may be interesting to read this summary.

What to expect from Facebook and Instagram in 2020?

1. Posting stories that last a day and are erased is one of the most successful content items on both Facebook and Instagram. In fact, Facebook reports 1 billion stories published daily. Has your brand used the “stories”? Their importance is that they provide a fast flow of news that anyone can consume in a few seconds in a graphic or video format, making them very friendly to smartphones where people prefer to see graphics or videos than read text. The stories have the advantage that they do not demand many storage resources from Facebook because it deletes them after 24 hours, so it can be expected that Facebook will continue to promote them and therefore they must already be part of the portfolio of elements that brands must use in social networks. They are especially useful in launches, in events,
2. Live broadcasts on Facebook are also something that has already been on the list of the most effective digital marketing tactics for many months. We know that Facebook wants to contend with live television and that Zuckerberg has this as a personal obsession so much work has been done to bring Facebook Live functionality into the hands of anyone who wants to post a live video to their audience. This is why we can expect that the posts based on a Facebook Live will continue to be the ones that receive the most relevance from Facebook.

In Facebook’s annual report, they detail 100 million videos streamed live daily. And a proof that Facebook’s algorithm treats live videos in a special way is that the engagement achieved with a live video is 178% higher than that obtained with a normal post.

But perhaps, when reading this, frustration overwhelms you because you could identify yourself with obstacles for which people and companies do not publish Lives yet: the main one is for fear of the camera and the fear that it will not go well because transmitting video Live has its tricks. But in reality it is one of those things that is not known until it is done and the interesting thing is that, if it goes wrong, it can always be deleted and removed from the feed after it is recorded. So be scared and consider Facebook Live in this year’s strategy.

3. More use of video.- Here we refer to the recorded or animated video that is then uploaded to Facebook or Instagram. Again, a video is always more attractive than a text post with a static image. And Facebook statistics report that videos allow 135% greater reach than posts with static images. In 2020 we can expect that videos will continue to generate greater reach than publications with static images, so every content strategy must include video. Remembering that on Facebook and Instagram the video must be short format, no more than 2 minutes, and that if you have a topic that requires a longer video, it should be uploaded to YouTube where the audience does consume more format videos long. The viewing time of a video must be at least 1 minute for the algorithm to be relevant in the News Feed.

The videos that people look for or the videos that, having been seen, people fly to watch, will have more relevance than other less popular videos.

4. More use of Messenger and chatbots .- Messenger is the most used instant messaging platform in the world, in fact, in the USA it has 4 times more users than WhatsApp (which in fact is also owned by Facebook). Messenger is natively linked to Facebook pages which makes it an excellent communication, support and promotion tool and we can expect Messenger to grow further in credibility in 2020. However, Messenger is of little use if when the prospect or visitor send a message, there is no one to reply. Visitors and customers expect and demand immediate responses and for this, the perfect and obligatory companion of a Messenger strategy is the Chatbot.

A chabot offers immediate and precise answers to those who connect with the brand. Facebook reports that 2019 closed with an average of 100,000 active chatbots per month and the number is growing rapidly. So something to expect in 2020 is increased use of Messenger accompanied by a chabot that can give quick answers to frequently asked questions. If you want to review a little more on the topic of chatbots, we suggest you read this other note that we recently published and that is called ” Chatbot in Facebook Messenger a community manager that never rests “.

5. More advertising investment . – We have spoken in many of our notes that the organic reach of Facebook has continued to decrease and it is increasingly difficult to build a marketing strategy based solely on the organic reach of published content. The latest figures reported in 2010 spoke of ranges that can range from 1% to 6%, which is ridiculously low, especially when time, talent and money are invested in developing a good content grid. This means that if a brand wants to have a significant reach and reach its target audience, it necessarily needs to invest in advertising on Facebook and Instagram and, for that matter, on LinkedIn alike.

This has already been happening in the past years and in 2019, but by 2020 it is expected to increase even more, so something to expect from these networks is less organic scope and the need to accompany the strategy with an advertising budget.

6. Better results when there is interaction . – We can forcefully expect that the trend for Facebook for 2020 will be to give greater relevance to content and profiles that show more interaction and meaningful conversations. This challenges the creativity of marketers, since publishing about products and services certainly does not generate interaction, it is required that the topic be related to the interests of the audience and that, as far as possible, generate reaction, controversy, affinity, questions , etc. Also, interactions with Facebook Live posts will carry more weight.

7. Groups . – It is known that, since the first changes to the Facebook algorithm in 2019, it was intended that people see less content from business pages and more content from friends and family, however, a format where people are also exposed to more content and that will continue to be popular, are the groups. The groups have been representing one of the important strategies of Facebook and it is expected to continue in 2020. A group allows reaching a very select and focused audience, the challenge is to form the group and achieve affiliations or to find an existing group, request inclusion and then participate in a very neutral and professional way. Any brand that has identified users who could benefit from sharing information between them, should promote the creation of groups.

8. What to expect from Twitter for 2020?

   Twitter closed the year with few changes, but announcing important changes for the beginning of 2020. It has been published that very soon Twitter will incorporate some important changes:

   • Limit that other users can mention you
   • Allow a person to leave a conversation
   • Allow a person to prevent anyone from mentioning it
   • Allow clocking Re-tweets

   What to expect from YouTube in 2020?

   YouTube will continue to be the leading video site on the Web, as well as being the second largest search engine in the world. This is not new. But what we should expect from YouTube is a hardening of the parameters that make a video be found. Gone are the times when for a video to appear in searches, it was enough to do a good writing of the YouTube metatags, by 2020 there will be xx metrics that must be mastered in order for a video to be found and displayed prominently:

   1. CTR which is the “click through rate” that measures how many people who see the thumbnail of the video, actually click to see it. When the user sees the static image of a video, but does not click to see it, the CTR is not achieved.
   2. View Velocity and this measures how fast the video accumulates views once it has been published. The first 24 hours are the most important and YouTube will keep track of how many people watch the video in its first 24 hours, some experts say that you will even have to focus on the first 3 hours.
   3. Average viewing time which should be as long as possible. YouTube measures it by video and by channel. Achieving 50% or more should be the goal.
   4. Watch time is the total metric of how much time people spend watching videos. If your videos are many and short, when you post a long one and people see it, that increases the Watch time of your videos.
   5. Session length is a very important metric because YouTube wants people to stay on YouTube and not withdraw, so one long-format video or several short-format videos where one detonates the next and detonates the next is something that YouTube is going to reward.

   So, in YouTube video strategy, you have to design content that is valuable, interesting and entertaining enough that it achieves good numbers in the metrics that are important to YouTube.

9. What to expect from TikTok for 2020?

   Tik Tok is the new social network that many people talk about but has not yet managed to enter the social media portfolio to consider in a digital marketing strategy. Many people still do not know what it is or how to use it and it is known that their interference is strong in Gen Z (born between 1995 and 2015), however, the age range should not be a limitation since we know that almost all networks have born to very young audiences and then have matured into older audiences (at least those that have survived).

   Tik Tok is an application with musical genes that allows young people to express something with music, singing, dancing, doing rap or comedy or lip-syncing. It allows you to upload short videos, not necessarily musicals, and then apply creativity to turn them into entertainment content.

   Tik Tok has still been closed to share metrics which makes it unsuitable for a serious digital strategy, however, those who want to get to Gen Z, could start to consider it accepting that they will not be able to have metrics that indicate if what is done is successful or not. However, you can expect that Tik Tok will soon start making its metrics available and when that happens, it will surely enter the portfolio of social channels that many brands are going to consider. For now, what you have to do with Tik Tok is not to lose sight of it and hunt the right time to try it.

   Some additional aspects to expect from social networks in 2020 are:

   • If your content strategy does not include video, you are already late, you have to include video in your profile because it is what will help you have more reach. Video is king on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn and of course on YouTube.
   • Everything that is done in networks accumulates data and analytics are the most important indicator to know if a strategy works or not. The “I think that …” or “I think that …” are over. Business owners should listen to marketers and marketers should listen to the data so that strategies are better focused. It is very good to use intuition to propose strategies, but they must be faced with the understanding that everything that “comes to mind” must be implemented with metrics and it will be the data that tells whether the intuition was correct or not.
   • Well-programmed chatbots are the best first-class operators to answer the first question of prospects, clients or users, achieving the immediacy sought by users
   • Marketing strategies need to be tailored to the type of lead and where you are on the buying path. Strategies must adapt to the way the customer (customer journey ) .
   • Brand building occurs with value content that is consistently published and focused on the audience.
   • There is so much data and so much audience that only automation can cover it, you should not try to do it manually because a bad metric can lead to poor decision making.
   • It is going to be very difficult to build a business in just one network … you must use multiple channels and take advantage of the formats and scope of each social network. Each network must have its objectives, have its metrics and use the metric to continually improve … every week … every month