Do you remember a time when there was no social media? – that adding a new friend to your circle takes weeks or even months to develop.
Two decades ago, the only way you would connect to your friends was snail mail and telephone calls. The dynamics of meeting new people was through person to person interaction that happens in parties, restaurants and even clubs. But today, social media made it possible to connect with new people not just within your location but made it easier for everyone to meet friends all over the world. Data all over the internet says that 80% of the 4.66 billion people in the planet uses social media and this numbers are projected to rise in the coming years.
Yes, we may agree that social media is quite addicting and is now part of our daily lives. Year after year since its conception, social media evolves into a rapid pace. What started as a platform for professional networking that allows people to contact businesses and schools evolved into a tech giant that shapes all facets of modern human existence.
The first recorded form of social media was called Six Degrees. It was launched in 1997 with the same core ideals of what Facebook is. It was a simple platform where in you could set up a personal profile page, create a rolodex of friends’ contacts and send messages within the site.
From that moment on, social media evolved year after year. Friendster and Myspace were the first ones to create a massive platform for internet users and today, there are 212 social media sites that are available in the world wide web that caters to every demographic, ethnicity, hobby, and language.
A platform that started with just a simple directory, creatively expanded into a network of user-generated sites that individually focused on a certain medium that molded the online behavioral culture of the world’s population. What started as a grain of pebble rolling down the mountain of information superhighway created an avalanche of technological phenomena, which affected the synergy of the world’s business trade; from digital marketing and advertising to creating products like touch screen phones and tablets, integrating a whole system of customer service up to the changing of how products are purchased.
Because of this new age of technological phenomena, businesses in almost all categories currently interact with consumers through social media platforms such as Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, and Instagram with new players like Tiktok, Twitch and Social Bee.
The narrative of this evolution is vastly substantial than any other online phenomena that has ever happened in the world wide web and you often wonder what would happen next. What other things you can add up to an already established platform? How will social media help businesses to further reach their consumers even more? Are we having live hologram conversations? Will Mark Zuckerberg form his own religion? Will social media tremendously aid businesses to expand? Today and in the coming years, what other things can we anticipate from the consumer-advertiser relationship?
1. Mobile First Advertising
Mobile devices are used by 91% of all netizens to access their preferred channels. And it is not an exaggeration that there hasn’t been a device in the evolution of mankind that was always been carried by a vast number of people from various background, ethinicity and demographic. What does this imply in terms of marketing?
In a tech-driven world, almost all consumers carry a mobile phone and this ignited marketers to use a variety of creative yet sophisticated mobile automated ads. Social media networks specifically Facebook already offers specific ad formats for mobile-only advertising. And we are looking for this trend to vastly grow into multitudes of innovation in the future.
With Facebook’s existing video poll ads, augmented reality ads and playable ads, we are expecting for more diverse options for advertisers to customize their native ad formats to uniquely connect with their target users. We are hoping to have shoppable ads that is mobile optimized with wide visibility on Facebook and Instagram stories.
In line with this trend, a lot of third-party platform specialists and vendors increased dramatically in the last 3 years and publishers are even launching and pionerring their own mobile ad formats. Advertisers are getting more creative as well as they are innovating their ads to adapt to the social media environment whether displaying multiple products or a particular promo.
In the recent years, social media communicators such as Watsapp and Viber only offers online messaging and calls but we are looking into direct product purchasing from the platforms. As Watsapp already rolled out its app shopping feature which simplified the process of browsing through businesses’ products and eventually leads to direct purchase.
2. You Can Stay Connected Through Social Media
Given the present and potential social, financial, and psychological impacts of a pandemic on the magnitude of COVID-19, social media will have a great contribution to remote work/working from home and online classes that may continue in the following year. With issues of mental health emanating to GenZ’s and Millennials, social media will serve as a platform communication and expression to reduce isolation and promote well-being.
Constant communication has never been more crucial, particularly for individuals who are used to having coworkers and classmates. The human interaction and dynamics will and always be significant to every individual. In effect, digital communication by any means or social media platform will remain popular in the coming years.
Launched in May 2020 during the start of the pandemic, Facebook thought of innovating a stand-alone desktop app for group video calls that enables users especially professionals to engage in online meetings and chat. We are forecasting that this trend of communication will rise in the following years since work-from-home is currently the major norm. We are also looking at other social media platforms to develop and innovate group video calls with added features and functions such as games, added filters, VRs, AR via brand partners.
3. New Functions
The restoration of connections which was the initial purpose of social media, which enabled users to locate old acquaintances online. Social networks, on the other hand, have shifted the trajectory of development. They now most often serve as a digital representation of a man or a business, allowing for the development of various brands that leads to an impact on user behavior and a need to sprung upon the development of new services. Many of the past innovations such as information search, file storage, picture editing, capacity to run a weblog in social networking sites, geosocial services – are still in high demand.
Video content will still be dominating the social media space and Augmented Reality will continue to be adopted by almost all users. We are seeing a rise in additional features of AR aside from just mere filters. We are looking for advertisers to produce AR ads that are specifically developed to direct purchasing in the coming years.
4. Added User Experience
While Virtual Reality in social media is in its infant stage, we are predicting for it to expand and roll out in the next coming years. With 360 Virtual Tours, Shoppable Ads, Clickable Tags in the fold, having a decent virtual reality feature will not be impossible in the near future.
With the advent of Tiktok, and other video platforms or “stories” in general, visual content is currently expanding quicker than any other media and serves as a consumer study on how users interact with user generated video platforms.
These added features will undoubtedly have an impact on the SMM’s growth as they will soon be as essential as a mere mobile ad because of the consumers desire for new innovations.
5. Social Media Campaign Automation
An increase of companies that provide surveillance of social media sites and blogs will be on the rise. Actively searched digital marketing keywords and phrases will be directly related to the brands that will pan out to instant redirection to consumer profiles. Reinforcement of optimization features in social media contents will further improve in the coming years which may immensely develop successful consumer targeting. A dramatic increase of analytical tools for digital marketers are thriving and in effect the streamlining of ad strategy execution processes will be easier.
6. The Power of Social Media
In today’s world, social media has made its way to the lives of human beings. The social media’s role and responsibility doesn’t just stop on casual interactions but rather influences decision making, obtaining general information and voicing out socio-economic opinions. Social media paved the way for brands and organizations to willfully connect with their consumers easily and we hope that more tools will be innovated for this to further improve.
With more and more people riding the trends of a single hashtag, the power of social media has dramatically changed human perceptions. It has the ability to make or break a government, an organization, a business, a celebrity or a normal person. We are hoping and praying for more positive discussions among a collection of people’s viewpoints.
The power of social media lies on its ability for measurement. The extensive availability of analytics providers made it easy for anyone to persuade opinions and trend jack false accusations. We expect the prohibition of such campaigns and look forward for truthful movements in the coming years.
