Three Social Media Trends Brands Will Adopt in 2020

With the hustle and bustle of the holiday season in full force, we are about to call “end scene” on 2019. Before saying goodbye to the year that catapulted TikTok into our life, shined a light on the importance of microinfluencers, and introduced us to the “cats can have a little salami” meme, here is a look at three social media trends I think we will see throughout 2020. 

Word counts are going up (like way up) 

Long form content matters: Whether you love her or hate her, “scammer” and Internet persona Caroline Calloway knows how to write a caption like no other influencer on the Internet. The longer the caption, the more engagement she receives…and the same goes for major brands following suit. 

In 2020, long form content on Facebook and Instagram will give brands the opportunity to increase storytelling, pick up where short video content leaves off, and weave together social media content with larger mission statements and marketing campaigns. 

Brands will stop assuming their audience has no attention span and that everyone wants curt, punny one-liners or zingers. Instead, in 2020, brands will spend more time curating meaningful content that sticks with its audience a lot longer than a passing chuckle. 

By curating extended content on social media, brands will spend more time highlighting what makes them unique and authentic instead of piling on to Internet trends whenever a new one pops up. 

Long form content isn’t just for brands and influencers though. I suspect we’ll see this trend trickle into personal timelines with friends and family jumping on board. 

Put A Face To A Brand @Username

Early on in the decade, a lot of brands had key personalities attached to their brands. Remember DKNY PR Girl and OscarPRGirl? This trend was super popular for fashion houses and cosmetic brands, and while it was short lived and hyper PR focused — there was something nice about putting one face to a brand and following that person’s brand experience and journey. 

In 2020, I think we will see brands attach real human beings to their social media accounts once again. This will help get rid of the common perception that an intern with no experience is firing off viral tweets (the good and the bad ones), but it will also give brands a new angle to extend their story and offer up a plethora of first-person user generated content. 

While the early 2010s saw one personality as the public-facing social media figurehead, I think we will see multiple social media managers share the public facing responsibilities for the brands they work on. Brands will pivot towards this because it will (hopefully) showcase their diversity and highlight that the people behind their Instagram posts and tweets are just like their audience. 

It won’t just be the typical B2C retail accounts moving in this direction — we’ll see financial institutions, start ups (of all kinds), large software companies, and nonprofits follow suit. 

Prepare for more ephemeral content than ever before 

With likes disappearing from Instagram and Facebook in 2020, brands will refocus engagement strategies on ephemeral content. Brands that produce Instagram stories a few times a week currently will most likely shift to producing content on a daily basis with call to actions and engagement opportunities becoming even more crystal clear for their audiences. 

Instead of relying on likes to showcase performance of a post, brands and companies will need to look for other metrics to show that their work is moving the needle and the insights from Instagram Stories will be able to fill that metric void. 

In 2020, more brands will use short-lived content opportunities to connect with their audience in real-time. Smart marketers know that not every piece of content needs to last forever (and if it does - that’s what Instagram Stories Highlights are for), so creating brand guidelines and strategies around what is worthy of an Instagram Story and what is worthy of a full Instagram post will become more defined. 

Social isn’t going anywhere

I recently told a friend that if I told my first-year in college self that I would work in social media full-time, I would have laughed. In 2006, Facebook was just becoming prominent across college campuses and I don’t think any of us (except for maybe Mark Zuckerberg) thought it would grow into what it is today. With that being said, one thing is very clear to me  — social media isn’t going anywhere, instead — it’s going everywhere our wildest dreams could imagine and beyond.