To ride the wave of the next big thing in social media, it often takes a lot of trial-and-error, a good deal of trendspotting, and some courage to try new things. Young Company has spent time researching what is hot right now and what is to come for social media and here are a few things we found.
1. Social Media at Work
Most people take on two different personas when using social media. One persona is the “on social media inside of work” and the other is the “on social media outside of work”. However, thanks to Facebook at Work, this may no longer need to be the case. Facebook at Work, announced last year, that it seeks to carve out a work-specific social media zone for coworkers to communicate with one another. Right now, Facebook at Work is only available to some companies, and you need a work account to use it, but we are excited to see where this goes!
2. Social Shopping
E-commerce on social media is about to become even more streamlined. Right now businesses and consumers have the option to tweet/post/snap about a product to promote it, yet the potential customer still must leave the social network they are on to visit your site in order to complete the purchase. However, that might be changing sooner rather than later. In fact, Pinterest already has a “Buy It” option on iPhone, iPad and Android devices, where you can buy pinned products directly from Pinterest, and we believe that this is only the beginning.
3. Messaging and Chat Apps
When we attempt to take a break from the constant newsfeed updates containing wedding announcements and baby showers, we find other ways to stay in touch with one another. Not on social media, but on messaging platforms: WhatsApp, Messenger, etc. This seems to be a growing trend for a lot of the back-and-forth convos that take place. If social media is seen as a broadcast medium, messaging apps feel a bit more conversational. And it’s possible that these two reasons might be why.
With messaging apps, there’s:
- No algorithm.
- No ads.
Algorithms and ads have come to define social media more and more. Messaging apps are the complete opposite. For instance, on Snapchat (not quite a messaging app per se but disruptive enough in this sense), a user will choose to view a branded story and give it their full attention, whereas on Facebook the algorithm decides which posts the user might see.
So with people choosing a way around ads and algorithms, how does your content stand a chance of being seen?
Now THAT is a blog post within itself. So we will do just that. Stay tuned!