2020 marks a new year and a new decade! Over the past ten years, social media has had its hand in revolutionising culture, impacting the way we do business and even influencing political campaigns.

Entering this new decade and following the influence social media has had on human behaviours, it will be interesting to see the impact it has over next ten years. Here are three social media trends we predict this decade.

Businesses will take full advantage of creative social media platforms

Facebook stands as the champion social media outlet with roughly 2.4 Billion monthly active users, with platforms such as Twitter and LinkedIn following behind. Over the past decade, platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat have become very popular, especially with Gen Z.

According to a recent Business Insider survey, 65% of the Gen Z participants check Instagram daily, 62% check YouTube and 51% will look at Snapchat. Newly emerged channel TikTok, the video-sharing social networking service, is slowly becoming one of the most popular social media platforms amongst this demographic.

Businesses have not overlooked the rise in activity across these platforms, with many companies utilising the digital spaces to attain engagement and conversion from their target audiences such as Gen Z.

The NBA is currently one of the only well-established brands thriving on TikTok, tapping into what the platform has to offer. The sports organisation has harnessed the light-hearted nature of TikTok, through the creation of comedic videos of its players dancing or interacting with fans, as well as sharing personal stories of its team members and its mascot.

Ultimately TikTok has proven to be beneficial as it supports businesses engagement results and relationships with consumers through interactive videos that the viewer feels like they can relate to.

This decade we will see more brands embracing creative social media platforms as a method to boost brand awareness, website traffic and increase conversion rates.

Less of a focus on ‘Likes’ and more on ‘Engagement’

Last year Instagram removed public likes for a few US and UK based users on a trial basis. The thinking behind this was designed to downplay the importance users place on receiving validation on their content and shift focus to the content they create. When deploying the trial Instagram said: “We want your friends to focus on the photos and videos you share, not how many likes they get“.

There is a possibility that the removal of public likes or other validation metrics may be a permanent change embraced by various prominent social media outlets going forward. It will be very interesting to see how bloggers, influencers and businesses who rely on this public display of engagement adapt to these changes. With public likes removed, we may find that high-quality content creation that leads to increased engagement becomes the prime focus, as opposed to likes.

Rise of AI within social media

As social media has developed from strength-to-strength, so has Artificial Intelligence (AI). Over the last few years, AI driven programmes have emerged that vastly improve the way we use social media for marketing. Third party social media tools like Pattern89 help optimise bids, divide budgets, and recommend channels most likely to help your ad perform.

From suggested posts based on the content you have previously engaged with, to scheduling software created so that individuals do not need to manually post day-to-day through social media management platforms such as Hootsuite. It is very likely that we will see AI integrated into social media on a grand scale, building on the technological innovations of the last decade and the present.

Social media isn’t just a platform for marketing and advertising, but a space to build and develop authentic relationships with audiences. It will be interesting to see how brands embrace these social media trends during this decade and the conversations we might be having in 2030.