2018 marks the 14th year since Facebook entered the world and changed modern society as we knew it. 6 years after that Instagram was launched and, following shortly after was the birth of Snap chat. All these platforms helped shape what the internet has become and ultimately how we use social media. Since their creation and subsequent rise to popularity, we have witnessed them change and grow quite rapidly with every new update and are currently in the midst of an innovation boom with new platforms popping up virtually everywhere for every conceivable community and purpose.
So, with all this evolution at the fore what will 2018 behold for our favourites both new and old?
Social messaging:
Many Social Media platforms originally included a messaging feature that was quaintly stylised like a good old’ fashion SMS. Recently however we’ve seen this de-integrate from the mainstream social media complex into entirely separate applications, for example “Facebook” and “Messenger”, where you don’t even need to have a Facebook Account to use it’s social messaging platform; and rather surprisingly, the number of users are surpassing that of the “Social Media” platforms themselves. We can numerous platforms to jump on this trend in 2018 (Instagram being rumoured to be embarking and diving deep on their social messaging) and enrich their services, and online communication in general.
Chatbots:
Responding to your users in timely manner of great importance to anyone trying to improve and maintain their online brand image. So, when social messaging began to cut its own path, it also paved a way for the use chatbots. This automation service helps take the brunt of incoming communications, saving many businesses time and money. Chatbots are already remarkably versatile and can seamlessly improve the flow of business by completing a lot of the monotonous tasks such as payments, notifying customers and a whole host of other marketing tasks, and research shows that most people don’t mind the fact that they’re talking to robot.
Video is still king:
Ever since video killed the radio star it has been almost everyone’s favourite content format. Its ability to quickly convey information through image and sound seems to be the most gratifying for users and It’s expected that nothing with stand in the way of this in 2018 with around 5,000,000,000 (billion) videos watched on YouTube alone every single day. Being the innovators that we are, finding ways to change and customise videos haven’t been too few and far between with tools such as Boomerang (used mostly for Instagram) allowing us to add interesting effects to videos, such as looping, and we expect there’s still room to grow.
LinkedIn Ads for B2B:
Since Microsoft acquired LinkedIn, they have added a number of interested tools and options for businesses to advertise on their platform. They added new features like Video ads, advanced user targeting and ability to share more rich content. Businesses should be highly active on this tool as its current monthly users are set at 500 Million and increasing every day.
