2015 is nearing its end, and a new year is in sight. How has social media changed your life? For private users and online businesses alike, social media has become a powerful tool for interaction, communication, and presence.
With more than 1/7 of the world's entire population living on social media networks, it's not surprising that businesses and social media network owners are taking this new platform to the next level. The proof is based on the statistics. Let's enumerate the most dominant social media trends that we saw this 2015.
1. Visual content ruled social media.
What attracts you more: text posts or images? Of course, visual content captures the attention of more than 50% of users. Videos, infographics, and eye-catching photos have higher rates of engagement as compared to plain text posts. This is one of the reasons why Facebook has added an autoplay feature in their videos.
2. Advertising has become easier than ever.
Now that Facebook allows advertising, small businesses can simply pay for their posts to appear on the Newsfeed of their target demographic. Businesses can choose the location, age, and gender of the users they want to target, enabling them to send ads to people they never imagined they could reach.
3. Mobile is king.
In 2015 alone, more than 75% of all social media activities have been performed using mobile devices. Laptops and desktops are still in use, but mobile trends are increasingly dominating the social media world. If you're a small business using Facebook ads, better make sure that your website is fully adapted to mobile viewing. Otherwise, clickthroughs that you get on Facebook from mobile devices will turn into wasted ads.
4. Social media is turning into a search engine.
Google is still the biggest search engine, but when people want to look for a specific business, especially local ones, they choose to search using Facebook and LinkedIn. Why? Some small businesses still don't have websites, but almost 80% of all small businesses have a social media presence. This means what you can't find on Google, you will most likely find on Facebook.
5. The big networks are growing even bigger.
Just this 2015, Facebook has acquired 5 companies namely Wit.ai, Quickfire, TheFind, Surreal Vision, and Pebbles. Twitter, on the other hand, acquired 7: ZipDial, Niche, Periscope, TenXer, TellApart, Whetlab, and Fastlane. LinkedIn has also made 4 acquisitions this year, including Lynda.com which they bought for a whopping $1.5 billion.
Truly, the big three are setting their presence in stone. They aren't going anywhere, and it's likely that in the coming years, they will continue to expand their networks with more acquisitions.
This year was an amazing year for social media, but what can we expect for next year? It's exciting to know that this online trend is taking over the world with more than 1 billion people involved in its presence. Let's see what social media has in store for us in 2016!