It’s a brand-new year – say hello to 2021…a year that India Inc hopes, will allow them to banish their pandemic blues of the year before.
But before we totally dismiss 2020, let’s look at the one big take-away we have from there. It’s the year that we saw India emerge as a ‘mobile-first’ nation as everyone took to working remotely on their hand-held devices from their homes.
Technology adoption is increasing both at the consumer’s end and at the enterprise end. For brands, this emerged as one of the key aspects of the new-normal – with both short- and long-term repercussions on how they can and will need to leverage their brands online with consumers.
And since we’re talking ‘online’, how can brands cut-off from social media – platforms that are key to driving brand visibility, brand engagement and enable consumer-connect? So, what are the social media trends that will help brands make-a difference in 2021? Let’s find out.
According to a recent Hootsuite study, the top five asks of brand custodians from their social media engagement is as follows:
i. Increase acquisition of new consumers – 73%
ii. Increased brand awareness – 64%
iii. Drive conversions (leads, purchases & product enquiries) – 45%
iv. Increased customer retention – 28%
v. Improve customer experience – 23%
Therefore, the question is, what are the top formats that will enable the above. In our mind the top format drivers of change will be:
i. Video – This will replace written posts as the # 1 format as people wish to read less and watch more. And not just videos but video stories will become more relevant;
ii. Written Posts – Will give way to video but still retains its importance. Blogs, posts, short articles will always be relevant from a social media perspective and will continue making a difference.
iii. Use more infographics to tell a story – people love those, and they work well across most social media platforms;
iv. You know what they say – a picture is worth a thousand words. But it’s more than just peppering written posts with more images. Social media platforms such as Pinterest and Instagram are more about imaging (and video) that they are about posts;
v. User-generated content such as testimonials, contests, reviews, etc will continue to grow in relevance and importance and work well with consumer-facing brands. Some brands like Airbnb for example rely completely on UGC for their social media.
