Nobody could have foreseen the events of 2020 and how they would dictate a huge surge in social media activity and a new set of consumer behaviour trends. Millions of us took to social media to escape the realities of the pandemic, connect with our friends, family, and peers, and discover new ways to entertain ourselves while we stayed at home.

With the timeline for the ongoing ‘situation’ still up in the air, and plenty of these new behaviours simply now bedded in to the way we interact after such a prolonged period, it’s likely that these shifts will be just as prevalent in 2021, and continue to influence how we connect, communicate and market online.

Here are some of my predictions for social media trends in 2021.

Live streaming

With a lot of the world being ordered to stay at home, brands and content creators have been taking to live streaming to connect ‘face to face’ with their customers and audiences.

The increase in live content across social platforms in 2020 was pretty staggering. Facebook saw a 50% increase during lockdown periods, and Instagram a whopping 70%. TikTok successfully launched their own live service, and long-established streaming platform Twitch hit 4 million concurrent viewers for the first time, along with many other personal bests.

With 2021 starting with new lockdowns around the world, and with people now much more accustomed to watching live online content in place of theatre, gigs, and even cinema, we’re confident that we will continue to see this upward trajectory throughout the year.

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Short, easy-to-consume video content

The recent surge in video content has been mainly driven by TikTok. Their super-short form video platform has seen even the most introverted of social media users adopt TikTok trends, with many new stars gaining large audiences almost overnight.

The short-form, accessible nature of the platform is what spurred on so many to take the chance, and that same nature has also facilitated the rapid, creative experimentation that has made TikTok such a hit. But its ubiquity also now means that established brands and creators have suddenly had to condense their content to fit the 60-second time limit, in order to take advantage of the platform. This, in turn, is shortening attention spans. Audiences will no longer be willing to wait through two-to-five minutes of chin-wag before getting to the point.

With the introduction of Instagram’s counterpart product, Reels, being capped at 30 seconds, I would expect to see a big increase in short, easy-to-consume content from brands and creators in 2021.

The ‘viral rush’ with Instagram reels

Instagram launched Reels in 2020, to compete with the incredible popularity of TikTok. Because, let's face it, TikTok outright won 2020 in the social media category.

Reels is a new short-form video tool that allows users to record quick, real-time moments between one and 30 seconds long. Reels doesn’t have the rich editing suite of TikTok, or the user-made trends that have made its rival so popular, but Instagram does offer one thing - and the most desirable thing at that. Reach!

Reels feel like a rewind to pre-2016, when the Instagram feed was chronological, the Explore page was ripe, and it was much easier to go viral and get huge reach and engagement from organic posts. With these changes to the way it presents and distributes content, it seems obvious that Instagram are trying to stem a mass-migration to TikTok by providing the ability to go super-viral with its equivalent platform.

Brands and creators are already reaping the rewards of repurposing all of their TikTok content and dumping it into Reels in exchange for huge numbers. That means that Reels can feel a bit of a TikTok echo right now, but it’s safe to say that much more organic, bespoke content will appear in 2021, as Instagram natives become more accustomed to it.

But will we see dance trends on Reels? Hopefully not.

Brands will humanise

People, fundamentally, connect with people, and brands are already starting to take a more human approach to how they communicate online.

2020 highlighted the need for brands to have more ‘real’ connections with their customers and audiences, as lockdowns and isolation drove the world’s populace to appreciate the authentic, human factor more than ever. Moving into 2021 we will see marketing strategies delivering further on transparency, authenticity and vulnerability in order to develop rich connections.

We expect influencers to play a vital role in this, with brands developing long-term relationships with ‘real people’ to amplify their key marketing messages and build trust with new audiences.

Sustainability, wellbeing and inclusivity

The demand for brands to be more sustainable has been present for the last couple of years, and the momentum is growing… fast! Any business not currently moving towards sustainable packaging, materials, technology, or supply chain will need to soon, as consumers become increasingly aware of - and motivated by - their products origins.

As the pandemic continues to be a part of our everyday lives, and the potential, tertiary physical and mental health implications continue to surface, brands and content creators will need to support and promote better wellbeing for their audiences. We expect mental and physical wellbeing conversation to be a big part of social media communications in 2021, now that the pandemic has normalised the subject for a huge swathe of the population not previously exposed to or engaged with it.

Inclusivity has also become a huge topic and focus in 2020, particularly with millennials. The Black Lives Matter movement rightly took center-stage last summer, and the need for brands and influencers to think, act and perform more inclusively is going to be key in 2021. Brands who are seen to be a (genuine) part of the inclusive conversation, and welcoming of the topic within their own dialogue, will make deeper connections. And those connections could translate into follower and sales growth.

Influencer Marketing

2020 was a big year for influencer marketing. With the more traditional marketing strategies becoming redundant during the pandemic, brands looked to influencers as a way to reach valuable new, suddenly much-more-online audiences. While at first there was a little uncertainty in how creators could produce truly creative branded content from home, without the big wide world as their canvas, the realisation quickly dawned that their socially-distanced content from home was exactly the natural, authentic output that audiences wanted to see.

Brands are now much more aware of all of the different social platforms available to them, as well as the different content types and voices each platform provides. Taking this into account, we expect brands and influencers to create much stronger, longer-term relationships to create niche, targeted campaigns with Instagram Reels, TikTok challenges, and longer-form YouTube episodes.

Instagram and YouTube influencer marketing will continue to take the lion's share of the influencer spend, but TikTok influencer marketing and Twitch look likely to grow considerably over 2021.

We work with brands to create high-impact influencer marketing campaigns across all social platforms. We help you to get under the skin of your audiences, understand who and where they are, and collaborate with respected influencers to get your message to them. If you’d like to chat about working together, get in touch.