3 Social Media Trends to Watch in 2019

The world of social media is ever-changing. New features are popping up all the time that change the way we interact with each other and with brands online. In the world of influencer marketing, it’s important to stay on top of these trends to create stronger and more valuable relationships with your audience. Here are three trends to watch this year:

IGTV

Cisco predicts that 82% of all internet traffic will be video by 2022. Instagram definitely jumped on the video trend with IGTV, their video application that allows you to create longer and more-detailed videos compared to Instagram Stories. Instagram continues to be a major player in social media. They first launched IGTV last year as their own version of YouTube. Before that, they launched Instagram Stories as their own version of Snapchat.

Brands and influencers will upload more IGTV-specific content this year as video continues to increase in importance on social, according to Influencer Marketing Hub. It’s a good idea to start experimenting with IGTV now to see how it can best work for you, your brand, and your audience.

Micro-Influencers and Nano-Influencers

There are four types of influencers on social media, according to Influencer Marketing Hub:

Mega-influencers – social superstars with more than a million followers.

Macro-influencers – influencers with between 100,000 and 1 million followers.

Micro-influencers – someone who has between 1,000 and 100,000 followers. A comparatively small following, but with high authenticity.

Nano-influencers – somebody with fewer than 1,000 followers who has strong influence with a narrow market.

As 2019 progresses, brands will likely choose to work with micro- and nano-influencers over larger influencers because of their authenticity and high engagement. These influencers are great at spreading a message to the communities they have built on social media. Micro- and nano-influencers are seen by their audience as more trustworthy and genuine because they have a small, close-knit community of followers compared to the social media superstars. More and more brands are starting to realize that the reach of the message only means so much - engagement is key.

“Real” Content > Highly Produced Content

The rise in popularity of Instagram Stories over the past couple of years is part of a bigger trend: people are loving authentic and short-lived content, according to Buffer. Brands and influencers alike are embracing this type of personal “in the moment” content to be more genuine with their audiences, which is particularly important for Millennial and Gen Z audiences who want meaningful relationships with brands.

This “real” content allows you to show more personality and be vulnerable with your audience, instead of the strictly business, highly produced and edited content we’re used to seeing. Authenticity on social media is huge in 2019 - use this opportunity to connect with your followers through real and valuable content.

Note: I wrote this post for Open Door Media while I was an intern there. See the original post here.