Social media is changing at a rapid pace.
For example, the content format Stories was introduced on several major social media platforms slightly more than a year ago. Now, it’s one of the most popular content individuals are posting. More than 300 million people are sharing stories on Instagram and WhatsApp separately every day, and 70 million people were posting daily to Messenger Day just six months after its launch1.
Due to its popularity, many businesses are now posting stories regularly, too.
To succeed on social media, it’s essential to stay ahead of the curve and understand the latest social media trends. Together with our State of Social 2018 report, we put together a comprehensive social media trends report. In this report, you’ll learn about the top major trends to help you succeed on social media in 2018.
Top 10 social media trends to know for 2018
This report is inspired by the annual Internet Trends report by Mary Meeker, a partner at Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers. Being one of the most anticipated reports every year, the Internet Trends report shares valuable insights and statistics about the technology industry. While our report is nowhere as comprehensive as the Internet Trends report, we hope to shed some light on the social media landscape.
Here’s a quick overview of the ten major social media trends happening right now:
- There are now almost 2.5 billion social media users
- Social media is going mobile
- Social messaging overtook social media
- Social messaging will greatly benefit businesses
- Chatbots are becoming the norm
- Businesses can no longer afford to ignore social customer service
- Organic reach and referral traffic are plummeting
- Video is still the most popular content type
- User-generated content can help drive reach and engagement
- Businesses are pouring more money into social ads
We will dive into these ten major social media trends below. If you prefer to read a slide deck, here’s the full slide deck:
This report wouldn’t have been possible without the amazing studies, research, and data available. We’re very grateful to the companies and organizations that have collected and analyzed the data. You can find out more about their findings by clicking on the tiny blue squares throughout the report, such as this2.
1. There are now almost 2.5 billion social media users
Social media is one of the best ways to reach your target audience because of its sheer size and the amount of data available.
According to Statista, there are 2.46 billion social media users in 2017, and this number is ever growing. It is predicted that there will be more than three billion social media users in 2021 — just three years from now3.
With social media, you can reach a massive amount of potential customers for free — through organic posts — or for a fee — through social media advertising. With ads targeting, you can reach very specific groups of audience based on their demographics, interests, past behavior, and more. There hasn’t been such a great opportunity to reach and engage your target audience before social media became popular. With this reason alone, I believe you can no longer ignore social media as part of running your business.
Here are the current user base of the six major social media platforms4:
- Facebook: 2.07 billion monthly active users
- Instagram: 800 million monthly active users
- Twitter: 330 million monthly active users
- LinkedIn: 500 million members
- Pinterest: 200 million monthly active users
- Snapchat: 178 million daily active users
You can see the growth of the respective social media platforms in the following few slides:
2. Social media is going mobile
We are becoming glued to our smartphones.
Facebook studied the behavior of 100 people while they were watching TV at home. 94 of them had their smartphone in their hands while watching TV. And one of the top reasons they look away from the TV is to use their smartphone.5
More and more people are also using social media on their smartphone. In fact, the majority of social media users are using the apps via their smartphone:
- Instagram: Because it’s a mobile-first app, I think it’s safe to assume most of its users use the app on mobile
- Snapchat: Snapchat only has a mobile app and no web application yet.
On top of these statistics, comScore’s 2017 U.S. Mobile App Report found that 78 percent of social media time is spent on mobile devices.
This trend increases the importance of creating mobile-friendly or mobile-first content. A few things you could do include creating images with the recommended size that will be displayed fully on mobile or creating square or vertical videos, which will take up more real estate on the phone screen than landscape videos when viewed vertically.
3. Social messaging overtook social media
Since the rise of social media in the last decade, the rise of social messaging is the next transformational shift that’s happening.
In fact, social messaging has already surpassed social media usage. According to Business Insider, there are more people using the top four social messaging apps (WhatsApp, Messenger, WeChat, and Viber) than the top four social media apps (Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn)10. Facebook Messenger alone has more than 1.3 billion monthly active users11, and Instagram is officially testing a standalone messaging app, Direct12.
The growth in social messaging is not showing signs of slowing down. Despite having three years of double-digit growth, the number of mobile messaging users is still growing at a significant rate13.
If social media has been a great opportunity for businesses, then social messaging cannot be ignored. And it is already showing tremendous benefits for businesses.
4. Social messaging will greatly benefit businesses
People used to communicate with businesses via the phone, then emails, and then social media. Now, it’s social messaging.
Facebook studied the messaging behavior of 12,500 people across 14 markets to understand consumers’ growing preference for messaging businesses. They found that messaging is helping businesses connect with their customers more than ever. Consumers use messaging to ask businesses questions, make appointments and purchases, and provide…
