Top 5 trends in Social Media and Influencer Marketing | October 2020

We never have been more ready for Christmas celebrations - and Autumn is just starting. With many countries imposing strong restrictions to combat the second wave of Covid-19, companies and consumers are already anticipating the end of the year hoping for better days. For you, we gathered the best upcoming & (already) Xmas-themed trends we saw these past weeks on social media and in the influencers world.

1. Facebook extends its advertising solutions for the holidays

Photo Credits: Facebook

Last week, Facebook announced new advertising tools to help businesses make the most of the holidays season, and accelerate the shift to social commerce.

The most important addition is certainly the new ability to add product tags to Instagram ads through Facebook Business Manager. Until now, brands could add product tags to their organic posts, but the new tool will enable them to “use more commercial creative and copy compared to traditional organic posts”. 

Facebook also added two new Audience targeting solutions: 1) Shopping Engagement Custom Audiences, which allow businesses to reach people who’ve already shown interest in a product or brand by doing things like saving a product, viewing a shop or initiating a purchase, and 2) Shopping Lookalike Audiences, for brands to grow their customer base by reaching shoppers who have similar interests to their existing customers on Facebook and Instagram.

Additionally, the social media company launched the Season of Support to help small businesses get holiday ready with free marketing training, resources and webinars hosted by business experts and celebrities in the industry.

Lastly, in the US only, Facebook introduced a discount feature for Facebook shops. American businesses can now create offers or individual discounts on their products. They are also able to promote the offers on their shop through creative banners.

2. Snapchat launches AR feature ‘Local Lenses’

Photo Credits: Snapchat

Earlier this month, Snapchat launched its new AR feature ‘Local Lenses’ with the first collaborative AR experience activation called ‘City Painter’ in London’s Carnaby Street.

Similar to ‘Landmarkers’, ‘Local lenses’ enables users to interact with a location through Snap’s camera, but on a much broader scale as it maps entire streets and creates a digital version of the space in the app allowing for a collaborative experience. The first Lens of this type is City Painter, which lets you spray paint over the buildings at Carnaby Street. Nearby users with the app open can see others spraying their paint, and even battle with each other to cover the shops in their colours. 

This is just one of the many AR features Snapchat has envisioned for the platform. And it is not the only channel doing so. Facebook is also investing heavily on AR/VR technology with five research facilities around the world, and now looking to release its first branded smart glasses in 2021 in collaboration with Ray-Ban.

3. TikTok’s ban lift and partnership with OpenSlate

Photo Credits: TikTok

Things seem to be going in the right direction for TikTok this month.

Firstly, Pakistan has decided to lift the ban on the platform after agreeing with TikTok senior management to “moderate content in accordance with societal norms and the laws of Pakistan", including blocking accounts who are responsible for continuously spreading indecent content. However, if this condition is not fully met by TikTok the platform risks to be permanently banned by the Pakistan Telecommunications Authority.

Additionally, TikTok has teamed up with OpenSlate to provide advertisers with an exclusive brand safety solution. With this partnership, brands are now able to track where their ads are served and can be confident that their ads will be shown alongside other brand safe content.

4. Instagram goes big to celebrate its 10th Birthday

Photo Credits: Social Media Today

To celebrate its 10th anniversary, Instagram released some fun new features for its users. The new tools include a Stories Map, an in-stream shopping for IGTV, and visual additions to help users customize their home screens. 

The Stories Map is certainly the biggest update as it provides users with a private calendar to track when stories were uploaded and a map showing where users have posted Stories from (only those which included a location sticker). 

Additionally, people can now see a shopping bag icon on IGTV videos indicating shopping tags have been applied to the content. A similar update might soon be seeing on Instagram Reels. And to add some more colours to the celebration, users can now customise their own Instagram home icon.

5. The death of Quibi and the rise of Triller

Photo Credits: Getty Images

In just six short months, the US based app Quibi shuts down after raising $1.75 billion in capital. There are many factors that could have played a role in this, and Quibi’s CEO, Meg Whitman indicated that their “failure was not for lack of trying”. 

However, Quibi was trying everything that would have worked years ago, but not for the current user and in the midst of a global pandemic. A short form content app for young consumers that brings you high quality content but it doesn’t let you share videos to other platforms, misses the ecosystem of community and its content personalization algorithm was not the best, and had no potential to survive the competitive industry of short form content.

On the other hand, the social video app Triller is rising fast and it clearly has its eyes set on its direct contender TikTok. With a great celebrity and influencer involvement, including Charli D‘Amelio, J balvin, Mike Tyson and the current American President Donald Trump, a feature which allows brands to tap into influencers on the platform and a ‘Brand Lab’, Triller is clearly on the offensive.

The main difference between both social media platforms is that Triller is focused on music and collaborating with the music industry, creating “a platform where the entire ecosystem can monetize itself.” As Triller’s chief growth officer Bonin Bough says “We are the MTV of this generation. We are a music-first platform where culture comes to break”.

Interested in how you can integrate the latest social media trends into your strategy?