Social Media Trends to Watch in 2021

In my day job, I deal with social media. I don’t know that I like it, I know that I don’t hate it but it is for sure something that I am glad I have team members to work on and I don’t have to do it myself. Each year there are predictions about what the trends will be in social media. Here are the predictions that I found from a great article on Forbes.com.

• Niche Communities – Look for the untapped niche communities. Those people that like one certain thing that is a little different or bizarre or just plain interesting but hard to define. If you can pitch to the folks that only like poodles that have had their hair trimmed into shapes with right angles… that is a niche community. That also means that if you can speak to their niche-dom you can have a rabid audience. 
• Micro-Influencers – These are the influencers that have probably already found that niche community. Harness that micro-influencer. They have cultivated a following, they have started the conversation. Use them to push your brand or your business or your products to a new set of people that might dig what you provide whether that be a widget or a service. 
• Macro-Influencers – This is the opposite of a micro-influencers… duh. But like the micro-influencer, the macro influencer has already gathered a group of followers and those followers are finding more people to follow them. Go after the macro-influencer if you can persuade them with money or swag or gear or services. For instance, if you can get Joe Rogan to push your product in front of his podcast you are reaching 20+ million people an episode. Talk about macro. And if you can grab a percentage of those people, you have harnessed the macro-influencer and turned that ad spend into money. 
• Video Content – This is the one that I almost deleted. Of course, video content is needed and required in social media. But let’s analyze this a little bit. Tik Tok – this is the most off-brand way you can use video. You do not have to focus on the product, you can literally just push the boundaries around your brand and possibly get lots of traction from a 1-minute video about something funny or interesting or just weird. 
• Direct Sales – If you have a product or service and you can sell that product or service on social media. On a channel that might not cost you anything but time or better yet where you already have a presence, why would you not sell that service or product directly?
• Stories – Tell stories. Tell stories about your brand. Tell stories that get your customer involved. Heck, get your customers telling stories about your brand then you can check off lots of boxes. In fact get a micro-influencer telling their niche community a story about your brand to a macro-influencer in a video. Then sell them a product at the end.

10 Little Known Instagram Features

I am not a power user on Instagram but I have played with it a little bit. That being said, I love to learn more about any of the technologies I use and some of these pieces of Instagram I had no idea about. 

• Instagram Boomerang App – The Instagram Boomerang app is how those top influencers are creating short looping videos on Instagram. This app is available on Android and iOS. Give those videos some extra punch.
• Collages – Us the Layout app to create amazing, thought-provoking collages. If a picture is worth a thousand words then four pictures should cover 4000. With the Layout app telling stories with pictures is simple and effective.
• Notifications – Go to the person you are following and hit the Following button. You will have the option to turn on notifications for that person. The next time the post you will get a push, notification. This is a great way to stay connected and on top of things. 
• Comment Filtering – Choose the Hide Offensive Comments button on the site or if you want to eliminate a particular word or phrase, Settings -> Privacy -> Comments and then choose the Manual Filter option.
• Finding Good Hashtags – Type # and then your search words and see what people are using on their posts that might be related to yours. Do the research before you start tagging. 
• Find Recent Posts You Liked – Settings -> Account -> Posts You’ve Liked – this will give you the last 300 posts that you liked on Instagram. Really helpful if you liked something recently and you need to go back to it. 
• Private Stories – Go to Settings -> Privacy -> Story. Click on the 0 People option below the Hide Story From selection. This will take you to a screen that lets you select the people that you do not want to see your story.
• Remove Tags of Yourself – Click that photo in Instagram that is unflattering but that your friends have tagged you in. You will get two options: Hide from Profile or Remove Me From Post. Pretty simple, right?
• Clearing the Instagram Search History – I had no idea this was even a thing. Go to Settings, then Security. Once you are there clear the search history. 
• Edit like a Pro – This is directly from Influencive: “You can do a lot more than using a simple filter on your photo. To make your post stand out and gain more engagement in the Instagram world, you can choose from a variety of other editing tools. Instagram lets you modify saturation, structure, brightness, contrast, and warmth. Try playing around with the various options, and you will see your photos undergoing an unbelievable transformation.”

The bulk of this article came from a an article on Influencive.com.