E-Commerce Seller Financing   •   January 29, 2021

Using social media can be highly beneficial for e-commerce businesses, big or small. It can help your e-commerce store get exposure, attract new customers, and even sell your products directly from your posts.

Nonetheless, social media is always evolving, and approaches that worked last year may not be as successful now. Therefore, it’s important to keep up with social media trends to ensure that your business remains modern and provides content that your potential customers want to see.

Below are some of the social media trends for 2021 that you can take advantage of next time you prepare your social media posts.

Top Social Media Trends for 2021

1. Memes Are Growing in Popularity

While memes are not a novelty and you have likely been enjoying them yourself. However, they have been rapidly growing in popularity over the past months. Data shows that meme usage and shares have increased by 26% from summer 2019 to summer 2020.

Why should you care?

The pandemic is changing user behavior, and nearly 90% of US social media users admitted to spending at least 30 minutes a day more on social media platforms than they did before the pandemic. Since the pandemic doesn’t seem to be going anywhere any time soon, this number will likely not change or even increase.

So, how can you implement memes in your social media marketing strategy?

You can:

• Make beautiful infographic-style posts that help your target audience solve a problem, learn something, or answer a question.
• Screenshot or create unique graphics featuring client testimonials.
• Repurpose lists or blog posts into carousel posts by featuring one specific point on each post.

2. Stories Are as Popular as Ever

Marketing options on social media platforms only keep expanding. Stories once used to be a feature only known to Instagram. Now, Facebook has stories, too, and so does WhatsApp.

Stories are short, limited-time photo or video updates that disappear after 24 hours. It’s timely content that encourages users to view it before it disappears, or they risk missing it altogether. How and how often users interact with your stories also signals social media algorithms how important they consider your content.  Of course, it’s beneficial for you if they think it’s valuable.

Despite being a relatively new feature, stories are rapidly growing in popularity. Daily users of Instagram Stories grew 5-fold from 2016 to 2019, and Facebook Stories’ daily user number tripled from 2018 to2019.

There are plenty of content ideas you can consider sharing in stories. These can be shares of your products with direct links to product pages or posts, behind the scenes shots, inspirational messages, and much more. To avoid any damaging social media marketing mistakes, make sure to share content that resonates with your ideal customers.

3. Authenticity Is More Important than Ever

Social media users have been bombarded by digitally enhanced images and other fake content for a very long time.

As a result, nine out of ten social media users, especially Generation Z and Millennials, state that authenticity is one of the factors that help them decide which brand to purchase from. This number is up by 4% from 2017.

This means that most internet users prefer raw and real visual content.

However, many brands fail to provide authentic content despite believing that it is important. 51% of social media users state that less than half of brands are sharing truly authentic content on their social media channels.

4. Customers Communicate with Brands via Social Media

Data states that every three in ten buyers communicate with brands via social media. Social media offers fast and more personal responses from companies, and 70% of US consumers state that they feel a lot more confident in a brand if they are able to directly message it.

While three in ten isn’t the majority, social media, the use of mobile phones, and social and mobile shopping are on the rise. Therefore, this trend is likely to only grow in the future. So, you can start benefiting by adopting customer service via social media as soon as possible.

How you can do that?

Make sure to keep an eye on comments, messages, and shares. Don’t leave them unattended. Like and answer comments, questions, and messages. Acknowledge and thank users for tagging or mentioning your brand in their posts.

This will demonstrate that you appreciate your followers and take the time to respond even to short and simple comments. While serious queries may not come right away, seeing that you interact with followers will give them the confidence to reach out to you in the future.

Conclusion

As the Internet and social media keep continuously evolving, it is important for e-commerce businesses to keep up with social media trends to remain relevant and answer the needs of their potential buyers. Therefore, it can benefit your brand to start creating memes, authentic content, using stories, and engaging with your followers on social media.