Facebook is one of the biggest social platforms in the world. As such, it is no surprise that brands and businesses have turned towards it to further boost their marketing efforts. On 1 November 2020, Oberlo released an infographic that highlights 10 key trends for Facebook in 2021, and they highlight key content that would be more prominent across the platform over the next few months.
Here are the key points in Oberlo’s findings:
Facebook Live Back in Favor
Facebook Live is expected to become more prominent across the platform. Oberlo found that roughly 1% of all branded posts on Facebook were composed of Facebook Lives, which indicates that brands are beginning to use Facebook Live to further connect and engage with their audiences.
The AR Ecosystem on Facebook
On the 20th of October, 2020, Facebook relaunched the Spark AR Network to better help connect brands and businesses with experts and AR creators and to foster a community that develops and produces AR. Its popularity across Facebook over the recent years shows that it will become even more popular in 2021, and more users will be more likely to consume AR across Facebook.
Facebook Video Marketing To Grow
Video marketing, in general, is expected to grow as video is one of the leading forms of content across social media today. According to Oberlo:
“In fact, after images, which form 70 percent of all Facebook content, videos have become the second most popular type of post on the platform. They currently make up 17 percent of all content on Facebook, beating links and status updates. If this is among the Facebook trends you’re thinking about jumping on, then keep this in mind: out of all video lengths, those between 65 seconds and five minutes perform the best.”
Private, Interest-Driven Communities Among Rising Facebook Trends
Facebook Groups meant to discuss or highlight a particular niche or interest is seen to grow in popularity. To date, there are over ten million groups on Facebook being used by billions of people each month. According to Oberlo:
“According to research, the reciprocal nature of these groups, its unselfish members, and their willingness to help are factors that are driving their popularity.”
Facebook Trends 2021 Include Online Shopping Experiences
Online shopping has become more popular this year, especially when lockdowns and social distancing protocols have confined people to stay in their homes and refrain from shopping at physical stores. 2021 sees an influx of customers shopping online, which means that brands should establish their online selling platforms to better engage with potential customers.
Facebook News Feed Ads Format Remains King
Ads are expected to be more prominent on the Facebook news feed. 58.2% of businesses’ ad spend is put into ads targeted for Facebook news feed. News feed ad placements have the highest CTR compared to other ad placement types.
Facebook Trends 2021: Chatbots Potential
Chatbots are set to automate the way that brands communicate with their target audience. Over 20 billion messages are exchanged between customers and businesses each month on Messenger, which highlights its prominence as a messaging platform for brands. Chatbots will help brands answer their customers’ basic questions and address their concerns, and they are foreseen to be one of the leading tools for businesses going into 2021.
More Support for Small Businesses
SMBs were the hardest hit by the pandemic. As such, consumers are turning towards supporting small, local businesses in an effort to help them recover. Many SMBs have also taken to using Facebook as their primary marketing platform, and they can conduct their business on Facebook. The platform has also set up aid for SMBs. According to Oberlo: “Given that experts are predicting that the COVID-19 pandemic will last well into 2021, we can expect Facebook to step up again to provide more aid in one way or another to encourage companies to continue advertising with them to grow their business.”
Facebook Trends 2021: User-Generated Content
Content marketing has benefited a lot from user generated content. Brands have turned towards customers and audiences to amplify their marketing efforts as the pandemic has forced production studios to halt temporarily. According to Oberlo:
“This is especially so on Facebook. The latest analysis shows that views of videos published on the platform that were not created by brands have been on an increase, more than doubling from 223 billion views in January 2020 to 495 billion in August 2020 (Digiday, 2020).”
Facebook has been trying to make hashtags work across the platform, and it has even revamped the way that its system suggests hashtags to users. It presents users with a list of recommended hashtags based on predictive text, and the list also shows how many posts are using those hashtags across Facebook. It is still in its developmental stage, but Facebook may be looking for more ways to better utilize the feature.
Implications for Marketers:
Marketers and brands can use these trends as a guide for their marketing efforts coming into the year 2021. As many businesses across the globe have suffered from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, Facebook has become a platform for brands to better connect with their customers as they head into their recovery period.
References: https://www.oberlo.com/blog/facebook-trends
