Hootsuite Top 5 Social Media Trends for 2019 – Trust and Intimacy

Update 30 Jan 2019

See Hootsuite’s own video breakdown of what three of the trends mean for business – including stories, closing the ads gap, and messaging. #socialtrends2019

In a quick 10 minute watch, three of the Hootsuite team offer case studies and ideas around what kind of content makes effective stories? How can ads be personalised and relevant (without being creepy) and lead to user-generated content? And how are brands to leverage messaging apps, including effective use of messaging bots?



Check out the video below.

Hootsuite Just Gave Marketers Its Social Media Predictions for 2019 – and a big issue is trust.

This time, it’s personal.

The impact of growing user demand for personalised, intimate and meaningful connections has put new pressure on the social media channels – and on businesses.

It was Facebook that learned a hard lesson in 2018 with its Cambridge Analytica Scandal, but all platforms, as indicated in the Edelman Trust Barometer Report, have suffered.

An alarming 60% of people claim to no longer trust social networks.



The takeout for brands? Be transparent, be ethical, be aware of who is following you and give them communities to connect in.  Conversations are becoming more important than ever.

Stories Instead Of News Feeds

With engagement in stories growing a massive 15x faster than news feed content, telling stories that are relevant, engaging, and shareable is crucial.



Note that high production values won’t cover for a lack of depth or substance. While more than half of businesses cite no video skills or low budget as being their greatest challenge, users are happy to see it kept real – raw, rough – and with a lot less sell or call to action.

Pay to Play – But How Good Is Your Game?

Organic reach for business has plummeted, in Facebook especially. So as more and more marketers throw themselves into social advertising, the costs go up – but not always the returns. Users expect more; ads are an unwelcome intrusion unless they have meaning and relevance.

Pairing the right creative – considered, clever and engaging – with a pinpoint target market and clearly-identified goals and metrics gives the savvy social media marketer an edge over the competition

Social Commerce – The Marketer’s Marketplace

With channels like Facebook and Instagram now letting users buy without leaving the app, it would seem the customer journey, at least for some brands, can be almost seamlessly nurtured.



Screenshot courtesy Social Media Trends 2019 Report – Hootsuite



But well over two-thirds of respondents to Hootsuite’s 2018 survey had neither implemented, nor planned to use, social commerce. This opportunity to leverage micro influencers and fans as they share and show off their hauls to prospective buyers – who can follow suit at a click – is not one to miss.



Getting the Message in 2019

WhatsApp, Messenger, WeChat, QQ, and Skype collectively have nearly five billion active monthly users. That makes chat the most commonly used social tool on the planet – with 90% of consumers happy to use messaging to communicate with business.



The warning? Messaging isn’t just another advertising platform.

Conversations need to be real, engaging, and, in keeping with the trend, personal. Chatbots are key to scalable messenger marketing, but they’re not a set-and-forget thing. Ongoing chatbot fine-tuning with services such as Conversologie’s can help maintain relevance.

The Top 5 Social Media Trends

1. Rebuilding Trust
2. Storifying Social
3. Closing the Ads Gap
4. Cracking the Commerce Code
5. Messaging Eats The World

The Conversologie Mantra

As a Digital Services Partner to Hootsuite, at Conversologie we can only echo Hootsuite’s findings: the social media management enterprise’s finding, from more than 3,000 businesses, reflects our own conclusions.

Conversation, personalisation, relevance and realness are in: hype and hard sell are out. The privilege of being allowed into the social media user’s personal space is not to be abused.

To learn more about how you can stay on top of 2019 in social media, book a consultation with Chief Conversologist Jam Mayer.