5 Social Media Trends for Small Business in 2021

By: Johana M. Caba, M.A.

Social Media Trends are continuously changing with new algorithms, new social platforms, new features on existing platforms, and new audience psychographics. I've discussed previously the demographics and psychographics of audiences in my post on creating your own Social Media Marketing Plan. In this post, we will touch upon some psychographics that will be causing social media trends to change in 2021. These changes have already been seen with various audiences throughout this year with the COVID-19 Pandemic. Throughout this post, we will discuss various social media trends that small business owners should be aware of for 2021.

Social Media Trends 

1. Social Awareness/Conscious Audience: This year, audiences have become more socially aware and more conscious consumers. Millennials and generation Z tend to engage on social media and actively participate on conversations relating to social issues, mental health, global climate change, etc. This makes for a socially aware audience that tends to think, research, and gather reviews on products and services before they purchase. Furthermore, more consciously aware audiences search for brands and companies that give back to their communities and have active corporate social responsibility programs within their organizations. As a small business, you should be aware of your audience and the things that they value. For these reasons, it is important that you take into consideration your socially aware audience before planning your next marketing campaign.
2. Conversational Marketing: This form of marketing is all about engaging with your audience in a conversational style where you create personalized content for your different customer personas. There is now a need for a two-way communication channel between brands and their consumers where the brand is actively engaging, answering questions, asking for feedback, etc. As Marketing Tech News discussed in a recent post, customers are no longer looking to just purchase products, they are looking to build genuine relationships which are a key factor in creating a good customer experience strategy. 
3. Authentic Relationships: Building authentic relationships is crucial for any business. Aside from being present on social media, brands and businesses need to engage with their audience and respond when they have issues or concerns. It is important for both the brand and the conscious consumers to build these strong and authentic relationships. Keep in mind that you should not just post content and hope for the best. It is very important that you post content to actively communicate and engage with your audience. Respond to customer comments or posts that tag you, answer their questions through Direct Messages, and do everything you can to ensure that the customer journey is not a pain.
4. Disinformation: Social networks have been doing everything in their power over the last few years to tackle the huge disinformation crisis within their platforms. Recently, Facebook and Twitter launched new changes to their platforms to tackle disinformation including warning signs of false information on user posts. This is also something that you should keep in mind for you small business. Although it might not affect you directly, you should be aware of such changes in order to stay on top of engagement. 
5. Old-School Marketing: This is a big one! Old-School Marketing is making a come back. People are once again attracted to audio marketing including radio and podcasts. The big one here is the podcast. Already, 55% of Americans listen to podcasts which means that a part of your target audience is listening to podcasts. It is important to keep this in mind for your marketing strategy in order to take advantage of this "new" avenue of advertising to your business. 

A COVID Content Focus
We just discussed 5 of the social media trends that you will be seeing in 2021. Now, let's take a moment to discuss something new. If you take a look at some of the social trends for next year on Google, you will come across articles from Social Media Today and Talkwalker that discuss COVID content as a trend.  They discuss the 4 C's of COVID content which focus on communication, contactless, cleanliness, and compassion. This is becoming a big topic in marketing because according to Talkwalker, 78% of consumers want brands to help them in their daily lives. What does this mean for small business? Well, this means that consumers are looking for brands, big and small, that can provide a way to help in relation to one of the 4 C's. For example, some businesses offer contactless shopping and deliveries, and others openly communicate about their policies and what they are doing to help. This open communication and the efforts businesses are taking to keep everyone safe through contactless shopping and cleanliness demonstrate the compassion that they have towards their consumers and employees. Additionally, this is very important to keep in mind considering that more members of a business's ideal customers are more socially aware than before. 

These are all trends that you need to keep in mind for your small business, brand, and content. It will be beneficial to keep them in mind when working on your marketing strategy for 2021. And, if you need any help, visit my services page and fill out the contact form to reach out to me.