By Emily Jarboe

Have you ever thought about what social media will look like in the next 10 years? Social media and its strategies are constantly changing. Consider just how much social media has evolved in the last five years. Companies need to keep up with change in trends and progression of technology in order to stay current and connect with their audience.

While it can be difficult to predict the future of social media marketing, there are at least three trends that experts say can be anticipated:

Consumption of visual content will change

As a public relations professional or a social media marketer, you should know how important it is to include visual content into your social media marketing plan. If you have not shifted your attention to visual content, then you are in need of a new marketing strategy because this particular trend should not be ignored.

Here are some statistics I found that justify the statements above:

• “When people read information, they’re likely to remember only 10% of that information three days later. However, if a video presents that same information, people retained 70% of the information three days later.”
• “Video content currently represents more than 70% of all internet traffic.”
• “Facebook users watch 8 billion videos per day.”
• “4X as many consumers would prefer to watch a video about a product than to read about it.”

The Rise of Dark Social

According to Techopedia, Dark Social refers to “the social sharing of content that occurs outside of what can be measured by web analytics programs.” Dark Social can be a challenge for companies that are trying to track and monitor social media activity and website referrals.  Dark Social mostly occurs when a link is sent through email or instant messaging, instead of shared on a social media platform where results can be easily measured.

The Death of Organic Reach and Facebook

Facebook is making it very hard to reach your audience organically. Facebook originated with the initial idea to help people connect with each other. Due to users complaining that posts from the media, businesses, and brands have “crowded out their personal moments,” Facebook decided to be very cautious and selective about what they place on their users’ feeds. Looking towards the future, brands may want to shift their Facebook strategy entirely to a paid approach since the luxury of a free online presence is declining.

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While the future of social media marketing can’t always be easily forecasted, we can almost guarantee that the trends are likely to change as technology progresses. Our social media strategies and how we approach them are constantly evolving, and it’s especially important to keep up with those changes in order to successfully connect with our audience and stay relevant.