HOOTSUITE’S PERSPECTIVE: SOCIAL MEDIA THEMES Rebuilding trust. In the wake of Cambridge Analytica and the fight against fake news, consumer trust in social media channels plummeted, while trust in experts, journalists, and immediate circles on social media increased. Building employee advocacy programs, one-to-one messaging at scale, and renewing customer communities will be key strategies for brands in 2019. Storifying social. Stories—the ephemeral visual slideshows—will surpass feeds as the primary way people share content within the next year. 64% of marketers have either implemented Instagram Stories into their strategy or plan to do so in the next 12 months, according to Hootsuite’s 2019 Social Trends survey. Closing the ads gap. More competition on paid social is forcing marketers to up their game. Marketers recognize that to see real ROI, they need to pair ad budgets with an equal investment of time, creativity, and targeting savvy. Cracking the commerce code. Improved social shopping technologies have begun to fuel e-commerce sales. These innovations include Instagram’s shoppable posts, more brands using live streaming to sell products, and new in-stream buying plugins for Instagram. Messaging eats the world. Top messaging apps—WhatsApp, Facebook Messenger, WeChat, QQ, and Skype—now collectively count nearly five billion monthly active users. The core challenge is scaling one-to-one customer interactions on social. Advertising tactics will also need to adapt, requiring sharper targeting and conversational tact. Click here to download Hootsuite’s 2019 report on these 5 trends including new strategies and best-in-class brand examples. 145