• by Oliver Yonchev , September 20, 2019

The world of social media is regularly evolving, with fast-paced shifts and updates throughout Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and other key social platforms. Here are seven social media trends to watch out for before the new year starts.

More ad budget will be spent on TikTok. The average TikTok user now spends around 45 minutes per day on TikTok, according to Fast Company, which is more time than on Facebook. I see TikTok taking incremental ad budgets from Facebook, as momentum keeps swinging in the new network’s favor.

Facebook will continue investing in long-form news shows, but with a European focus. The platform’s bid for long-form, episodic content shows no sign of lessening any time soon, leading to more mid-roll programmatic advertising opportunities for brands.

We will see more ads within Instagram Stories. Story ad frequency has drastically increased in recent months, to the point where it's detracting from the overall Instagram user experience. For example, Instagram was experimenting with increasing ad volume in Stories via testing back-to-back Stories ads from different brands. This kind of feature could really tick off users.

Instagram will continue its inevitable decline of organic reach. Facebook-owned Instagram will follow the path of the holding company. We will see organic reach continue to decline, as brands will need to continue to pay more to access the community they've invested in growing. The latest data shows a steep decline over time, and I expect this to accelerate in the next 12 months.

Facebook Groups will provide a big opportunity for brands. Facebook has platform challenges, as audience growth stagnates and young people leave the platform in droves. Facebook needs to find a purpose in people's lives, and the company believes that will come in the form of Groups. Facebook is changing the user experience to put Groups and community at the center of the platform, which offers an opportunity for brands that act quickly and start to nurture their own communities in this arena.

Twitter will continue to offer brands the most cost-effective opportunity to reach many people.Twitter continues to hold value in the social world, despite changing since its inception. A well-written, well-timed tweet is one of the only ways in which a brand can create viral magic, reaching millions of people without paying big media bucks. Due to the success of fast food brands and other playful brands on Twitter, we'll see many companies try their hand at the art of Twitter satire. I’m a huge fan of the platform; more and more brands should be investing headspace and creative efforts into Twitter.

50% of all brands will launch or plan to launch their own podcast. Podcasting allows marketers to create self-owned media outside of social algorithms and change up their media offerings. With the entry level to podcasting rather low from an investment standpoint, many brands will try creating branded podcasts. I believe many of these brands will fail, but the 20% of brands that get them right will reap all the rewards.