The new year is upon us, which means it’s time to look ahead at what 2020 will bring for social media. This post goes over several social media trends to keep an eye on, including changes in how people shop, how businesses sell products and build trust, and how people interact with content.

Seamless Shopping

One trend that began in 2019 will only gain steam throughout 2020, according to Social Media Today’s Lucy Rendler-Kaplan. That trend is shopping through social media, which lets customers make purchases without leaving whichever social platform they are on. This is a powerful tool because it dramatically reduces the number of steps customers need to take to buy something, making it much more likely they will complete their purchase.

Employees as Influencers

One of the more surprising social media trends is that businesses may begin using their own employees as de facto influencers more and more. Prominent social influencers are quite expensive, but with an employee advocacy program, businesses can tap into their workforce to deliver messages over social media at a tiny fraction of the cost. Among other possibilities, employees can share information about a product or service they’re excited about, helping gain attention from customers. They can also share the reasons they like working at their company, helping recruit new, high-quality employees. 

Interactive Content

As it becomes easier to use and create, interactive content will become more and more common in 2020. For example, tools like Facebook’s Spark AR Studio make it easy for people—even with limited experience—to add augmented reality features to content. This is probably the most futuristic of the social media trends covered in this post.

Less Advertising, More Trust Building

At Entrepreneur.com, contributor Deep Patel predicts that smart companies will shift away from using social media purely to advertise and toward using it to build trust with customers. In other words, companies will turn to social media to boost customer confidence. Tactics they will use to do so include engaging with customer comments and showing off socially responsible corporate activities.