By Lucy Siegel | December 18, 2020
As we exit 2020, marketers and communications professionals in the Americas can learn something useful from current social media trends to take into 2021. We surveyed public relations agencies in the United States, Canada, and Brazil on this subject. This post will share the trends in social media usage that stand out clearly from the data.
Social media has more influence than ever on product sales.
Carla Bianchi, founder of Carla Bianchi Comunicação in Sao Paulo, Brazil, puts it in a nutshell: “Social media has an extremely strong influence on product sales.”
In addition to organic social media postings and discussions, social media platforms are offering more and more tools for directly selling products. Social media platforms now allow marketers to engage in direct sales by posting high-quality photos and updates linked to click and buy opportunities. “Pinterest just rolled out new editorial and shopping features in November, which makes it a higher priority platform for our agency to maximize,” states Julia Labaton, president and founder of beauty and lifestyle firm RED PR in New York City.
Says Aurélie Char, account manager at VROY Communications in Montreal, “In Canada, social media shopping is definitely on the rise. In the future, social media will be multifunctional platforms both for purchasing products and for increasing the visibility and awareness of a brand.”
Paul Furiga, president and chief storyteller at WordWrite in Pittsburgh, comments, “If social media shopping were like the old department stores, we are just now on the ground floor, with plenty of room to go up, up, up to more lucrative sales floors. The key is the algorithmic targeting abilities of social media platforms. They can surgically place the right products in front of the right audiences, even small, niche audiences. There’s just no way brick and mortar can compete with that.”
Customer relations on social media has become a PR specialty offered by some agencies.
Positive comments from consumers on social media about a product are likely to influence others to buy the product, while negative reviews of a product persuade people not to buy. For that reason, customer relations on social media has become a communications specialty for some public relations agencies, such as The Other Agency in New York City and WordWrite in Pittsburgh. Says Paul Furiga, president and chief storyteller at WordWrite, “Customer service on social media is important. And it’s too specialized a function for marketers to staff and manage.”
Social media reviews influence consumer attitudes towards companies themselves, not just their products or services. A study done some years ago by the Wharton School, reported in Knowledge@Wharton, showed that negative reviews of retail services resonated more loudly than positive reviews. People are more likely to vent strongly on social media about negative experiences with retailers than to talk powerfully about positive experiences. This information is crucial for product sales because, according to GlobalWebIndex, 54% of social media users research products on social media before buying them. Positive social media referrals make 71% of users more likely to purchase products and services. This example of two-way communication shows the importance of listening, not just speaking, on social media.
Social media platforms’ importance for public relations varies by age group and country.
If you have read our previous posts on social media trends in Europe and in Asia/Oceania, this may seem obvious. We asked the public relations firms in the Americans that we surveyed to choose the most important social media platforms for reaching each age grouping. The social media platforms chosen vary by the PR goals of the company or agency client. Says Labaton, “I would choose more platforms for certain generations than others because of the nature of my clients. For example, LinkedIn is vital for company ethos messaging and thought leadership to reach anyone in the career stages of life; however, my client’s top priorities are product sales, so I didn’t select LinkedIn as a top pick. Pinterest has become more important for lifestyle clients because they recently released a Guides feature that allows creators to curate their static posts by content types – for example, ‘Best Winter Coats,’ ‘Tops Spots in NYC,’ and ‘Social Justice.’”
Here are the results:
United States
| Age Group | First Tier | Second Tier |
| Ages 18-24 (Gen Z Adults) | Instagram YouTube TikTok |
|
| Ages 25-39 (Millenials/Gen Y) | Instagram YouTube |
Twitter SnapChat TikTok |
| Ages 40-55 (Gen X) | Facebook |
Twitter YouTube |
| Ages 56-74 (Baby Boomers) | Facebook |
|
| Ages 75+ (Seniors) | Twitter Nextdoor |
Canada
| Age Group | First Tier | Second Tier |
| Ages 18-24 (Gen Z Adults) | Instagram YouTube SnapChat TikTok |
N/A |
| Ages 25-39 (Millenials/Gen Y) | Facebook |
N/A |
| Ages 40-55 (Gen X) | Facebook |
N/A |
| Ages 56-74 (Baby Boomers) | N/A | |
| Ages 75+ (Seniors) | N/A |
Brazil
| Age Group | First Tier | Second Tier |
| Ages 18-24 (Gen Z Adults) | TikTok |
YouTube Twitch (video gaming community) |
| Ages 25-39 (Millenials/Gen Y) | Facebook |
TikTok |
| Ages 40-55 (Gen X) | Instagram |
|
| Ages 56-74 (Baby Boomers) | Facebook |
|
| Ages 75+ (Seniors) | Facebook |
The popularity of social media platforms can shift quickly.
Brazil’s social media fluctuations are a good example of this. For both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) PR, Verdelho Comunicação in Sao Paulo sees Instagram as the most used platform. According to Valdeci Verdelho, founder of Verdelho, “Facebook used to be more important as a strategic tool for this too, but companies have been migrating to LinkedIn. Brazil is now the 3rd largest market for LinkedIn in the world, with more than 30 million users. Companies and brands now realize that this is the place to work on their reputations.” Verdelho comments that WhatsApp is highly popular in Brazil, but its credibility is declining due to spam and fake news. He says Facebook is declining in importance for the same reasons. “The difference is that WhatsApp is a communication tool, so people don’t stop using it, while they use Facebook for leisure,” he says. “if the quality of the content drops and there are no new features, the public loses interest. And this is what has been happening.”
Carla Bianchi agrees that Facebook is losing influence in Brazil. “A big reason is its loss of favor with young people,” she states. “They no longer use it because it’s dated.” However, she says it is still highly valued as a tool for B2C PR. She agrees with Verdelho that LinkedIn has become the platform of choice for B2B PR, and that Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube have been growing the most quickly.
Verdelho notes that 2020 has been the year of TikTok. “At the beginning, most users were Generation Z, but the platform became popular among older people, and brands have already begun to identify market opportunities similar to what they had on Instagram and Facebook,” he comments.
These shifts in social media platforms’ popularity in Brazil are quite significant to their well-being. Brazil is among the top three countries worldwide for the activity level of social media users (as measured by how often people post content), along with Mexico and China, according to digital market research company Synthesio. Incidentally, Brazil is the largest of the South American and Latin American markets; twice as big as Mexico, the next biggest market, and four times as big as Columbia, the third biggest.
In the U.S., Furiga cites TikTok’s growth explosion, despite the federal government’s efforts to cut it off. “It has now reached the point where it’s more than a focus of teenagers perfecting dance moves and has to be seriously considered by tastemakers across industries,” he says. “While nearly every major platform continues to boast growth, some are seemingly losing steam. Snapchat would be among them. Its best features have been copied or stolen by other platforms with big infrastructure (Facebook’s Instagram) or innovators (TikTok) who can move quickly to give social media consumers what they want.”
Lee Weinstein, president of Weinstein Public Relations in Portland, OR, points to Instagram’s and LinkedIn’s growth. “Instagram is growing because of its visual nature and the relief it provides from political material,” he comments. “LinkedIn’s growth is due to increased business use of the platform.”
Jeffrey Graubard, principal, The Other Agency in New York, agrees Instagram’s visual nature has fueled its growth. “I also feel that Facebook is on the decline because it has little B2B application,” he says. “And because it’s a political football.”
Char says the influence of TikTok is increasing in Canada, too. “It’s a very accessible platform,” she notes. She gives the same reasons as her colleagues elsewhere for Facebook losing influence: “Its credibility has diminished due to fake news and its older demographics,” she comments.
Social media platform choices depend heavily on industry audiences.
Certain platforms are not appropriate for some industries. The choice of social media platforms to reach out to various industry audiences has changed somewhat over time. An example is Verdelho’s comment above about migration from Facebook to LinkedIn to build business reputations.
Our survey included a list of industries and asked North American PR agencies to select their top choice of platforms for each of them:
| Best Social Media Platforms for PR by Industry | ||||
| Industry | Best PR Platforms | Industry | Best PR Platforms | |
| Technology, Software | YouTubeLinkedIn | Business to Business (B2B) | LinkedInFacebook
|
|
| Healthcare, Medical, Pharmaceutical | LinkedInFacebook | Education | FacebookLinkedIn | |
| Retail | FacebookInstagram
|
Energy | FacebookInstagram
|
|
| Fashion, Beauty, Wellness | InstagramPinterest | Food & Beverage | InstagramFacebook
YouTube |
|
| Banking, Insurance, Investment | FacebookLinkedIn | Law | LinkedInFacebook
|
|
| Travel, Tourism, Hospitality, Dining | FacebookInstagram | Non-Profit | FacebookInstagram | |
| Entertainment, | InstagramFacebook | Media &Publishing | LinkedInInstagram
|
|
| Sports, Outdoors | InstagramFacebook
YouTube |
Real Estate | InstagramYouTube
|
|
| Automotive | InstagramYouTube | Government | FacebookLinkedIn
|
|
| Manufacturing | FacebookInstagram
|
Transportation, Aviation | InstagramFacebook
|
|
| Architecture, Interior Design, Furnishings | InstagramPinterest
|
|||
Social media platforms listed above are the ones cited most frequently by PR agencies we surveyed as the platforms they would use on behalf of clients in the industries listed.
For all industries in total, some platforms are used for PR much more than others. See the graph below. The percentage for each platform represents the percent of all platforms total mentions for all industries by the North American PR agency respondents.
The role of influencers on social media is increasingly both controversial and important.
“Influencers are as important as ever,” states Weinstein. Graubard agrees and says, “Depending on audience and purpose, social media influencers are growing in importance, particularly with younger audiences.” Weinstein adds, “We are also finding that a placement by a group/association that is important to our clients on social media is of equal value to an earned media placement.”
Notes Furiga, “The controversies over the independence (or lack of it) among social media influencers are far from over. Most recently, the New York Times profiled the growing influence of collegiate cheerleaders, who, because they are not participants in an NCAA-supervised sport, can sign lucrative sponsorship deals, while the athletes they cheer from the sidelines cannot. The tension and contrast between these kinds of influencers will continue to draw the attention of regulators and skeptical consumers.”
In Canada, says Char, social media influencers have more and more power. “We regularly recommend influence marketing to our clients because we see it as a good return on investment.”
The 2020 American elections clearly show social media’s echo chamber effect.
Social media trends and usage differ from country to country, but there are some similarities. One is the echo chamber effect of social media. Users of many social media platforms are in a kind of bubble, surrounded by like-minded people. They tend to interact almost exclusively with those who hold the same views and read articles posted by others that support the opinions and beliefs they already have. The discourse leading up to the 2020 presidential election in the United States is a perfect example of that effect.
In 2016, an academic study published in the journal PNAS (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States) analyzed 376 million Facebook users’ interactions with over 900 news outlets. The study found that people tend to seek information that aligns with their views. However, it turns out there may be technology at work that causes them to do so. According to a recent study reported in Digital Information World, the echo chamber effect on social media platforms is closely related to user experience moderation by the platforms themselves. On Facebook and Twitter, moderators use algorithms with other methods to keep users’ experiences within their comfort zones. If users frequently post about their opinions and beliefs, the algorithm would keep them from coming across opposing viewpoints. People who follow public figures may see opinions they disagree with, but they typically don’t interact with those people, so it doesn’t affect their views.
Facebook and Twitter did not build this type of algorithm into their software to create deep divisions among people, although this has been the result. They simply wanted to make their users as comfortable as possible so they would stick around longer. According to the study, some platforms do not operate this way – the study examined Reddit, for example, and found its users to be less separated by their views. But Facebook is so widely used globally that this type of echo chamber effect unquestionably has power in reinforcing many people’s beliefs, which inevitably leads to deep divisions among people.
Disinformation is ever-present.
Fake news is in the news all over the world. While some connect fake news to politics, it has also permeated the business world. Its spread on social media makes it a huge problem, one that can be difficult to solve.
“Like so many other aspects of social media, disinformation is here to stay,” comments Furiga. “And in crisis communication, it’s social media disinformation that either starts the crisis or makes it worse. As a result, it is increasingly more common for our clients to need proactive and reactive strategies to deal with disinformation before they are the subject of it on social media. Because social media disinformation moves so quickly, you must prepare for it in advance.”
Weinstein explains how his agency often deals with disinformation about a client company or product. “Sometimes social media, especially Instagram, becomes fraught with issue comments that can be awful. We try to refer social media users to a client’s website when that happens so the issue can be explained thoroughly from the client’s viewpoint.”
For more information on fake news and how to deal with it, listen to PR Boutiques International’s recent podcasts (Fake News, and Fake News Part 2), and see our blog post on the topic.
Metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of social media in PR and marketing have changed.
A brand or company’s number of followers and “likes” on social media have become less important as a success metric over time. Many platforms themselves have de-emphasized these features. Jack Dorsey, CEO of Twitter, said in a 2019 TED talk that he thinks it was probably a mistake for Twitter to establish the “like” measurement, because likes aren’t important to emphasize. Communications professionals have realized that what is truly essential and worth measuring are actions that lead to meeting communications and marketing goals. Metrics now emphasized include those that indicate audience engagement, such as sharing of content by followers, or unsolicited mentions by influencers.
Looking back and looking ahead
Social media technology has caused significant disruption in society worldwide, both positively and negatively. During this horrible year when billions of people everywhere have been forced into isolation, social media has provided some human contact and comfort. It has also been a source of information about products we couldn’t see close up because we can’t shop at brick and mortar stores right now. It has even become a convenient place to shop.
On the other hand, the negatives – fake news and the echo chamber effect, to name two – have had and will continue to have real consequences for society and will not go away any time soon. One thing we can count on as we move forward into 2021: there will be continual changes and new social media trends that will impact society and our work as communications professionals.
In the marketing and communications arena, public relations professionals are overall the most knowledgeable about social media use. Two-way communication, a defining characteristic of social media, has always been the bailiwick of public relations. It distinguishes good public relations from advertising and marketing because it incorporates both listening and speaking to organizations’ key audiences. “Publics who are treated as equals of an organization and whose ideas are communicated to the organization – as well as the ideas of the organization being communicated to the publics – more often support or fail to oppose an organization…” So wrote James E. Grunig, editor of “Excellence in Communication and Public Relations Management,” a book published in 1992. Social media provides the ability to listen and speak to an organization’s target audiences, the only way to develop relationships. And PR is all about developing long-term relationships between an organization and its different audiences.