The 7 trends that will dominate social networks in 2021

From social shopping to the boom in Twitter challenges used to advertise, here's what to expect on social platforms in the coming months

(photo: Getty Images) 2020 has given back a great deal of prominence to social networks, also thanks to the measures of distancing imposed by the Covid-19 emergency. A social role but also a political one, with the standoff that saw China and the United States clash with TikTok. In 2021 some of the emerging trends will gain even more share.

1. Tutorial-mania

Not just lip-sync. 2020 saw the explosion of the #LearnConTikTok trend that gave TikTok its cultural turning point: video-tutorials that teach everything, even difficult topics, have sprung up like mushrooms. The lockdown triggered the phenomenon: if the students do not go to school, the school goes to the students with the complicity of the most willing teachers.

On Instagram, meanwhile, it was a triumph of carousels: galleries of posts that, one after the other, make up a sort of horizontal infographic with a few images and many words. The trend has by no means exhausted: from the TikTok headquarters they let it be known that in 2021 they will continue to bet on tutorials and Instagram will not give up by exploiting the Reels function. "People are very interested in learning new things and I believe that the phenomenon will not go away anytime soon", confirms to Wired Benedetta Santini, tiktoker and popularizer of philosophy, who has collected more than 800 thousand likes explaining Plato and Schopenauer in videos of less than a minute. "My secret - he admits - lies in applying philosophy in everyday situations".

2. The guides

At the time of the first lockdown, Instagram proposed to a select number of creators to create mini-guides on health and wellness to help other users in pain for the covid. It was also a way to experiment with the guides, which are basically collections of posts on the same topic with a surplus of text that introduces the various photos. The final effect is that of a guide in social format (with tags, hashtags and all the rest). To date, the function is not accessible to everyone, but in 2021 it should be widespread. And we will see many guides, also because they have an advantage: they allow you to aggregate content already published, without having to create it from scratch. Call it creative recycling.

3. In-app shopping

The engagement between TikTok and the Shopify ecommerce platform is recent. The first TikTok advertising videos have already appeared in the United States, making it possible to purchase products via Shopify and in 2021 they will also land in Europe. In the meantime, a few months ago, Instagram Shopping also took its first steps, which offers, among other things, the possibility of tagging products that are seen in a video or photo to simplify their purchase. Influencers will thus be able to earn their authority with the blessing of the big brands. As journalist Sarah Frier explained in the book No Filter, shopping via social is a genius for brands as it pushes users to impulse purchases, bypassing the review system that has dominated ecommerce so far. This is why we can bet that 2021 will (also) be the year of social shopping.

4. Complaints? No challenge

In jargon they are called branded hashtag challenge and are a special version of the TikTok challenges with products at the center of video-challenges between users, invited to reproduce an advertising content in order to make it viral. The idea that advertising is no longer the famous faces and not even the influencers, but the tiktoker next door is something that not even Andy Warhol would have imagined.

5. Cross-posting

Let's face it: being a creator is not a walk in the park. If before it was enough to create one content for a social network, today it is necessary to create at least four to hit the audience of the main ones: Instagram, TikTok, YouTube and Faceboo k. However, not everyone has the time and energy to keep up with the pace. Here is the idea of ​​cross-posting: create content that is good for more than one platform and share it.

TikTok already allows it through the share posted video to function, which allows you to export videos also on Instagram and Facebook. Instagram, on the other hand, for now does not reciprocate and prevents sharing with TikTok, but once you have created a Reels, just download it to share it on TikTok and on YouTube Shorts, the new YouTube function that allows you to share "vertical videos with a maximum duration of 60 seconds" , that is, similar to those seen on TikTok and Instagram. The lowest common denominator is time: 30 seconds maximum.

6. In video veritas

To date, watching the cold numbers, Instagram TV (Igtv) hasn't broken through. Time to time: 2021 could be the year of its redemption. First, because as a recent Cisco study explains, by 2022, 82% of all online content will be video, which means that short or long films will overwhelm us. And then because next year anyone who will make videos for Igtv could earn: in May, the chief operating officer of the social, Justin Osofsky, declared that Instagram will give creators 55% of the earnings coming from 15-second commercials, which they can insert in their video. And not only: "Instagram is working on several tools that will make creators earn", explains to Wired Yari Brugnoni, CEO of Ninjalitics, the made in Italy app that analyzes the performance of Instagram profiles.

7. Social visual journalism

The Washington Post, on TikTok, opened the dance with light journalistic content, designed for the very young. In the meantime, in 2020 Now This has filled Instagram with informative mini-videos with subtitles: many and different topics, but always designed to glue the social media audience to the screen. Cnn, The Guardian, CBS news and other big names arrived, all united by the intention of supporting the latest transformation of journalism: social visual journalism. A trend destined to grow, judging by the number of job advertisements for the search for video content editors and the success of profiles such as that of the journalist Mona Chalabi, who in one year has practically tripled her followers on Instagram: 430 thousand people who they recognize her ability to synthesize news and facts in posts halfway between comics and infographics. All clues that make us think that among the many slogans of 2021 there could also be Show, don't tell.

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