Social media is an ever-evolving landscape that changes from year to year. Trends that are popular today may be gone the next. This is why it’s important that Internet marketers and webmasters stay on top of the latest social media trends — something that we’re going to discuss more of in today’s blog post.
Increased Tweet Limit
Ever since Twitter was first launched nearly a decade ago, it has restricted user tweets to 140 characters or less. But this may soon change, as Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey has expressed interest in increasing the character limit of tweets. While there’s been no official statement on when or even if this change will be made, Dorsey said the company is currently “considering” increasing the character limit of tweets to 10,000. Twitter users have already found a way around the current 140 limit: they’ll write the tweet in a word processing program, take a screenshot of it, and then tweet the screenshot. By increasing the character limit to 10,000, Twitter will encourage search engines to crawl and index user tweets more easily, which should drive more traffic to the social media network.
Facebook Thumbs Down Button
Another social media feature that we’re likely to see in 2016 is the introduction of a thumbs down button on Facebook. Users have pushed Facebook for years to add a thumbs down button, but to no avail. Last year, however, Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg said the company is currently working on a thumbs down button.
Of course, it only makes sense for Facebook to include a thumbs down button, because not every post is something that you ‘like.’ If a friend reveals on his or her timeline that they are sick, you wouldn’t want to ‘like’ their post, but rather a thumbs down button seems more appropriate.
Content-Driven Posts
Facebook recently launched a new content platform. Dubbed “Instant Articles,” it allows brands to publish full-length articles that load, well, almost instantly. Facebook acknowledges the value in content-driven posts such as this, which is why it’s pushing the new service to major content providers.
Video, Video, Video!
There’s a growing trend towards the use of video on social media. Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and even Instagram supports video — a trend that will likely grow in the months and years to come. If you’re looking to enhance your brand’s presence on social media, be sure to include video as part of your content strategy. Social media users love to share and comment on videos, yielding a higher level of engagement than text, photos or links.
