The digital behavior: Usage, trends & insights
The 2021 Topics and Trends report from Facebook IQ
We started the year by publishing a summary of “The 2021 Topics and Trends report by Facebook IQ” – a report that has gathered and analyzed topics and trends from Facebook and Instagram during the past year. With data from Europe, North America, Asia and Latin America, we brought with us insights into what trends were born in 2020 and which were and still are worth keeping an eye on in 2021. A report divided into four overall categories; Education and activism, lifestyle, technology and leisure.
E-commerce exploded in 2020: Insights about the user behavior that you need to know
E-commerce picked up speed during the previous year and due to the current pandemic, growth increased in more product categories. In February, we therefore shared the latest statistics in social shopping and valuable insights for e-retailers from, among others, “The 2020 Facebook Christmas Package” and Influencer Marketing Hub.
DigiView summarized: Think forward 2021 – The social reset
In March, we summarized We Are Social’s annual trend report, which aims to highlight the complex and ever-changing online consumer behavior and explore the role that brands can play in reflecting and shaping it. The 2021 report was compiled by their team of experts from each of their 15 international offices worldwide.
DigiView summarized: Digital 2021, the global overview report
In April, we also offered a crash course of use per platform in our summary of the report that We are social & Hootsuite conducts every year – “Digital 2021”. A study that maps the digital media landscape and important insights into 2021.
Get started with social media
Are you in the starting blocks of implementing social media as part of your marketing strategy and need support on how to get started? During spring, we published several guides for some of our largest social platforms to help you as a marketer get started with your advertising in social media:
- Advertising on Youtube: Guide & Best practice
- Advertising on Snapchat – Step by Step
- Advertising on LinkedIn: A Beginner’s Guide
- Get started with your advertising on Twitter
- Get started with advertising on Pinterest
- Advertising on Facebook & Instagram
- All about the fastest growing social media app – TikTok
In addition to the posts above, we have made a guide for all ad placements on social media.
News and trends: Platform by platform
Facebook & Instagram
Facebook is the largest social media channel and has 2.7 billion users, followed by Instagram which has 1 billion active users every month. Advertising on Facebook therefore opens up the possibilities of reaching the right target group by having a large database that helps you find the right people.
During the spring we published these news about Facebook & Instagram:
- The standalone tool Facebook analytics will be phased out and Facebook’s other business tools: Facebook Business Suite, Ads Manager & Events manager will replace the tool. In the blog post, we take a closer look at the complementary tools.
Read the article here.
- Facebook launched dynamic ads for streaming services in order to raise the content libraries of streaming platforms to a relevant target group. Dynamic advertising is now available for all streaming services around the world in the blog post, we take a closer look at the ad format. Read the article here.
- Instagram seems to be testing advertising in Reels during spring. First out was Italy, Brazil, Germany and Australia to open up for creators to create ads in the format before they hopefully open up to more countries in the coming weeks and in the blog post you can read more about how the ad format works. Read the article here.
- Instagram has also launched a digital magazine “Instagram Insider” – with trends, news and inspiration for those who often scroll through the “explore tab” in search of the very latest trends. Read the article here.
- Is all of the Instagram content controlled by the Algorithm? We have clarified this question mark in our blog post: 9 ways to relate to Instagram’s algorithm 2021. Read the article here.
- As social shopping grows, Shopify is strengthening its payment options on Facebook and Instagram, and we took a closer look at this in this blog post.
Today, the platform has over 260 million active users every month, and in total there are over 760 million users in over 200 countries according to statistics from Kinsa. On the social platform, there are enormous opportunities for you who want to reach out in B2B and want to build a network in your professional life. On average, LinkedIn users spend 17 minutes every day on the platform. Of all active users, 40 million also apply for jobs via the platform every month.
During the spring we have published this update about LinkedIn:
- Over the past year, LinkedIn’s live streams have increased by more than 400% compared to the year before and during the spring, they therefore launched new features to enable you to “Boost” organic posts and increase the number of participants to your digital events via event ads. Read the article here.
TikTok
In recent years, TikTok has grown enormously since it was launched in 2016. The app merged with Musical.ly 2018 and has been on the top lists of the most downloaded apps in both the App Store and Play Store. Today, the app has over 1 billion active users.
During the spring, we have published these news about TikTok:
- TikTok has introduced a new advertising feature: lead generation, which will effectively help advertisers create lead-generating ads with the aim of expanding their customer base and more easily driving the number of conversions via the platform. Read the article here.
- Sound and music effects are a big part of video creation for TikTok users. During the spring, 6 new effects were launched that can give creators more ways to use music and sound effects on the platform. Read the article here.
- The mobile format is growing, however, and TikTok seems to be beta-testing a new recruitment tool for some selected companies, which will be a service that is primarily aimed at generation Z. Read the article here.
- TikTok has also launched a new video editing tool, “TikTok Video Editor”, which will make it easier and more cost-effective for advertisers to create video ads. Read the article here.
Youtube
Youtube is the world’s second largest search engine and the platform contributes with great opportunities to reach a wide audience. Video is growing and attracting the most engagement and it is predicted that over 80% of all content on the web will be in mobile format by 2022.
During the spring we have published this update about Youtube:
- Youtube has tested a new format “Youtube shorts”, that includes short vertical videos, and is available for creators in both India and the United States. Read the article here.
Snapchat
Snapchat is a social platform where you as a user can share photos and videos with various stickers and filters or make a video call and chat with other users. The app was launched in 2011 in the United States. Today, the app is used daily by 238 million Internet users around the world, according to statistics from Hootsuite. The app has active users who on average open the app more than 30 times a day. Snapchat has a young target group compared to other social channels, as many as 82% of all Snapchaters are under 34 years old. According to a survey by Hootsuite, 60% of Snapchat’s users make spontaneous purchases.
Today, Pinterest has over 442 million global users and there are great opportunities for you to increase your growth by advertising on the platform. 48% have shopping as a priority when they use the app’s search function, which means that you can advertise to a buying-oriented target group.
During the spring, we have published this article about Pinterest:
- Recent searches on Pinterest extend beyond the pandemic. Over a year, the pandemic has limited our everyday lives, which has made us more creative than ever. Home projects have, among other things, been a rising trend, which seems to stay for a while longer. However, we also dream of traveling and socializing with people. We took a closer look at the search trends on Pinterest. Read the article here.
Other trends
The hottest trend of the spring has been Clubhouse – the audio app that took the world by storm. One year after launch, the app had over 12.7 million downloads. Initially, Clubhouse was only available to iOS users, but recently launched a version for Android.
The audio format is growing through new functions and platforms, which opens up new opportunities for companies, which we wrote more about in our articles: “The social media audio trend: 5 marketing formats that you need to consider” and “The audio trend is accelerating: Facebook, Twitter & LinkedIn are fighting for the podium.” Is the audio format going to stay?
Dispo was a new photo app that launched in 2020, where you can share nostalgic photos taken by a digital disposable camera. We took a closer look at the app in this post and wondered about its future: Dispo – Just buzz or the next Instagram?
Insights from Team DigiView
DigiViews Head Of Performance, Ellen Lidbrink, shared her 7 best tips to keep in mind as an e-retailer when it comes to advertising on social media.
“In 2020, e-commerce grew at a fast speed, while social media continued its constant development in our increasingly digital society. The competition for consumers is tougher than ever and in a competitive climate, you as an e-retailer need a clear strategy to succeed in reaching both existing and potential customers. ”
Ellen also wrote about the unexplored opportunities on Twitter and Pinterest. Business opportunities in our most popular social media; Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat have long been well known. But in recent years, additional opportunities have opened up through advertising on Pinterest and Twitter and in this article, Ellen highlights why you should not miss these channels in your media mix.
Our digital strategist Sofia Vinsa has extensive experience in B2B marketing. She wrote about “5 mistakes that B2B companies make in their paid social media marketing in a blog post. Where she contributed with many interesting insights and common patterns about organizational challenges.
Andreas Bengtsson, CEO of DigiView, shared 7 reasons why your organization should use social selling. A sales strategy that is about building value-based relationships with key people and decision makers. We see a trend in social media that personalized content is growing because it creates value. In social selling, a lot is about the people behind the brand and Andreas tells more about this in this blog post.
David Andersson, Performance Marketer at DigiView, shared a beginner’s guide to the technical set-up to measure your social media advertising. To be able to measure and see how your campaigns perform in social media, a technical set is needed to get valuable data that you can then use to optimize your campaign and achieve successful results. David gathered a couple of important foundations that you must not forget in your technical implementation in his blog post.
Totte Annerbrink, Art Director at DigiView, shared 7 success factors for results-driven content in social media. Communicating to the right target group is the basis for achieving good results in social media. But exactly what you communicate is also a crucial factor in achieving success. Totte goes into some success factors and what you should think about for results-driven content in your blog post.
Thank you!
We hope you enjoyed the reading and gained some valuable insights about the digital marketing landscape 2021, so far. If you’re unsure for how to tackle things and go about it, we’re always at your disposal.
Team DigiView wish you a great summer and looking forward to an existing autumn with new insights, trends and news to be shared. Don’t forget to subscribe to stay updated! 🥳