Late last year, I made some predictions about social media in my post, The Top 7 Social Media Marketing Trends That Will Dominate 2016. Now that we’re more than halfway through 2016, let’s take a look at what the dominating trends really are:

1. Less is more, better is better.

Social media is a crowded world already—there are billions of users with social profiles, and they all follow hundreds to thousands of different accounts. On top of that, most platforms’ newsfeed algorithms now sort posts based on a degree of perceived relevance, rather than based on the time of publication (in fact, Instagram just changed theirs over recently). Add in the fact that users are beginning to prefer hyper-relevant, in-the-moment content to regurgitated updates or retrospective posts, and you have a perfect formula for users to prefer fewer, but better posts. Quality has always been more important than quantity, but now social platforms and users are further cementing that fact.

2. A shift is happening in platform dynamics.

Until recently, the three big players of the social media game were Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn—almost indisputably—and all three platforms served similar functions for slightly different niches. Today, those positions have changed and diversified; Instagram and Snapchat are newer players in the game, but each serves a niche role despite having massive user bases.

3. Live streaming is getting bigger.

Video content has seen a huge spike in popularity over the past few years, in part because it has become a more accessible medium, and in part because users are growing tired of older mediums. Combined with the trend of users demanding more “live” and in-the-moment updates, live streaming video has seen a major increase in popularity; especially with the recent release of Facebook Live.

Source: here.