2020 Social Media Trends, According to HubSpot's Social Media Professor

Through groups, you can find exactly the right people to connect with. Creating a dedicated community for your loyal audience will increase engagement over time. Groups feel safe, encourage dialogue and are great for user research.

At HubSpot Academy, Corey Braccialini and Jen Stefancik created a private Facebook group to support people interested in learning more about content marketing. In the last 4 months, they saw the group grow from 0 to 5,346 people.

Corey told me, “we weren’t really sure if this was something people wanted, but the consistent growth and engagement rates have shown that people were eager to connect in an authentic community about this topic. It helps us identify who is our most engaged audience. To some extent, we know these are our advocates and promoters.”

The key to building a successful group is to stay engaged and involved. Nurturing a group is just as important as creating one.

Stop Using Social as a Broadcast Communication Channel

Social media marketing is about community building and engagement. It is no longer just a broadcast channel for brands, so you want to ensure you are not generating the one-way messaging that was so popular — and ineffective — in the past.

For example, HubSpot’s social team uses quizzes on Instagram Stories to engage with (and try to better understand) the audience.

A lot of this work to engage your audience is done in the copy. Don’t ignore your copywriting.

Social media marketers value creative imagery and videos, sometimes at the cost of engaging copy. I’ve seen some big mistakes that could’ve been easily avoided with a proper review.

But it’s not just about proofreading — make sure your team includes someone with the right content skills, including a strong understanding of voice and tone, and also proper context. Good copywriting can escalate a brand (think, Wendy’s Twitter), and bad copy can hurt your brand’s image.

What can you do instead of broadcasting your messages? Spend time fostering your community by engaging with your followers through comment replies, direct messages, or reposting their content.

You’ll also want a dedicated resource for social listening and monitoring, as well as escalating comments/posts internally as needed and leading external responses.

My Recommended Social Media Tool

There are some great online tools to help you create professional content quickly and easily. Canva is one of many resources for social media marketers to design images that are on brand and engage your audience. When considering your creative content, experiment with and test different styles and types of content. A savvy audience will get tired of seeing the same images in their feeds.

Take a Deep-Dive Into the State of Social Media Marketing

It’s a challenging and exciting time in the world of social media marketing. I’m sure your head is spinning. To get a sense of what other marketers are thinking, get access to over 70 data points and trends from over 3,400 marketers around the world. Dive deeper into HubSpot's survey data by clicking the download button on the CTA below.

Editor's note: This article was originally published in our "Not Another State of Marketing Report" that went live on February 17th, 2020. A lot has changed in the world since then, so keep that in mind as you process these trends and data.