The ongoing pandemic situation is one which the world has not seen in a hundred years. This has led to lockdown of almost every single country in the planet. Along with the lockdown there came a host of other issues as well. But one industry which seemed to be thriving more than ever was the social media industry. During this lockdown the industry seems to have reached new peaks than ever before.
There have been quite a few trends during the lockdown which the blog will discuss in more detail.
Increased social media presence (regular dance and workout videos)
One of the first trends which occurred during the COVID-19 phase was the increased presence of pretty much everyone on social media. Most people who used to spend a small portion of their time on social media started spending increasingly higher amounts as time progressed. This also resulted in more revenue generated from these platforms.
Higher profits for social media giants streaming services (FB, TikTok, Youtube)
The number of people using streaming services such as Netflix, Youtube and other such services increased exponentially during the lockdown. As a result of this trend, such companies posted record profits during this period. This also increased in more number of entities willing to advertise their products over such platforms. Overall it was a huge benefit for such organizations.
Increase in impulse online shopping and social media marketing
Apart from organizations providing streaming subscriptions, another type of organisastion which prospered was that from e-commerce industry. E-commerce giants such as amazon and flipkart also saw a huge surge in revenue during the lockdown period when people started preferring their services to other physical shop services. This also resulted in impulse online purchases and other such online purchases of this kind.
Changes in peak engagement times on social media
One more trend which ensued during the crisis was that of engagement times. Earlier, retailers and advertisers had mapped out particular times of peak engagement with their audience. Now, with the lockdown in effect, almost all of the peak engagement times seem to have changed. People visit social media quite frequently and also engage a lot more often with social media advertisements. As a result the entire peak engagement time seems to have become a lot more spread out than before.
New social media challenges and trends
With the COVID-19 phase, there have also been a lot many social media challenges which seem to have arisen along with the same. This can be attributed to many reasons, most prominent of which seem to be the presence of a lot of free time in people’s lives due to the work from home culture.
Dalgona Coffee challenge
This challenge is primarily concerned with created a special type of coffee using coffee powder, water and sugar. This surfaced during the initial days of lockdown.
Safe hands challenge
This challenge was primarily created to increase awareness of proper hand cleaning habits to help people ward of any viral infections due to ignorance of proper sanitation habits.
Ethnic wear challenge
In this challenge, people took pictures of themselves in ethnic wear and posted them on social media.
Until tomorrow challenge
In this challenge people posted their pictures taken one year ago and also tried to re-create the same pictures that day.
Instagram template challenge
This was a bingo challenge created during the first few days of the lockdown. This was primarily a show of the different types of experiences which a person had in his or her lifetime, pictured in a bingo matrix.
Quarantine dance challenge
This was basically all about creating a dance video while in quarantine, to increase awareness of keeping oneself fit despite being at home.