When US consumers started spending more time at home during the pandemic, they also started using social media more, providing an unexpected boost to engagement on these platforms. The coronavirus has hastened the development and popularity of new live streaming, video chat and gaming features on social networks.

The Harris Poll conducted between late March and early May, found that between 46% and 51% of US adults were using social media more since the outbreak began. In the most recent May 1–3 survey, 51% of total respondents — 60% of those ages 18 to 34, 64% of those ages 35 to 49, and 34% of those ages 65 and up – reported increased usage on certain social media platforms.

Which consumer behavior trends on social media will continue after the pandemic and how can we prepare for any expected shifts?

Social virtual reality, or social VR, has seen an increase in users too. Social VR apps like Rec Room, BigScreen, VRChat, and AltSpace have all seen an increase in traffic. AltSpace is even hosting one of Burning Man's virtual worlds from this year's virtual event. This week, Facebook announced the launch of the public beta for its social VR experience, Horizon.

Sneak peeks of Horizon screenshots are flooding social media. Facebook dropped the gameplay trailer for Facebook Horizon after months of anticipation. The trailer shows avatars playing games in Horizon, building their own worlds, and having fun with other avatars. Facebook Horizon's beta access is currently invite-only.

Like any Fortune 500 company, public safety agencies should be active users of social media if they want to thrive in todays information-rich environment. Content on the big four platforms—Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube—is accessed by more than a billion people worldwide. For many people social media is the first thing they check in the morning and the last thing they see before they sleep at night.

While most of us all have personal social media accounts where we post our cat videos and vacation photos, there are still agencies that don’t have official social media presences. My argument is that all public safety entities should maintain an active presence on at least one of the larger social media platforms, because the benefits of doing so far outweigh the costs in time and effort.

While there are many reasons why every agency should have a vibrant presence online (many of which are unique to individual departments), my favorite benefits all relate to recognition: staff recognition, agency recognition, and interagency recognition.

Social media has seeped into virtually all aspects of modern life. The vast social media universe collectively now holds 3.8 billion users, representing roughly 50% of the global population.

With an additional billion internet users projected to come online in the coming years, it’s possible that the social media universe could expand even further.

How the Networks Stack Up
To begin, let’s take a look at how social networks compare in terms of monthly active users (MAUs)—an industry metric widely used to gauge the success of these platforms.

Rank        Social Network        
#1        Facebook        
#2        WhatsApp        
#3        YouTube        
#4        Messenger        
#5        WeChat        
#6        Instagram        
#7        TikTok        
#8        QQ        
#9        Weibo        
#10        Qzone        
#11        Reddit

Social platforms are still reporting robust growth — yes, even Facebook — despite a growing chorus of opposition. Social conversation continues to shape everything from culture to the media cycle to our most intimate relationships. And we now spend more time than ever on our phones, with endless scrolling through our social feeds being a chief reason why.

But dig a little deeper, and a more nuanced picture emerges about social media users today that has important implications for the ways in which brands reach customers. Specifically, when you look at who is — and more importantly, who is not — driving the growth and popularity of social platforms, a key demographic appears to be somewhat in retreat: young people.

For example, 2019 findings from Edison Research and Triton Digital show social media usage overall among Americans 12 to 34 years old across several platforms has either leveled off or is waning, while 2019 research from Global Web Index suggests that the amount of time millennial and Gen Z audiences spend on many social platforms is either flat, declining, or not rising as greatly as it has in years past.

~ Brands must shift from their pre-pandemic social media strategies
~ More organic and engaging approaches are crucial when it comes to winning back customers or retaining new ones
~ Select the most appropriate platform that fits the target audience, even if it’s uncharted territory for your brand
~ Authentic influencer campaigns, user-generated content challenges and conversational tones are among the most effective ways to engage with customers

Convenience, but not only
At first glance, it could be said that the price of the product and its technical characteristics are decisive aspects when it comes to an expenditure. When two products have the same level of performance, the quality-price ratio always wins. But this is not true! The market is full of examples of products that are more popular even though there are competing goods that have similar characteristics.

Looking to implement a content marketing plan for your business, but not sure where to begin?

Used well, content can help you maximize connection with your target audience, and become a key resource in your niche. Your content can boost brand awareness, exposure, and eventually, lead to greater business success as potential customers become aware of your brand and its expertise.

So where do you begin?

The key to content success is mapping out a full strategy from the beginning, so you know not only what you're going to create, and where you'll share it. But also, what metrics you'll be using to measure its success, and how you can track performance over time.

An effective content strategy does take time to generate results, and if you have not aligned with the right metrics, you can come off the rails quickly.

French startup Yubo is the biggest social media app you have never heard of — unless you are a teen. With a focus on young people under 25, the company has managed to attract 40 million users. A fraction of them hang out every day in live-streaming rooms, meet new people and spend money for more features.

That is right, the company isn’t betting on ads. You can pay to unlock items or subscribe to the app. Yubo  expects to generate $20 million in revenue this year — that’s twice as much revenue than it generated in 2019.

This year has been a whirlwind, but if there’s something we all have in common – aside from living in the midst of a pandemic – it is our mutual exposure to a new age of activism. Modern social movements have transitioned online, much like the rest of our lives. With social media platforms remaining at the forefront of online communication, it has become more important than ever to reevaluate why and how we use these platforms, especially as they pertain to social movements.

Instagram, with its incredibly platform-specific-spread, has mini slideshows of infographics. Twitter and Facebook both have catchy headlines and quips, bites of information from a wide range of credible and not-so-credible sources. Almost every form of social media has a way to disseminate information in bite-size chunks; that function is central to its purpose as social media. This is fine, except when it comes to activism.

There are two sides to online activism: there are those who want to appear like they care about a cause, and there are those who actually do. A lot of the former tend to fall into the brand/celebrity/influencer category.

One common refrain is that, for understandable reasons, people feel worn down by the volume and composition of the media coming at them.

This fatigue stems from a few compounding factors. There is a strong perception that the character of the information presented by the media is warped by highly polarized players.

Nearly two-thirds of Americans across partisan affiliations believed that the existence of too much bias in the reporting of news stories that are supposed to be objective constituted a major problem in our media, a 2018 survey found.

It was back in 1999 that RSS feeds originated as a way of getting an overview of new articles and blog posts. They are still around today and can still be useful if you want to tailor and streamline your reading content.

RSS feeds can be used to bundle news from any number of websites within a program, browser extension or app. The only requirement is that the pages must support the.rss or.xml file extensions.

For example, if you just want to read headlines on the go, there are smartphone apps such as Feedly, Newsblur, Inoreader, and Feeder.

These applications have modernised the classic RSS service and offer, for example, the synchronisation of the RSS feed between smartphones, desktop computers and laptops.

The modern type of RSS feed reader also offers other advantages. Providers like Feedly also make suggestions about possible feeds based on keywords or interests, Neuhetzki says.

Google Podcasts is finally getting a feature that’s already standard across most listening apps: private RSS feed support. The head of product for Google Podcasts, Zack Reneau-Wedeen, made the announcement on Twitter today and shouted out some networks that are especially reliant on private feeds, including Patreon, Slate, RedCircle, and Supercast.

To access the feature, tap over to the activity tab in the bottom right-hand corner and slide over to the Subscriptions tab, then tap the plus symbol.

It is reported today in Hong Kong that more RSS apps are disappearing from Apples App Store in China in a new crackdown on feed readers. Apple removed two additional apps that pull content from RSS feeds, allowing Chinese users to access articles that might normally be blocked by the countrys Great Firewall.

Fiery Feeds and Reeder both acknowledged on Twitter that their iOS apps had been removed in the country. They cited a 2017 tweet by Inoreader, another popular RSS service, which posted a letter from Apple saying its app was removed in China because it included content that is illegal in the country. Inoreader said the entire service was blocked in April this year.

Privacy-protecting browser Brave is introducing a new news reader, Brave Today, per Ars Technica. Brave’s news reader masks users’ reading behaviors by divorcing IP address details from content delivery requests. Once a user clicks on a news item in the feed, Braves reader directs traffic to publishers own pages. Brave Today is supported with privacy-protecting offers and promoted content.

This all sounds vaguely reminiscent of an RSS reader, and Brave is not the only one revisiting the potential for news aggregation. Substack has also launched at creating a distraction-free space to consume email newsletters that isn’t the inbox.

Facebook is often considered the 800-pound gorilla of the social networking market. Its family of apps -- which includes its main app, Instagram, and WhatsApp -- grew its monthly active users 14% year over year to 3.21 billion last quarter. Facebook also shares a near-duopoly with Alphabet's Google in the digital ad market.

However, several major social networks are still growing in Facebooks shadow. Lets take a closer look at three of them, how they withstood competition from Facebook, and what that resilience means for Facebooks long-term prospects.

1. Snapchat
2. Pinterest
3. Tiktok

1. Say goodbye to one-man-shows.
2. Be mindful of response times.
3. Hire social-centric experts.
4. Have backup resources.
5. Educate leadership on social media basics.
6. Provide social teams with ample resources.
7. Establish clear escalation and brand guidelines.
8. Encourage days off.

Is your social media marketing approach in line with the latest usage and behavioral trends?

The use of digital platforms changed significantly over the course of 2020, with the lockdowns and COVID mitigation efforts forcing people to find alternate ways to socialize, to shop, and to work, all of which have flow-on effects. That's sparked new trends, like audio social, and new approaches in how businesses connect with their target markets.

If you're not aware of these shifts, you may limiting your marketing performance. To provide some more perspective, the team from tech.co recently put together a listing of six key digital usage trends that could influencer your strategic approach.

You can check out their six key trends in the below graphic, which might help in your planning.