The “new normal” represents huge opportunity for businesses in the digital world.
With around four billion people logging onto social media sites every day, there is a huge opportunity for businesses to take advantage of a seemingly endless audience.
Boundaries between work life and home life have become blurred as employees get to grips with a “new normal”, whilst people take to their screens for escapism.
This represents a huge opportunity for businesses: more people than ever before are looking, and searching, for you online, and there has never been a more opportune time to invest in digital media.
According to Bazaarvoice’s Influenster survery, 82% of consumers (and your potential customers) have increased their social media usage since the coronavirus pandemic took hold, with Instagram and TikTok benefitting the most from the uptick in screen time. Couple this with social media’s year-on-year user growth of 9%, and your potential audience continues to increase.
Since lockdown was implemented, 35% of consumers have increased their time on YouTube, which points to a trend that has been developing rapidly over the past few years: video and visual content is king. Whilst they are similar in terms of consumption of media, it’s key to point out that the media itself on these video platforms are quite different: TikTok and Instagram can be quickfire, with Instagram Reels and Live representing opportunities for businesses to delve into live streaming (much like the social media roundups on @reevesocial on Instagram – drop a follow over there if you haven’t already).
Working from home also means flexibility in working times, so using that wisely means exploration into content that normally would be shelved and forgotten about. Take the plunge to try something new – especially if you have a smaller following. Taking the risk and time to get it right could just pay off massively.
Getting that content right, however, does require research and preparation; knowing your audience is key. With 99% of users accessing social media through their phone (and 78% of social media users exclusively accessing it from a mobile device), it’s pivotal to ensure that your content is mobile-optimised and easily digestible on a small screen.
Not only does screen time continue to rise during lockdown, audio has experienced an increase in podcast creators of 49% month-on-month, whilst Acast, Bauer Media and BBC Sounds have all reported record-breaking months in terms of listeners since the UK went into lockdown.
It didn’t look so rosy at the start of lockdown for the podcast industry, with a complete shutdown of commuting and gyms resulting in downloads taking a 10% hit. However, a gradual adjustment to the new normal has seen podcasting back at the forefront of content consumption, with 18% of consumers say they have listened to more podcasts during lockdown. Spotify touched on this in its Q2 2020 earnings release, stating that podcast consumption had more than doubled, with 21% of its users regularly listening to podcasts.
Tying the audio into the visual is a huge opportunity for businesses, with dissemination being a key tool to fully utilising content and getting the most value out of every feature. Stringing content into multiple threads will help you to fully utilise the growing audience across multiple platforms, with short- and long-form video being paramount to capturing a new base of followers. There’s more opportunity than ever before, with new platforms able to boast millions of users within weeks of release. Clubhouse, for example, was only released in December and is invite-only, yet already has six million registered users. Capitalising quickly on emerging trends, even if they don’t last long, is key to growing brand awareness and enables your business to always be ahead of the curve.
Considering the growing number of consumers spending more time than ever online, coupled with an ever-increasing catalogue of social media sites, COVID-19 represents the greatest opportunity for businesses this century.