2015 has been and gone but not without leaving a large impact on the social media industry. There are over 2.2 billion active users on social. With the world of social changing so quickly, 2016 will see a host of new trends and updates emerge. So here are our three social media predictions unleashed for this new year…

1) ‘Snaphappiness

Snapchat’s popularity increased dramatically last year, with over 100 million users being active. This could largely be down to the platforms new and exciting features that we didn’t realise we were missing from our social media driven lives. These include a live feature, to showcase real moments as they are happening around the world, and the story feature where you can share your own posts for up to 24 hours. These live updates will continue to dominate the industry this year, with Facebook incorporating virtual reality in to their platform:  “Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures???. Twitter jumping on the live experience lead, by acquiring Periscope, a live video broadcasting application.

Watch out for this throughout 2016.

2) Social Shopping

With brands using social media to advertise their products, the next logical step is to introduce a ‘Buy Button’ to the platforms, turning social a little more commercial. Pinterest and Facebook have already began incorporating this to their channel, which will allow users to purchase clothes, gadgets, furniture etc. without leaving the app.

3) The customer is always right

With social media being ingrained so heavily upon our lives, it makes sense that we turn to it when we have customer service queries, however, studies show that large retailers only answer up to 20% of Twitter questions, and 54% on Facebook. Luckily for us, changes have been made to allow business to up their online customer service game, and we should reap the results from this in the coming year. Twitter has got rid of their “mutual follow??? rule for its direct messages, so users and companies can message each other privately. The 140 character work count for these messages have also been ditched, which will help improve the service.

Please anticipate these trends for  2016 and beat your competition to it, after all social media is one trend that shows no sign of slowing down any time soon.