Webinar Recap: A Decade in Social Media. What’s Now. What’s Next?

This month, we hosted a webinar in honor of our 10th anniversary in business. The focus of our webinar was around the changes we have witnessed in the social space over the past decade, the current trends, and our predictions for the years to come in social media.

The Past 10 Years in Social Media

We kicked off the webinar with Lisa Braziel, our SVP, talking about how she was one of the original community managers in 2007. Facebook brand pages didn’t exist in 2007 and the focus was around one to one engagement and community building. Moving into 2009/2010 we started seeing that visual content was becoming a priority with new channels, Pinterest and Instagram, coming on the scene. In 2011/2012, there were new media opportunities and there was a push for brands to buy fans to build a following and reach. During this time, LinkedIn was the first to go public and Facebook soon followed. In 2013/2014, we started seeing Facebook reduce visibility of content in the news feed and much more of a focus on mobile first social. In 2015/2016, organic reach was down to 2.6% of brand’s audience. During this time we also started seeing video, livestreaming and messaging apps gain steam.

The Current State of Social Media

Social media usage is still climbing, and according to GlobalWebIndex, almost every internet user can now be reached via social media. Almost one in every three minutes spent online is for social networking and messaging. Also, people’s time is split between almost eight different accounts, up from three accounts in 2012. These stats set us up for our current social trends.

  • Channel competition is fierce
  • Influencer marketing and paid is another way to gain exposure
  • Marketers are looking for efficiencies

For additional insight into current trends and if you are curious about our predictions of the future of social media, check out the webinar and let us know your thoughts below.



Ignite Social Media